Fray – V. Moist

-The door opened with a swoosh, the wind was blowing outside. It had picked up from last you had noticed it. Even before you took a step out of the coffee shop, standing there at the doorframe, the wind howling in front of you, you could feel it begin to deplete that built up warmth. It seeped out quickly. You hurried through the puddles and sleeked concrete to your bike. As your hands reached out and grasped the handlebars, you could already feel the biting cold of the breeze. The dampened sweatshirt, its flooded crest, became like an ice pack, prickling cold against your goose bumped flesh. Your face again reddened by winter scratching, the feeling and sense of your nose becoming lost in numbness.
You jumped on and peddled, water splashed with the rubber wheels’ intrusion into the huddles of fallen raindrops. And though the feeling had been taken, again, from your face, your thoughts were still fluid and the coffee had, if nothing else, shaken things around to dismiss any attempt at singularity of thought, which might have been your mistake in the morning. You thought about the softness of the feminine voice, those words which had proved as much to you. You thought about smiles, a wondrous image, if created by the right person, of course. You coasted down the up slopes which had slowed you earlier, you crossed the same street which had been crowded by cars, and as you approached your house, the same bird, after having slept all morning in its warm tuft, was again watching the small narrow street. It watched you as you rode along the Shrine’s portion of the sidewalk and let out a squawk. You heard it, all other thoughts were slowed, and you wondered if a premonitory squawk that morning would have changed your day and saved your sweatshirt from defeat.
Your attention shifted as the squawk echoed and faded. You noticed a stillness. The trees continued to shiver, but their leaves no longer danced. The raindrops continued to lose their grip of the trees’ green and continued falling onto sleeked surfaces. As your tire’s thread crashed down, searching for traction, little streams parted, leaving a dampened narrow path amidst the water drenched streets, but there was a silence. The wind had held its breath and the only sound you heard was a thought that brought you a smile, as you eased the back brake and came to a stop. Your feet touched ground and you felt the swish inside and shivered, the dampened cold sweatshirt still wrapped around you. You secured the bike, your hands a little pale, and went inside.
Leaving your backpack in the bathtub, you entered your room and pulled at the tapered end of the sweatshirt, pulling it up and over and off of you. You let it fall to the ground, crumpling and dampening the carpet. The shirt you wore under it clung to you, a second skin. You peeled it from you and left it hanging in your closet. You looked at the sweatshirt, picked it up and laid it over the back of your desk chair. You knew, as you saw it crumpled over, weak, it would be a while before you wore it again. You unbuttoned your pants and watched them gather at your feet. You finished undressing and tucked yourself under the blanket that had kept you in that morning. Took a quick glance at the alarm clock and closed your eyes, knowing it would be okay if you happened to drift.
Drift you did. Instantly, the cover enveloping the warmth of your body; the warmth pushing against the thin layer of frost still clinging to you, melted away the frost’s advances. You disappeared without being aware of the moment of disappearance. Oblivion came upon you and filled your lungs more fully. The duration of each breath elongated. Steady lengthy inhalations followed by quick exhales. The sound of slumber filled your room so that when your cell phone rang, its ringing was almost inaudible. You were cocooned within the warmth of slumber, the sound of it, and the depth of your oblivion.
When you finally opened your eyes and the sound of slumber had faded, as you lay quietly in the dark, a beeping slowly came into your awareness. You searched the room and found the sound along with a flashing light. You reached across the desk, across the textbooks, knocking them over and knocking the highlighters that still lay in their pages onto and off the desk. The crashing sound of textbooks, highlighters and cell phone, sharp, made you cringe and in doing so brought you to a stage of greater waken ness. You picked the cell phone up off the floor, leaving everything else where it had fallen. As you did, the light blinked and the beeping filled your ears once more. You noticed you had two missed calls.
Your eyes darted to the red numbers, glowing in the darkness. You had been asleep for an hour. It had felt like days to you. You weren’t late for anything, but the missed calls made you feel as if you were. You navigated your way through menus and options and found that the two calls had been from work. You called immediately. The phone rang without cessation. You hung up and redialed thinking perhaps you had punched in the wrong number. Again, it rang and rang. You were about to hang up, when you got an answer. The lights had gone out under the rain’s campaign against the day. You had the night off.
You got up from your bed and turned on the fluorescent upturned lamp in the corner of the room. You could feel the weight of slumber still weighing your eyelids. You looked at the scattered textbooks and highlighters. Picking them up, you noticed the sweatshirt was no longer heavily dampened; it was still moist, but the heaviness of water and cold had evaporated. You set the textbooks and highlighters down on the desk and stood there long enough to notice where the sweatshirt had been weakened by its defeat against the rain. You knew, as you stood there, naked, where the first fray would come from.