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The door creaked as it opened, the light from the hallway bleeding into the dark expanse of the room and illuminating whatever sat in the cracks of light. Spamton shuffled inside, hair wet from the nonstop rain drenching the city outside. His ears felt muffled and his lungs were full of tar, rendering him unable to do anything but sigh.
Darkness engulfed his frame, its hands coiling around him like a snake once he managed to shut the door, halfheartedly twisting the lock behind him. Spamton knew what day it was, it wasn't like he had forgotten all he was — but there was something preventing him from having the slightest bit of joy for it. Maybe getting older meant less joy, or the opposite. Getting older meant more misery, which drowned out the joy. That sounds about right.
Leaving his keys on the countertop next to the toaster he never uses, his fingers hooked his tie and undid the knot. Getting rid of the blazer felt like cutting the last string tethering him to the earth, collapsing on the couch in his dingy little apartment like a marionette. Stringless, devoid of life.
God, he was so miserable.
There wasn't any particular rational reason why he was the way he was. Would it be enough to excuse this behavior by just saying he was tired? That the exhaustion from lack of sleep and not any other matter caused this inescapable emptiness laden in his heart? It felt as if someone were grabbing the pit in his chest and squeezing it with adversarial hatred. It felt... Well, he felt nothing at all in reality.
The nothingness he felt was strange. It felt like he were aching but it wasn't painful. Made it hard to breathe but he could breathe just fine. An anomaly sitting in his chest, nestled so deep within his organs he couldn't have done anything but claw his way in and rip out the tissue to find what the problem was.
If he had known he'd feel this way, he wouldn't have gone to that damn party. Tenna suggested it, claiming he had to celebrate his birthday, he must, for it was something to celebrate. Funnily enough, the entire time he felt nothing standing there with a glass of merlot and Tenna watching over him nervously, asking if he enjoyed the party.
Of course he liked the party. It was everything he could have wanted. Free alcohol, food, entertainment. Tenna was plenty entertaining. All for him.
Shutting his eyes, he watched the light behind his eyelids dance gently, glimmering as if they knew his plight and were laughing in his face. The lights in the city never ceased. It was his fault for not closing those giant windows, but he couldn't be bothered to do anything but lay there uselessly on the couch made for more than just him. What was the deal with him anyway?
He couldn't even get up to grab a thing of wine from the cooler, pour himself a glass. God, how much did he have to drink? He wasn't drunk, he was just... There were too many questions he wasn't equipped to answer swimming around in his head.
Best he could do was rest, wasn't it? Resting helped exhaustion, but he wasn't exhausted in the sense he didn't get enough sleep. He had taken a nap in Tenna's office before the party and he'd gone to bed early that prior night to prepare for his "big day." Spamton concluded he did not want to rest, not yet at least.
Cracking open an eye, he looked at the digital clock illuminating the dark room with its emergent glow. 12:08 AM.
His hand caressed the couch cushion briefly, his thumb moving back and forth against the fake leather to feel the bumpy material. After all that thinking he still did not feel. It was still nothing. Maybe he was just upset and he didn't know.
No, he was definitely upset. Memories of a better time flashed in his mind, ones with pink and blue and yellow and orange. White.
Pink brought the cake because he was better at decorating than the rest of them. They could have just gone with something premade but Pink was stubborn enough to want to show off his skill. Orange was the most impressed by the cake.
Blue suggested the party because Spamton had made his first sale — well, his first indirect sale. He tripped while in that stupid, sparkly blue dress and some nutjob decided they were interested in what he was wearing that day. Orange made a quick buck off of his wares and Spamton's humiliation but these memories were a blur, flickering in his mind absentmindedly.
He remembered eating the cake. It was dry, kinda flaky, not that good, and way too sweet. The frosting was hardened because Pink's buttercream had too much sugar. He remembered Pink's expression when he set the cake down and stabbed the candles through the stiffened frosting. Neutral, somewhat happy. The pit in Spamton's chest grew.
None of them were here anymore. They were all gone and all he had was Mike, Tenna, and maybe Swatch. It wasn't like he was complaining. He'd rather have no one and stand at the very top than be some stupid fucking loser kicking rocks again.
12:35 AM. He didn't even remember the time going by like that. It was starting to get late, yet he still felt wide awake. What did it mean for him to feel exhausted down to the bone yet still be wide awake? Achingly awake, unwantingly awake?
Spamton imagined himself driving the 'dero, the city lights rushing by like blips in the darkness of his car. The headlights punching through umbra and clearing the path ahead for him, the path past an actual road and off a cliff. He imagined the cungadero bursting into flames, the heat of a thousand suns burning his skin and melting him into ashes, permeating the smell of burning flesh into the night air with no one in sight to help.
He imagined himself in another life, passed out in the drivers seat, the front of his car totaled because he'd crashed right into a nearby tree on a whim. Because he decided that being big alone was too painful a fate for him and that freedom came with the end of him. His being, what he was, and his consciousness. If he were no longer conscious, he didn't have to worry about silly things like rising above himself and reaching out past the dark. He wouldn't even know what darkness or light was.
Closing his eyes, he rested a wrist on his forehead, inhaling the cool night air filling his apartment. Spamton didn't feel like getting up right now, so the easiest thing to imagine was for him to close his eyes and never have a worry again.
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"Happy birthday to you..."
"Happy birthday to you!"
"Happy birthday, dear White..."
"Happy birthday to you!"