Solitude

Eryn held the pencil loosely between three fingers. The lead pressed the paper, indenting a small black hole in the blue line. She stared into the blank spaces on the page. She tapped the pencil on the sheet until a constellation of dots made a circle at the top of the page.

She sighed and set the pencil down. She cleared her throat and reached for the glass of water on the edge of the table. She swallowed and looked up at the kitchen light, inspecting it for bugs and the like until her retinas shrieked for mercy. She closed her eyes and lowered her head, afraid to open them to a blank page.

She belched and sighed again, finally opening her eyes. She set the glass down, smacked her idle hands together, and licked her lips. Page still blank.

Eryn slid out from the table, given the lack of space between it and the wall behind her. She made careful notes about the motion of her body as she walked a few steps, from the curl of her bare toes on the floor, to the tensing of her leg muscles, to the length her arm extended toward her computer on the opposite side of the table. Under her finger, her mouse screen was slick but tract. She rubbed the edges of the little square, still fresh after four years, unlike the middle that had worn smooth from oil and sweat from her fingers. Her joints popped quietly as she clicked the music player icon and selected a song.

She walked to the downbeat of the song, back to her side of the table, and retook her place in front of the paper. She picked up the pencil and tilted the page, ready, in case a musical note struck her the right way and words began to fall involuntarily from her hands. She struck the side of the pencil, ticking the lead inside to the beat of the high-hat drum in the music. She closed her eyes again, hoping to see the music dance as her ears swallowed it.

The scene behind her lids was fuzzy, like that of a snow globe with too much snow.

In the fog, she could make out the forms of a man, a woman, and a dance floor. The male and female shadows danced together in the dust. Gradually, silhouettes of other people appeared, lingering around the edges of the floor, their faces blotted out like on a crime show.

A shimmer of red flashed across Eryn’s vision. As the song ended, her imagination faded to black before she could question it.

Her eyes opened to the page where, now, one word sat, perched innocuously on a blue line.

Distance.

She peered at the word as if it’d appeared by magic. She inhaled. Underneath it, she added, “solitude.”

She tossed down the pencil and her shoulders relaxed, as if the pencil had weighed 10 pounds. Her eyes wandered about her kitchen as she thought.

She closed her eyes again suddenly, trying to strike the same match twice. But she still couldn’t make out the figures.

She stood up quickly, slamming the chair against the wall. She marched to the fridge and yanked the door open. She snatched up a bottle of American ale and popped off the top with the can opener. Down the hall, in the living room, she fell into the soft pillows of the couch, reached for the remote, and turned on the TV.