Waking the Dead: Part One

Thomas stood at the back of the room, clutching in his fist a glass of watered down drink that had once been a scotch on the rocks. He felt numb all over and if someone had simply knocked the tepid drink from his hand it's likely he would not have reacted at all. Thomas hadn't reacted to a thing in three weeks. He'd tried, to be certain, but it was as if any ability to register love or loss or hope or pain or joy or sadness had left the world three weeks earlier, had checked out along with Julia. He'd tried getting drunk, tried fighting walls, and in one fit of desperate stupidity he'd even tried putting cigarettes out on his leg. Nothing worked. He was a living statue, a golem stripped of the spark of life.

He watched the room, his eyes glazed, his legs and feet aching. He felt as if he'd not sat down in months, years. People walked past him, turning eyes void of any real understanding on his lifeless form. He was a stranger amongst them, still too new to their world for any of them to offer true comfort, not that there was any true comfort to be had. So they shuffled quickly past, museum goers moving briskly past a wall littered with art they couldn't possibly understand.

The golem stood silent.

--This was the first of a three part exercise. We had to write one 250 word entry a piece about a friend, a family member, and a significant other. I envisioned a funeral where all three were the same person and the stories were being told from the point of view of the people related to the deceased. This is the first, the significant other.--