Shadow

She could not be found anywhere in the apartment. All the windows and the balcony doors had been left opened as before, and a colder night wind blew in from the darkness outside. After several minutes of searching, he found no sign of her, nor any indication of where she had gone. He shivered uncomfortably, closing the large external doors in the lounge room, and felt a wave of nausea hit him. As he picked up the trail of his clothes from the floor and dressed, he shuddered, sighed painfully, and tried as best he could to restore a semblance of calm. The thought that he had inflicted such pain upon her, while it spurred him on at the time, always left him with a vague feeling of discomfort, and her absence amplified it tenfold.

He picked up his phone to call her, but after pressing the unresponsive buttons and tapping the screen repeatedly, realised that the battery had been completely drained. There was, of course, no landline in the apartment, and no other way of contacting her. He sat despondently on the sofa and waited for what seemed like an eternity, although the wall clock helpfully told him that he had waited only half an hour. The apartment remained silent but for the rustling of the trees. As he waited in the darkened apartment, a picture on the wall caught his eye; it was a black and white sketch of a small bird in a cage, with a note scrawled below it. The inscription read as follows:

"It's my hell, and I'll love it if I want to."

At length, the waves of nausea subsided and tiredness replaced them. It was two o'clock in the morning, and he could have slept there, but was reminded that she always objected to him staying afterwards. It was unusual for her to disappear like this, but it had happened before, and in times when it had, he had never succeeded in contacting her or inducing her to explain what had happened. Even then he could hear her voice, its tones turning uncomfortably serious, telling him matter-of- factly, as she did, "I love you, really I do, but you don't have to map out my life for me. I can take care of myself."

He looked around disconsolately; the apartment seemed foreboding and severe to him in the darkness, and suddenly he wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else. He strode across to the front door, and swiftly opened and closed it behind him, the sharp snap of the lock engaging completing the feeling of finality about his exit. His consciousness seemed to slip from him for a second until he was back in his car and turning the key in the ignition. As painful as it was, he was not going to risk his relationship to solve this mystery, one of many about Clara that he would probably never unravel, or more likely, never try to unravel. It was time to go home, with the windows up and the heater on, and go back to his life, until the next time she invited him back into hers.

***

Daniel opened his eyes with a start at the beep from his mobile phone. A few rays of early morning sunlight flowed in around the curtains, lighting the room with a haunting orange glow that blended with the wooden furnishings in the bedroom. He picked up the phone, squinting and tilting it to avoid the glare, and read the message:

"Thank you for last night sweetie. Don't forget ILY. And leave your phone on at night... ;)"

He sighed, shivered and rubbed his eyes; although he felt relieved that nothing had happened to her, he also felt a sinking feeling he could not fully explain. Falling back onto the pillow, he dropped his phone from the side of the bed and fell back into a restless and uncomfortable sleep.