The Best Man | sisyphic
He snatched the letter and re-read it. Yes, it was done.
He snatched the letter and re-read it. Yes, it was done. Yes, they planned to move in soon. Yes, the marriage would be held in the garden. Yes.
He imagined the bridegroom. Always smiling, always laughing, always happy. Ellis didn’t understand how a single human could behave so carelessly, so free and open and unlatched. He did not think to add any colour or sound or even faces to that imaginary scene, he didn’t want it to become too true. Of course he knew this pouting would do no good to anyone, but gosh it was painful to indulge in another’s success.
Why could he not have done it? Wasn’t he the one praised for recognition? For a brief few moments he felt a slight sickness that travelled up his spine and through the arms. It was a nervous, jittery kind of shiver. Almost inhuman, as if he was really a shade pulled up from the fields of the dead somewhere deep below the earth. He certainly didn’t look alive: the late nights and spontaneous bursts of passion and regression enfeebled his limbs and cast a deep sluggishness onto his mind. With that letter, has the last morsel of goodness within him leeched out from his eyes and splashed onto the pages? No, those were only the salty drops of a predator upon seeing a prey too large to take down.
If only a chisel or crowbar were available in that moment, and the observer may then pry open his mind and peer within. It was a pungent dish, seasoned with envy and garnished with a small dash of failure. There was the smell of chopped-up pride and roasted fear. The entire thing was cold too; unserved it lay rotting in the depths of that once glorious kitchen. A good scrub and clean might be of some redemption but the cook is absent, and the scullery-servants are nowhere to be seen.
Ellis picked up his stale mug of coffee and took a long draft. He’ll think of a reply later.
