The brown curtains fall to the floor - unopened. He scrambles with his food-stained old duvet finding the courage to take his first step out of bed.
After what seemed like a lifetime, he drags himself out of his rectangular shelter. While every step is forced to the window, the unsureness on his face radiates as to whether he will open the curtains today whilst flickering with them. He seems taken aback by the shy beam of light filling this once dark room.
His malnourished frame stands still as he wonders how life turned out this way. He remembers a once happier self when life seemed better, and life was full of hope. He remembers a time sitting at the dining table, voices echoing from the kitchen followed by outbursts of laughter, and the smell of sweet-smelling apples filled the room. That was happiness. But now he looks over to that unrecognisable dining table, surfaced with cigarette ends, old food packets and empty beer bottles.
The excruciating pain from his alarm clock floods the room, and he returns back to the side of his bed and almost punches the clock off his side table to silence it. That noise is a reminder that he had allowed it to become three in the afternoon and wasted another day. Five years ago, he would have been at work, looking forward to going home and spending time with Lucy - his ex-wife. Now, he sits limbless on a stall and gazes out of the window, with his pale face protected from the world behind the curtain. Anxiety rushes through him as he sees the streets full of life. He notices a woman - a petite frame with dark brown hair in an elegant ponytail, which lifelessly falls down her back. She reminds him of Lucy, and the thought of her name once again spirals him back to a pit of guilt.
His intercom screams, and he remains still as if his mind and body are disconnected. He cannot hear the noise, even though the noise is still there. Instead, he scuffles his hands towards a cigarette packet in the hope to find one out of all of the empty packets that remain. With luck, his fifth attempt at a packet had a cigarette, to which he lit. He sits there, flicking ash onto the burned carpet below, thoughtless.
Thinking was the issue, and at any given moment, he would blank everything out, and for a single millisecond, the pain would go away, but after every moment of feeling pain-free, guilt would hit him like a tsunami hitting a coast. He wants to feel numb and, in doing so, was the reason why he was stumbling to the kitchen, still drunk from last night, getting the final beer that had resided on the dirty counter. The kitchen is a mess, with vomit over the grey lino flooring and not a clean dish insight. A room that used to mean so much to him, as he and Lucy spent most of their day cooking and baking. He was once an exceptional cook, working in his and Lucy’s five-star restaurant, whilst Lucy had a talent for desserts.
But now the kitchen was the memory of a partnership he lost and his grief had not allowed him to pick up his apron since he lost her, relying on pre-packaged foods, and that was only if he was not too drunk to eat. A once ambitious chef who now was a drunk divorcee who was lifeless, living amongst cigarette ash and empty beer bottles.