a letter from nowhere

Collin lied in bed and stared at the ceiling. A deep dark mood had been creeping up on him all day. A sadness mixed with frustration. It drained him of all ambition. He felt extremely restless, but he had no desire to actually do anything. He couldn’t think of what he would do anyways. Nothing held any interest for him.

The girl he loved was on the other side of the world, the other side of the planet. He hadn’t heard from her in two days, which doesn’t seem that long, but to him felt like months. He knew she was busy and if she wasn’t calling, it was because she couldn’t get to the phone. But his personality was such that the slightest little thing allowed doubt to creep in. Despite knowing full well how much she loved him too, he couldn’t help but think horrible thoughts about how maybe she had grown tired of him suddenly. How being away had changed her perspective on things. About how much fun she was having. Laughing, living her life without him.

But that was ridiculous. He had to get up and stop thinking things like that. She wasn’t the cause of his dark mood. She was his ray of light. She was the best thing in his life and to doubt her was wrong and unfair. The genesis of this depression rested in the moment he had opened that letter the night before.

It had seemed so innocuous at first. He had found it nothing more than amusing and even a little confusing. A second reading had done little to illuminate the point of the missive, so he had set it aside and gone about his evening and gone to bed.

In the morning it all seemed different. It was like his brain had restructured itself over night, making him suddenly able to decode what was being said in the letter. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the key to that understanding had been handed to him in a dream. But he couldn’t remember the dream, no matter how hard he tried.

He had picked the letter up and read it again. What it said now startled him, where it had amused him before. The things he had found particularly funny were now threatening, damning. However, the situation was hopeless. There was nothing he could do now. So he had tried to put it out of his mind. His thoughts kept going back to Adrienne. If she were here he could talk to her about it. She was the only one who would understand.