Telecommuting by L .Marie Wood

Author:L .Marie Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mocha Memoirs Press

Ten

It’s dark.

So dark.

Conference calls in the middle of the night or, I guess it’s technically the wee hours of the morning- whenever the fuck this is – they don’t get any easier the more you do them. I should know. I’ve been on more than my share.

Voices pierce the darkness. The small light on my desk only emits a cone of muted yellow, tentative as it cuts through the blackness to light the papers strewn atop the surface. It seems hesitant, this light, afraid… almost like it feels the darkness could swallow it up, sop it up entirely like bread does gravy. And then it would be gone, gone, gone.

Gone.

She is gone.

Definitely gone.

Like the not coming back kind of gone that feels hollow, numb around the edges instead of solid or stinging. She’s gone and I’m here, this big house swallowing me up, smothering me with its heavy air and inky black shadows. Gone like she was never actually here at all. I would believe that if I could, would cling to it if it would fill the emptiness I felt, but I knew it wouldn’t. Because she is gone.

Definitely, without a doubt gone.

Maybe she has someone else. It’s been months now – maybe she found someone else at a happy hour or the gym or wherever she spends her time these days. Maybe she swiped right on some hot dude who looked like he could wine and dine her then bend her over the arm of the sofa and fuck her good. A twofer. Why not?

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was in her new place sleeping in her new bed all alone and that’s the way she wanted it to be. Without anyone. Without me.

Fine. Fuck it, if that’s what she wants. If she wants to be alone – if she wants to be without me – then so be it. I don’t need her. I don’t need her to smile at me in the morning, make sure we have enough toothpaste, make sure I eat something or at last change my fucking clothes every once in a while. I don’t need her to tell me to look for another job since this one sucks, even if it means I have to leave the house because I should leave the house because leaving the house and talking to people is a good thing for my soul. I don’t need her to tell me she loves me just because, even when I’m not doing anything to make her say that, because I don’t need to hear it, to feel it, to be made comfortable in that way. I don’t.

I don’t.

“Are you seeing that the emails are being quarantined too? I just want to make sure we are in sync before we tell the customer to go to their IT department…”

The voice on the other end of the phone had been speaking for some time, but it had just been background noise until then. I thought I answered this a while ago, before I realized how loud the silence was at o’clock a.

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