187 Orchard St has been many things since its construction, but most recently it took the form of a small book store. It was the shortest building among a sea of steel giants. A shop saved from demolition only by a community vote that half the residents didn't know existed. By day and by night, one long and wide glass window is illuminated in a soft yellow glow. The lighting allows an easy view into the shop and it's inner workings. This morning there sits a young man, picking away at a styrofoam cup half filled with cold coffee. The air is cool, the sun low as it peeks over the horizon and sends fractals of light shimmering across the store front. The name on the slightly shattered screen next to the man flashes 'Jack' and the phone vibrates fiercely against the metal of the table. His brother is calling him- again. How he detests the noise notifications make, like drilling and scraping, shrapnel being mercilessly shaken. He swiftly declines the call and stuffs a few receipts and papers in his side bag.

The Book Store is compact. To the right of entry is the sitting area and to the left a labyrinth of books, organized in no particular order. Dark green bindings are balanced atop hot pink paper backs. Peeling beige artifacts that are losing their color the longer they're left deserted. When bored, he runs his fingers along the spines as if each were a key on a long piano. Occasionally he takes down a book, wipes dust from a cover with his palm and sets them back. Today however he doesn't linger in the textbook section. He doesn't attempt to memorize decimal points or passageways. He reaches the classics area, retrieves a singular title and makes his way to the check out.

"Thank you Lilith," Josh speaks curtly and hands her his debt.

He tries to ignore the small black and white photograph of a young woman and man that is scotch taped to the register. He doesn't look too long at the shallow amount of five dollars bills in the register drawer, almost as green as the antique wedding ring that is rusting on his cashier's finger.

"Mr. Taylor," the old woman says as he steps outside, placing his money into the lock box. The small bells tied to the door with a red ribbon continue ringing as he pauses and looks back. "There are other books in my shop other than Wuthering Heights, you know."

Joshua nods, aligning his teeth and biting down just enough to feel a pressure of pain in his molars. With this comes a shrug, a glance to the yellow daisies in the blue vase set upon the front desk, and then a departure.

The black coat he wears is loose around his arms, the inner lining separating from the wool like sea from rocky coast. Subconsciously or not, the color feels important in a way he isn't- therefore he wears it often. Those acquainted with Josh wouldn't call him a captivating company, at least not in the conventional sense; but rather one would agree that there was something charismatic in his stance and conversation. He was pleasant to have around. For the most part he had a quiet demeanor, a gentle smile and languid laugh that often coaxed a brightening of spirits from even the most dull of associates. Brown curly hair was moderately unkempt and his narrow face wasn't in any way striking to the memory. Many who met him paid him little mind. But for the few that stared hard and long enough at the youth there was a notable strangeness to his appearance. He seemed rather like the living prose of some poet tasked with describing a person while the sun shone bright in their eyes. Filling in bits and pieces best they could, despite an intense glare, they would find themselves with nothing more to copy down but a dark and blurred silhouette.

Many who saw Josh saw the outline, the pieces, rarely did anyone stitch them together cohesively. Long and staggered lashes often seem painted against his pale complexion. Speckled hazel in his eyes summoning memories- summer nights of sparklers and campfires around the opaline brown. It was the manner in which he carried himself however, that gave away those subtle hints to his secrets and life.

As he walks he follows a simple pattern of repetition, heel to tip of toe in a steady slapping rhythm against the damp pavement. He thinks of how all of life falls into patterns, and patterns emerge from chaos and traumas that are inescapable. His fingers rest against his leg as he glides, playing memory as an instrument in small flecks and pressures. In some moments he had been able to clear the clutter, enjoying a blank mind of desensitization from the many elements of stimuli which rushed at him all at once. He still tried to shake it, the pressure on the back of his skull, the nail-like horror that hammered harder in his head every time Jack tried to have a discussion about it.

Oh dreaded it.

A simple command code; like sentences, some tasks longer than others, droning on in steps and lists. And others short. Quick to start and quick to finish.

He remembered somewhat bitterly that to brush his teeth or take the empty mugs out of his room had become a weighty task, difficult to even remember.

It is strange. Is it supposed to be affecting him less like Jack says? Then why does his conscience tell him with a strong guilt that he should be feeling more? After all, he should be more shaken shouldn't he? It was all so sudden.

How can he mourn the loss of things that never happened, he wonders. After all, he hasn't lost a wife. He hasn't even really lost a friend or colleague. She had taken leave and made a choice he could respect even if he didn't understand. Their different perspectives had at last driven between them a wall that couldn't be bridged or climbed.

He watches the fluttering of curtains by the breeze as shop owners close up for the day. His nose scrunches in disgust at the stench of smoke and gasoline that settle in a thick soupy fog over the entire city. Do they not know? Can't they see that there's someone missing, that the entire universe has crashed in a chaos, one death metamorphic to the end of logic and peace all together.

'Melanie Steele is dead,' he thinks to himself, 'and I feel nothing. What's wrong with me? It was wrong of you to sneak out on Jack like that, he's probably worried. Worried you'll go and drown yourself somewhere or just never come back. She is never coming back Josh, you do know that, don't you? Then why- Just a headache and this strange pulsing everywhere that won't go away...'

What had Jack told him last night? Something about something having killed her? Someone had sequenced a life's end, pieced together an algorithm of cut brake lines and rushing cars and now Mel was-

Josh stumbled a bit, fingernails digging into his chest as he felt it, the first large drop of the stomach, the vision that blurred the world into complex grainy pixels of photons.

"Josh?"

So Jack had joined him now in the swirling nightmare, standing there with shocked eyes and pulling him back from the street. He was in the street wasn't he? There were his feet, leading him out to stagger over yellow lines and blaring horns.

"I just went for coffee," Josh said quietly and pushed his brother away, "I only went for-"

He can't hear his own voice anymore, it sounds strange and muted. Then the nausea attacks viciously again, the skin on his arms prickling as he turns to the side of the road and throws up an empty stomach. He just wants to sleep, to lay down a moment-

His chest constricts violently as he gasps for air, he feels himself pulled off the street toward home. Jack rushes him up the stairs in hazy vision, past the beige walls and other apartments, past worried onlookers and whispering residential gossip to 441A.

The pinching is behind his cheek bones now, something is brimming on the verge of collapse. The leather of the couch is cool against his burning skin. Home? How did they get home so fast?

"Jack-" he gasps pitfully as he clings to the jacket of his elder brother.

"Sit," Jack said.

Beads of sweat roll down Josh's forehead and for a moment, he thinks perhaps his nose has started to bleed. Then, by chance, he looks across at the round mirror on the wall adjacent. There he is met with the red faced horror affront him.

He is home, that he knows, but there is the inescapable feeling of something chasing him, of someone watching. Perhaps that terror in the mirror.

'It's like part of him has been torn out,' Jack thinks as he scrambles for medications and water, 'Ruthlessly cut from within him. He left this morning a brother and now it's like he's back like a corpse walking.'

Jack's heart breaks slightly as he looks over the young man, shuddering in his coat, staring blankly with wide bloodshot eyes at the mirror as he doesn't bother to wipe the fluids from his face. Sobbing hysterically, unable to stop, the tears pour in rapids, every vein and cell pounding in a dull pain. They coat his hands in thick translucent glass, thin spiderwebs of moisture as he spreads his fingers apart.

Finally, Josh chokes out a reply.

"She's gone?"

Jack pauses, looking away, and gathering all his courage- nods. "She's gone."

Mel Steele

9:08 PM Mar 21Symbolic of Josh being lost without having someone to read him from an external perspective and anyalze.

Mel Steele9:09 PM Mar 21

Start of patterns of familiarity as a coping mechanism.

Mel Steele10:45 PM Mar 29Items that once had emotion sentiment are limited to their surface appearance, going deeper ruins the facade, acts as a reminder that depite the stability of the setting and the balance of routine grief persists

Mel Steele11:25 PM TodayNote to self: People cope with grief in diffrent ways, but everybody feels it and eventually, everybody has to face it.