3 A.M.
There’s a moment around three AM when the sounds of sirens wailing in the distance wakes him up, and he rolls over in bed to find it empty. His partner had moved to the chair by the window, and the neon light of the vacancy sign paints bars across his naked shoulders. He watches the flare of the cigarette move, watches him tap the ashes into the broken-down air conditioner as the smoke dissipates into the moldy darkness.
They haven’t spoken since the moment the sweat started to dry. Cheap yellow wallpaper peeling from the wall, dead bugs on the windowsill and he’s choking on his own words at the Happiest Place on Earth.
“Those are mine,” he manages as the clock ticks off 3:34 AM.
That red spark hangs in the air for a long moment, and then the smoke curls up towards the ceiling, and the other in the chair answers in a strained voice, choked with tobacco: “Go back to sleep.”
When he wakes the next morning he finds an empty room and an unpaid bill. They meet later in the conference hall, sitting in silence. The other deliberately avoids his eyes, but he images a thousand accusing stares from the audience around them, seeing cigarette smoke, peeling wallpaper and tangled sheets in their silence. He imagines smirks and whispers when they return to the research center, and the silence of their lab as they ignore each other. He imagines every day as awkward and shaming as this one.
The next day he begins to look for a new job.
Notes: Features characters Ethan Adrisson and Adam Baxter from "Love in the Age of Robotics"
They haven’t spoken since the moment the sweat started to dry. Cheap yellow wallpaper peeling from the wall, dead bugs on the windowsill and he’s choking on his own words at the Happiest Place on Earth.
“Those are mine,” he manages as the clock ticks off 3:34 AM.
That red spark hangs in the air for a long moment, and then the smoke curls up towards the ceiling, and the other in the chair answers in a strained voice, choked with tobacco: “Go back to sleep.”
When he wakes the next morning he finds an empty room and an unpaid bill. They meet later in the conference hall, sitting in silence. The other deliberately avoids his eyes, but he images a thousand accusing stares from the audience around them, seeing cigarette smoke, peeling wallpaper and tangled sheets in their silence. He imagines smirks and whispers when they return to the research center, and the silence of their lab as they ignore each other. He imagines every day as awkward and shaming as this one.
The next day he begins to look for a new job.
Notes: Features characters Ethan Adrisson and Adam Baxter from "Love in the Age of Robotics"