From the Vast

Interlude IX: Drifter

"*shhhh*—ou know what it is, just an afternoon with my wife!"

The roar of canned laughter floods the living room before giving way to harsh hissing once more. Above it, the black-and-white image of a talk show grows blurry as static devours it, erasing whatever meaning it still had. A few moments later, the broadcast fights back, pushing through the noise and distortion, yearning to be seen for just one more moment.

But nobody is watching.

The television's pale glow pierces the muffled darkness of the living room, brought on by the thick blinds obscuring every window in sight. All one needs to bring the space back to life is to stand up and walk these few feet, to grasp the grimy cords.

But it is too late.

In front of the TV set rests a well-worn armchair, its once blue fabric covered with stains the color of dirt, blood and pus. On it, a mound of cloth and sludge, a pile of regret and decay, what was once a person wrapped tight in what was once a blanket. Around it, empty plastic wrappers and glass bottles, their contents long forgotten and devoured—first by their owner, then by microorganisms decomposing them.

What remains of the human's head keeps staring at the device before it, the receiver's light illuminating the many shades of decay covering the skin. Sometimes, it twitches just a bit as another patch of sinew holding it together turns into mush. Aside from that, there is no motion in the room, no change.

Not in days.

Not in years.

*knock knock knock*

The muffled sound eclipses the TV static despite being so much quieter, stirring flakes of dust from the garbage strewn across every flat surface. For the first time in weeks, there is a shift in the putrid air, beyond the miasma of death and waste growing ever more intense. Tension rises in the motionless space, begging for the external influence to leave it be, to let it decay into nothingness evermore.

But it won't.

*knock knock knock*

Another three strikes against the front door, its mechanism long since half-devoured by corrosion. Soon after, a pair of muffled voices outside, chatting with each other, and a low, animalistic growl, their intricacies falling on the abandoned house's deaf ears. The world demands presence, the pile of decomposing flesh demands closure.

At last, motion.

A grayish hand phases through the stained, crusty blanket enveloping the corpse, and another one follows moments later. After it comes one leg, then the other, with only the inanimate TV set to witness their appearance. The half-formed, immaterial entity shudders and stops; it wants to go no further. No thoughts grace it, no memories—only the emotions that used to comprise them.

Hatred.

Guilt.

Regret.

*knock knock knock*

And yet, What Is must continue its crawl, to depart the cocoon of What Was and What Will Never Be. The quietest of metallic jingles fill the air as its head pushes through, freeing the rest of itself from the once-body that once held it. It falls from the armchair onto the trash-covered floor; the digging of shards of plastic and glass into its woven skin overlooked in the horror of steadily building consciousness.

And then; it opens its eyes.

Their dim, pink glow sweeps the room, taking in hundreds of objects it used to know but doesn't. It stares but does not see, the decomposing environment around it reduced to naught but visual noise and an incomprehensible blur of shapes, all bathed in shadows.