He opened the box. Plastic covered in dust. He hadn’t seen this stuff in years. It was strange, knowing now that they’d been here all along, lying in a box like corpses. He grabbed one, a small robot-like ninja and remembered where he bought it.
George coughed. He had been looking for something to keep his mind busy, looking through the attic just for the sake of looking through the attic. He had to keep remembering, he had to keep going through the box. George knew that sooner or later he’d start thinking about what happened and he didn’t want that. Anything but that.
He put the ninja down and grabbed another toy. These used to be his life. He would come back from school and play with them, make up stories. Then years passed and he forgot all about them, started doing other things, started writing, talking to girls, drinking whiskey and vodka. When exactly did they disappear from his room? He couldn’t remember. He didn’t even notice. When exactly did she stop caring for him? George grabbed another toy. He needed to stop his mind from wandering. He bought that mutant mouse with the metal arm and the eye patch back when the show was still on.
What was that show called? Biker Mice From Mars. George snickered, what a silly fucking show. He really used to love that show. He used to love so many other things. Not just like them. It was so much easier to actually love stuff back then.
He’d changed, he thought. Grown bigger, older. But what exactly had changed inside of him? Why couldn’t he stay at home and play with his toys anymore? Worry about little things like getting all the baseball cards he could get his hands on, trying to read comic-books with dirty words in them. Or buying the meanest looking biker mouse from Mars. And just why the hell did he keep doing this to himself, with the goddamned girls and the booze and all that shit? Damn.
“What a bitch,” George muttered. His voice, alone in the attic, nobody left to hear it but him, sounded peculiar. It sounded good: “What a fucking bitch.”
The toys looked back at him approvingly. He put the mouse back into the box. It was almost six o’clock now. He was supposed to meet her at the coffeehouse with the muffins she liked, six thirty. It would be awkward and painful and ultimately useless. He considered, for a second, just staying there in the attic with the toys. Not showing up. He glanced at the rest of the boxes, still unopened, smiling. What would he find in them?
And it was then that he felt a terrible hole in his chest, like a million leeches sucking on his heart, his lungs, his soul and he knew that whatever it was he would find in them didn’t matter, not at all, because she’d still be there, outside, without him. George closed the box. He had to take a bath, change clothes and brush his teeth.
He would not be playing with those toys again.
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Do you mean brush? I mean, sure, we all wash our teeth (I hope XD) but, washing teeth seems like washing dishes or something.
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