The Bubble

Those lines that converge and make the borders of the window framed the view of the city: a patch of happiness overlaid by the landscape of men’s trivial achievements. Reaching for the sky and cutting though the horizon, it stretched across indefinitely, like a separate universe, embraced by the arms of distancing crossroads, car horns, and indistinct urges that are slowly fading, exposing the world that surround them all into a great civilization.

 That night, the city was cloaked into an abysmal darkness. The ground burning into a cold sheet of neon lights, customs, and unspoken crimes against the confusing ethics of man. Hairless apes hovered over machines, staying out of sight, hemmed in by relatively spacious cubicles into a row of hard working figures, aligned into a tower of concrete, aloft, giving them skewed sense of superiority and protection, while being paid by the leading organizations that earn from their hard work.

By the end of the day, these individuals were off to their domestic quarters; carried by this tiny enclosure of swiftly moving objects that are only allowed to traverse in a certain manner on a certain path- they call it vehicular traffic. Freedom was stripped off this man enclosed by civility so that he can go home safely without being restrained by his own people of wrong doing.

The miles stretched away from the city, the scenery gradually morphing into less people, into thinner contrivances, into a big village bespangled by tiny bulbs and a carpet of trimmed grasses; a phantasmagoria featuring personal landscapes of dreams and hammocks suspended under the trees with silent leisure. He passed by a house. Driving the figures inside his head, it is a thousand fold smaller than the structures with that of the cities, a hundred times more honest, and a million times less expensive. It is surrounded by a garden of growing peace and simple desires.

That specific night, he got off his car and stroked the knob on the door, twisted it far enough to know that it was still locked. He pressed a protruding silver button adjacent to a sign stating “Home Sweet Home” once, twice…thrice. Hearing the familiar melody chiming inside, comfort licked him, the desire for his wife, his son sleeping, the bed and the tea. He was here, with all those expectations buzzing around his head like disturbed bees, standing on his doorsteps of his own house. And no one was answering. Few seconds stretched into few minutes. Eventually, he went through his case and lifted the keys. It dangled under his grasp, its sound disturbing.

He clipped the case closed and opened the door. After adjusting from the darkness, he gradually figured out that his wife was murdered. There was blood everywhere, a baseball bat on the floor, a knife on the couch, and then her body sprawled and bathed in her own wastes. He was staring into her like it was his son. His real son though was not in sight, he might be in his room, cowering in a corner, alive, calling for help inside his head. He was shaking, and no thoughts were coming into his head except the battering images presenting itself like an invincible dream.

There was someone in his head urging him to walk upstairs to check if his son was there, another voice telling him to walk away and ask for help, the other to simply pick up the phone. But there he was, glued on his stature, and savoring his life on the brink of collapse. There was a house with a man and his dead wife, a son missing.

The world. It would start over in the morning, will work out to remain a world might he find the murderer or not, and will continue in its cycle. People will be born, some will drift away, something and someone will continue to shift and vanish like they've never been there.

The man imagined going upstairs, discovering his son still cowering on the corner of his room, asking for him to be saved from another nightmare. After that, he imagined picking up the phone downstairs and eventually hearing his wife, telling him she will not be coming back until the end of the week, reminding him that she loves him. The man then smiled, tears smudging his periphery. He slowly bent to his knees and lied down on the floor, closing his eyes, trying to sleep, but all that came was a realization so strong that he wept. With his tie still tight around his neck, he wept so hard that the house creaked and sobbed with him.

The night was filled by its sound. Every hiccup was carried by the breeze outside to a world indifferent to personal cries. The earth is at its farthest from the sun and winter's forefront had been tormenting the trees and the hammocks that swings back and forth and back and forth, making them dance as if celebrating another night that was about to pass.