Anthony

It was a Thursday in April. I remember because I had taken a glance at the calendar before I had went to bed and thought of how I was born on a Thursday. Not in April, obviously; June. But I remember thinking that. So I know it was a Thursday. But I don't know which one it was.

I had lost track of the days, and the date, and even my sense of time was withering away. I am usually stuck in a vortex of nothingness, and there are times when I have even felt like I have lost myself in the abyss there. It was three in the morning when I thought to glance at the clock, and like a ghost I decided to pull the covers over my head. I could smell the odor of my own sweaty laundry covering the floor, and the film of rot in the air from the dirty dishes. Stale chip crumbs crunched under my bare feet, and I didn't even bother to brush my teeth; I just collapsed from exhaustion, and something else, onto my bed. I breathed in the scent of the musty green sheets, and felt the filth of my life hover over me in the darkness.

I was a few minutes into dozing when Giovanni jumped on my bed, simultaneously snuggling next to me and waking me at the same time. I fetched my hand out of my covers and gave him a scratch on the head as he purred. And then I heard from my deep underwater ears a scratch on the door. Grumbling, I climbed my way out of my sheets, and navigated through the dark to the back door. I turned the handle of the unlocked door, and opened it a slit, expecting Campanella to walk through with his tail all proud and prancing in the air. After a moment of seeing nothing, I gasped and swung the door open to see who was there playing tricks on me at three in the morning. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, but with the door entirely embracing the thick blanket of darkness and the slightly rustling plum tree to my left, I could see absolutely no one. My confusion rose, and with it, my fear, and I was left with my hand stuck cold to the door knob, unable to move. My eyes swung back and forth for any movement, and my ears pitched into the night for a single sound. But my eyes found it first, sitting at my feet. The sliver of moon came out from the clouds, and I stared at the thing below me. It was a sketch, an outline, a reflection of moonlight on an invisible body. I watched it stare back at me, as though introducing itself once again to me as what it was. The plum tree rustled in my ears; how many days ago had I buried the cat in it's roots? My head instantly soared to the clouds.

But introductions were over, and Campanella moved swiftly and silently into the open doorway.