by Gregory Reed

Created on: February 03, 2009

Thoughts splurge from the decrepit mind of Theodore Ellingsly as he lies in bed half awake, half naked listening to the morning chirp of yellow-tipped, hovering canaries. The pale, rounded sun has yet to rise over surrounding hill-locks and his body has yet to stir this day of St. Valentine. A day that he has grown to detest and regard to as "the day I wish to sleep through". His eyes quiver with curiosity and hands tremble with regret as his body lies motionless while ears count each passing tick-tock of the crooked, wooden clock. A thick hand-woven duvet drapes stock still, covering him head to toe upon a sunken, defeated mattress. A bed side table of three feeble legs is set to the right, on it a candle casting a dim flame, revealing an unkempt, diminutive room with the stench of an eroding carcass being quaffed about, thick enough to be choked on during a deep inhale. A single, shattered window at the foot of his bed, off-centered is covered by a seamless, stained shade of which hasn't been opened for years. A cedar-planked floor set beneath catches shadows thrown upon by crawling insects that flow from cracked, papered walls like mewling love-milk.

"This day" he mutters, "is a day I want erased from my mind's calendar, torched and trotted upon by those very wicked saints who devised it". Rolling gingerly over, he turns his back to the clock wanting time to fly by like those moments of pleasure. Reaching his right hand behind him, he waves at the candle's wick suffering the flame, darkening the dank room. A creek is echoed throughout portraying the sound of a bending floor board. His lids cautiously slide open only to reveal still air as his mouth speaks blank words articulating, "Who's there? What do you want, damn it?" of which fall upon deaf ears. Shutting his eyes once again he thinks to himself, "what if this day was never shared with one I admired, what if I never met her amongst those gardens of beautiful, unpicked flowers, what if I never tried to catch that innocent butterfly which guided me to her, what if for this day would just be another instead a day full of agony and dried up tears." His faded heart beats unsteady and blackened with every passing emotion of grief which he cannot ignore.

Nightmares repeatedly haunt his attempt of forty winks, driving him mad as he just wants to be dead to the world. Daylight now creeps through the drawn shade revealing day's arrival and the wee hours of morning. He tucks his head beneath the unwashed, tainted

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