“w’hat?” he said

It wasn’t a question to anyone in the room, he was answering the blinds that rattled in the open window. He was in his late thirties, and hunched his shoulders, arms hanging at his side, as he turned and stared into the fluttering blinds.

“So little breeze, and the blinds flutter.” Whether he says these things out loud or is thinking them makes no difference. His voice has lost touch with his body. Sometimes his voice startles him, he wasn’t expecting anyone else to be there. And his face, it has no emotion, and it never changes. It’s as if he could pull it off and hang it on the wall before he went to bed, and it would hang there, just as it is now.

He starts to fall backwards, vertigo. He’s been staring at the blinds too long. A little bit forward, a little bit backward, he tries to right himself, but gives in. He’s been here a thousand times, laying on his back, with the light and shadows coming through the blinds playing across his face. He turns his head.