OBSCURED.

Random lights hover over the landscape, making blurry holes in the soft, cool, opaque blanket that covers the area from horizon to horizon. He sits there alone, under the watchful stare of the stealthy moon-man, gazing at the fuzzy-edged halos. A breeze blows across his face, sending a stray hair through his field of vision. It tickles his eyes as though to remind him that a world still exists outside of the illuminated circles coloured like a the flesh of a ripe melon.

He plucks out the hair without so much as a doubled breath, then lays it on the other end of the bench he’s on. As he nears the beverage seated beside him to his lips, the beginnings of a fog slide over the landscape. He closes his eyes as he drinks, and, sip-by-sip, he feels the liquid sparkle down his throat. He reopens his eyes and lowers the glass to see the lights look even more blurred and diffuse due to the moist grey veil distorting his view.

His attempts to continue focusing only serve to make his eyes cross. He stares out into space, while his mind is days away. When he tries to concentrate again, the fog’s thickness makes his eyes ache from strain. The small amount of light still able to penetrate the clouds seems to begin swaying in the breeze. Realising it is apparently a hallucination, he decides it is finally time to retire. Rising from the bench, he picks up the glass once more, then strolls the few feet to his door where he finishes his drink.

After he sets the container beside the doorstep like an empty bottle for the milkman in the morning, he turns and looks back in the direction of the soft electric glow. Though everything is still shrouded, what he can see of the lights seems to wave goodnight to him through the haze. A brief gust of wind tosses another hair from the maddening pile atop his head into his eye. He promptly wrenches it out and tosses it to the ground below.

"You sure made a mess of me," he says to someone that’s not there as he watches the hair fall. Turning back towards the building, he reaches into his pocket for the key to his door. Fumbling with the unfamiliar keys, he has to lean in close and study them to get the right one. Upon finding it, he unlocks and opens the narrow door, which bids him enter the crisp, dark room.

Across the shadows on the floor a cockroach scurries. With a swift nudge he sweeps it out the door and shuts it. With the door closed the room is pitch-black, even to the point that it seems lighter inside his eyelids. Through his eyes, he sees nothing but complete darkness, so he relies on all he’d seen earlier to get around. He makes his way to the bathroom mere feet from the front door, and proceeds to relieve himself. At this point he is rather unconcerned about his aim, choosing to concentrate on the total lack of sound.

He finishes, walks into the main void, and tries to look around. "Looks like I'm home tonight," he says to no one in particular, not even himself. Slowly, carefully, he gets to his knees, feels over the carpet with tentative hands, then lies down in the midst of the darkness. He curls into a fetal position to ward off the cold seeping through the cracks.

Now he sleeps on the floor, the things he said that he doesn’t mean anymore haunt him. If only he could deny it all, all that he didn’t want.

Tonight he remains in darkness.

Alone.

Obscured.