My Black Heart: Part Three
Blindsided
My consciousness surfaces from the depths of sleep. I keep my eyes closed.
Not ready to face the day, yet.
My head rests against cool, cracked leather. A heavy weight bears down on my chest. My arms wrap around one of the most important women in my life.
“Wakey, wakey,” she says. “Hands off snakey.”
My eyes flutter open and I snort.
“Inappropriate.”
I untangle myself from my guitar, lift her from my chest, and sit her in her stand.
Her steel strings sparkle in the morning sun. The chestnut tones of her neck and body reflect golden rays of light. She has a chip on her head, but the imperfection only adds to her beauty.
“Let’s play,” she says.
I wiggle my head side-to-side.
“I don’t know. I’m — .”
“Braow!”
Peasy complains from her food dishes.
Saved by the braow.
“I can’t,” I say to my guitar. “Duty calls.”
She sits silent in her stand.
I walk to the kitchen with a shrug.
Oh well. The Muse is silent today, too.
I usually wake to subliminal dissonance. My thoughts crash into one another like electrochemical clouds, producing a thunderous roar of cerebral sound.
Today, my inner dialog is masked by mental white noise.
Good.
I kick down the easy chair’s footrest, stand up, and stretch my arms high.
Crack! Pop!
My knees and spine speak to each other in bursts of broken nitrogen bubbles. I drop my arms, walk to the kitchen, and begin my morning ritual. The air fryer’s digital timer ticks as my apartment fills with the smells of coffee, hash browns, and bacon.
The countdown to happiness.
“Braow!”
Peasy tells me it’s her turn.
I glance in her direction and nod my head.
“Yes, ma’am, coming right up.”
I gather up her food dishes, fill them, then set them down on the blue mat in the living room. Peasy waddles over and almost steps into her water bowl.
That’s weird. Did she not — .
Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
The air fryer’s timer goes off. I plate the food, walk to the living room, and sit. The chair’s leather squeaks and crackles as I settle in and chow down.
Peasy and I eat our breakfasts in silence. She finishes before me, then she walks around behind her food dishes and sniffs around.
I crinkle my brow.
What’s she doing?
Peasy licks up a few spare morsels of food, then she waddles back to the front of her dishes and lies down.
I shake my head.
Being a weirdo today.
I shove the last bite of smoky bacon into my mouth, wash it down with a gulp of bitter coffee, and set the dishes on the table next to me.
I sigh and glance around. My guitar is mute. The TV screen is a black mirror. Peasy licks her paws clean.
I need some lovin’.
“Peasy,” I say. “Pss-pss-pss.”
She looks in my direction. I lift my hand and squeeze an invisible ball, performing the universal gesture for “come get ear scritches.”
Peasy doesn’t move. I make the gesture again. She remains motionless.
I squint at her.
I’ve seen you run across the room for ear scritches.
I stand up, walk over, and kneel down next to my cat. She sniffs the air, but she doesn’t move.
I squeeze the invisible ball twenty centimeters in front of Peasy’s face. She still doesn’t move.
I twist my lips.
“You alright, kitty?”
Her head rotates toward my voice and morning light glints from milky eyes.
I scrunch my eyebrows.
Wait, what?
I reach out to her head and my fingers graze her ears. She jerks back in surprise.
Almost like…
I scruff her neck and turn her face toward me.
“Grrraow!”
Peasy voices her displeasure, but I need to know.
I gently rotate her head toward the window. Sunlight bounces into her eyes and a white sheen reveals the truth.
She’s blind.
My eyes become milk saucers and my breath quickens.
“What the fuck?”
The words tumble from my mouth in a horrified whisper.
“What the fuck?”
My lips tremble and a tear wells in my eye.
“What the fuck?!”
My knees buckle and I collapse to the ground.
What the fuck?
A silent movie plays through my mind, each image filling in a blank. She ignored ear scritches and she refused to beg for treats. Last night, when I tried to lie beside her, she didn’t move until we touched. She almost stepped in her water bowl this morning.
How long has it been?
I lie on the ground and ponder the question for — I don’t know how long. I open my eyes and Peasy is gone. My stomach rumbles and I glance at the time.
Almost noon?
I get up, walk to the kitchen, and prepare a light lunch of raw fruits and vegetables. Cooking is the first basic task that I set aside when I’m overwhelmed.
I take the food to my chair and nibble in numb silence. The plate empties and I set it on the coffee table, next to the dirty dishes from breakfast. Lacking human intervention, the dish pile will grow into a mountain.
I don’t care.
Peasy walks from the hallway and into the living room. Now that I know to look, her fumbling gait is terribly obvious.
Clack!
I snap my fingers and Peasy shifts her milky eyes toward me.
Clack! Clack!
I snap again and she comes to me in a stumbling half-trot. Her whiskers brush against the chair, then she lifts her floppy forepaws onto the footrest.
“Braow!”
Peasy wiggles her haunches and launches from the floor. Her claws scrape as she blindly scrabbles along the leather and into my lap.
I scratch her ears and smile.
“Good job, kitty.”
I adjust the chair to its fully reclined position and lie back.
Peasy headbutts my chest.
“Prrraow!”
The subtle change in vocalization indicates contentment.
I pull in a long sigh and close my eyes. I lie in the easy chair with Peasy’s comforting weight resting on my chest.
Reality shifts.
My eyes flutter and color drains from the world. Sharp edges become smooth. Dimensional depth blends and blurs, then disappears.
I’m in a featureless, two-dimensional, gray void.
Welcome to The Null.
I first visited The Null twenty-five years ago, but that’s a story for another time. Twelve-year-old me lacked the knowledge and context of thirty-seven-year-old me. I know I’m experiencing derealization.
I don’t care.
I succumb to the grayness and drift in The Null for seconds, years, or eons.
“Mraow!”
I open my eyes. The living room is dim. The calming weight of Peasy’s proverbial safety blanket is gone. I pick up my phone and check the time. It’s 6:31 PM.
I scrunch my forehead.
What? How?
“Mrrraow!”
Peasy sits in front of the blue mat, not-so-patiently waiting to be fed.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
I drop my phone, kick the footrest down, and stand up.
Snap! Crack!
My knees pop and protest as I walk to the kitchen to prepare Peasy’s dinner. I deliver her food to the blue mat, return to the kitchen, and open a cupboard. Food stares at me, as appealing as hot garbage.
I sigh.
Gotta eat.
I reach to the top shelf, pull a nut bar from an open box, and tear off the crinkling wrapper. I take a bite, chew, and force a swallow. I repeat the process as I walk into the living room and sit down. The bar disappears in two more bites.
Peasy finishes her dinner at the same time. She stumbles to her bed, using the wall and her whiskers to guide her.
Poomp!
She plops down onto the fuzzy fabric, closes her milky eyes, and purrs.
She’s dealing with this better than I am.
I scan my surroundings for an antidote to the pressure-poison that clouds my mind. My guitar sits in her simple stand. She’s been silent since the morning, but now she speaks.
“Hey,” she says. “Let’s play.”
I twist my lips.
“No. Not today.”
“Especially today,” she says. “Play with me.”
I shake my head.
“No. I’m not in the mood.”
“You haven’t touched me all day,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”
My shoulders sag.
“I — I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
I stand up and walk to the hall.
“Hey, wait,” she says. “Where are you going?”
I take a deep breath and let it out in a slow rattle.
“To sleep.”
“You need to deal with this.”
I shake my head.
“Not right now.”
“It’s not even 7:00,” she says.
I shrug.
“I don’t care. I’m done.”
“Fine,” she says. “Coward.”
I look at the floor.
“Okay.”
I flick off the living room light and abandon her in the dark. My feet drag as I walk to my bedroom. I pull the covers aside, slide into my bed, and sink into the supple sheets.
My alarm clock projects the time onto the ceiling. It’s 6:52 PM.
I gather the sheets around me, slip into the warm waters of exhaustion, and let myself drown.
Day two ends.
