The Seventh Mark

He didn't know what he was looking for, but he knew exactly what he was hoping for.

His eyes scanned the desk as he ran his fingers against it, the wooden surface smooth against his skin. With one hand on the glossy top he bent forward, looking underneath it. A dusty film had made its way up the inside part of the desk, dust gathering in the corners.

The smell of dust and yellowing pages filled his nostrils, settling in the back of his throat, his eyes squinting against the hazy air. Muted light filtered through the window, spilling against the floor in the shape of rectangles. He slowly looked over the desk, his jaw working as the silence pressed against his ears.

His knees found the carpet as he slipped under the desk, his hand slowly dragging across the surface. His fingers made their way across the walls of the inside before slipping into the roof. He shifted, peering at the wood, his fingers crossing through dust and onto a clean surface. The dust looked cleared away on the roof of the desk in quick, hurried gestures. The edges of the dust were marked by the distant shapes of fingers.

He slowly blinked, licking his lips before he paused, noting the marks underneath the desk. He squinted his eyes, just barely making out the scratch marks made by a pair of scissors over the years. They were shaky tally marks, the same ones he had seen last time he was here. His teeth grit against one another as he dragged his finger across them, counting them like he used to.

“One,” he mumbled to himself, his throat hoarse. “Two,” he slid his fingers, the memory of her telling him what each one meant distant in his mind. “Three...” he felt a lump forming in his throat. “...Four,” he attempted to swallow it. “Five...” his neck craned as he looked at the marks, clearly remembering six of them. “Six...” he said before he stopped, all feeling leaving his body. “...seven.”

He pulled his hand back slowly, his body slumping against the inside of the desk as he stared at the marks. The six older marks that had been shaky, almost desperately written. Then the last mark, the seventh one that was lodged awkwardly by the others, looking clean and precise.

He blinked rapidly before slowly turning his head to look at the newly replaced window. Sunlight filtered through it, the shadow of the day slowly drawing back to reveal wisps of dust in the air. He sat alone within that room, under the desk he had seen so many times in his life, still trying to figure out what he had been looking for. The police had searched this room so thoroughly, he wasn't likely to find anything.

But what he had hoped not to find, it had been there, and it would stay there as a constant reminder. He stared out the window towards the brick wall of the neighboring house. The lump was lodged in his throat as he shifted to watch the shadow slowly cover the sun, the rectangles of light slowly vanishing.

This, he thought, this is where doing nothing gets you. It gets you nowhere.