The lights of the night city shined far below him. Small flashes of neon lights and tiny, even smaller than toys, cars were moving in the chaotic patterns of never ceasing life. He felt detached, cut from the rest of the world by the thick glass wall. Nothing - no sound or smell - could penetrate through it. His senses were strained, but he couldn't hear, couldn't feel, he could only see. And what he saw both bored and enchanted him.

It was the same scenery every night of any month and any year. Nothing changed, although the city grew with each passing year, but the nights remained as busy as ever, glittering with the attractions he didn't succumb to and offering the entertainments he could never accept. He couldn't feel the acid taste of the alcohol sold nor he could sink into oblivion provided by the drugs. He couldn't touch the living bodies, which were eradiating warmth so foreign to him and offering the pleasures he knew nothing about. The night was as dark, as cold and as indifferent as he was.

And sometimes he was even glad that he couldn't breach this glass wall. For he knew nothing of the things he couldn't have and therefore felt no regret of not possessing. His life was spent in the darkness, which enveloped him like a blanket - not demanding, not offering condolences, - just being. But with every passing day it was getting harder to see the light in the end of the tunnel.

Turning from the view spread before him, he soundlessly stepped back, dissolving in the darkness.

11/27/2005