Gone Girl

Sitting at the coffee table, modernized by the reflection his laptop made upon my eye, was a quietly made man. Not necessarily quiet as a self, though I hadn’t heard him speak. There was just something quiet about his appearance, his very existence. He had glasses or maybe he didn’t. But he was thinking about writing, in that way only writers with a past do. Life was weighing on him and it had almost taken him away.
Did you ever wish that when someone was truly suffering you could see their lifeforce fading? So that all they were going through was visual? I wish that for myself. Sometimes I’m dying and no one can see it on the outside. If one could just see me fading, maybe they could touch that part that’s not breathing, and breath would face me again.
So I approached him. I couldn’t fully. His fading had gone too far. Standing at the very edge I watched him. Maybe I guarded him from something, but I felt a slight tremble in the air around him. His eyes closed, making me think whatever had just happened, had actually happened. Then color slowly, almost imperceptibly, faded into his lifeless existence. His burgundy sweater hid a gingham button up, leashed in with a tie that he couldn’t keep bound up. Then, brown slacks sat beneath him, and a pale neck rose from the loosed tie,into a calm, worn face. Finally, his gaze fixed through his glasses onto his laptop, and he wrote.