The Art of Loneliness

I was on the fifth floor again, curled up in one of those big, soft wingbacked chairs with a copy of Titus Groan between my thighs.

It was a quieter day, but I had slipped in unnoticed and sat with my back to the bar. I wasn't ready to be talked at yet, just wanted to lose myself in Mervyn Peake's beautiful world where everything was broken and decrepit.

I wished I could be like him, that I could be him. That I could draw and write and share.

But I was content, at that moment, to be myself, and let him simply was over me instead.

To borrow a bit of his faded fairyland glamour.

"You again!"

And these, the words that shattered the dust and bone castle that I had built around myself.

I looked up, and found myself face to face with the boy I did not know.

I did not like him, I decided. He represented change, and change was something that I was not ready to accept.

So I looked back down, and hoped he realised that I wasn't ready to order, especially not from him.

For a while he stood there, maybe waiting for a response, maybe puzzled, maybe just learning how to hate me.

But then he went, and I could breathe again.