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[FICTION] Tales from Port Astor | Whispers 1

 "Hello caller, you are on the air"


"I can't sleep. I see my days play out in my mind; the banality of my life projected like old film upon the canvas of my closed eyes. The fine details lost under patina so heavy as to be entirely lost. And what plays on that movie? Which is so gray and dull as to be worn river rock? The small moments of each passing day, but utterly unable to be separate from one-another. Already lifeless as it is reduced to the mere physicality of brain matter and electrical activity."

"But more than that, the failings of my life, none individually extraordinary, consume me in their totality. Lack of family, found or otherwise; the path of my life so lost in the weeds as to make me wonder if it was ever really there."

"I can't sleep. As I lay there, watching that film, I fear that it will still be playing when I open my eyes; looming over me as I lay in the dark, illuminated by what little inner-city light that creep-crawls in through the blinds like vine through stone. The light forming scan-lines across its visage as it bores into me."

"I can't sleep. I can't tell what my life is anymore, or if I am just running in place as it loops in on itself; living only in the film playing before my eyes; living only in that which haunts me when I lie fitfully at night. A simulacra of myself."

"I can't sleep anymore. I don't know if I have ever been awake."


"Thank you, caller."

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