by Raheel Deedar Ali

Created on: April 19, 2008

He lived in an apartment building which was located a few miles outside of the 'active and happening' life of downtown and the city. The building was quite tall as the real-estate and rental costs made it more feasible to occupy the vertical air space rather than the horizontal cubic feet(s). His apartment was way up the building, in the section accessible only by the express elevators. Often clouds descended outside of his apartment window and he couldn't see the life as it occurred on the ground below. Winter prevented him from going out as often as he liked so he forced his surroundings to evolve providing, not many physical, but enough mental engagements. Computer games were his favorite and he was able to play for tens of hours, skipping meals, phone calls or exposure to social life. Winter was most likely the cause of it all.

Ray was sitting in the dark, clicking away endlessly at the mouse and with his eyes peering into the computer screen.

"Gaah! Another miss, my team's crap!" he yelled. He leaned back into the chair and waited for the new round to begin.

He knew it was the New Year's Eve but the idea of excitement, just like the celebration on his twenty-second birthday, had gotten too familiar to him. He'd grown fat and lazy. Life, like the receding hours of winter sunlight, appeared in him only sparingly; and seemed ever fleeting. There was some evidence of energy but it was pain, or perhaps some kind of remorse, more than anything else. It was like your awareness of the sun at winter time: your knowledge that, there is a Sun hidden behind the clouds which, if it only showed itself, would confirm that you've not been deprived of that day; of your life's vibrancy; of the romance which gets choked at the hands of the very day, every day, that you spend on this planet. Life ought to cry or it so did, for the light which was bound by a never ending eclipse, this darkness denying life a release. His head slouched and he turned it to look outside of the apartment window. He could see thick fog and the darkness which lay beyond its enclosure. He said:

"Hmm, nothing New here!"

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