The apartment looked empty. Something undefinable had left, been taken away, and all the furniture now seemed without luster, devoid of memories and personality. Though the sun shone in through the windows, and lit the large space with light, the apartment seemed gray and quiet. Almost melancholy. Reaching up to place the keys on their hook, Reginald allowed the door to swing closed behind him with a soft click. Home. Their home. His home. His home. He almost lacked the energy to move forwards, to go through all the small routines that settling down to rest involved. He could picture them, the numerous small tasks, each step a still frame of himself, frozen in action, numbered, till the steps culminated in his sitting with a mug of tea to gaze out the window and into the world.

Pursing his lips, Reginald shrugged his long coat off, allowing it to slip down his arms and catch on the crooks of his elbows, from which he swung it around and bundled it in half, dropping it over the back of a chair. Unwinding the old scarf, he moved towards the kitchen table, a clear expanse of light, honey colored wood beneath the window out of which he'd soon sit to look out. How often they'd sat just here, early mornings, the quiet rustle of newspaper pages, the delicate clink of saucer on cup. The warmth, the sound of their hearts beating together, in unison, unheard but... felt. Feet bumping under the table, the casual contact that never failed to excite, if only the slightest stirrings of desire.

Reginald reached out and allowed his fingers to trace the striated surface of the wood, a light whisk, a palping of fingertips over the wood, eyes raising to gaze out and through, over the rooftops of the college and into the verdant quad a block away. Silence. Midterm break, the campus deloused. Silence and solitude, melancholy sorrow and regret. These were to be his companions for the next few days till Maxwell came up to visit. To visit and distract, to make him laugh and make it all more bearable.

Where was she now? Out of which window did she gaze into the world? Ankles crossed under the chair, long fingers wrapped around a cooling mug of tea? Eyes hard and flat, the gaze of a person who has been hurt, who has been hurt and grown hard so as to not shatter. She always did that, Susan. Always clenched, always tightened and twirled away, a dancer who could not be caught. She'd strike as soon as you tried to raise your fist, as fast as a cobra, a small ball of potential anger and fury that waited, almost suspiciously, for a sign of danger.

Reaching out, Reginald pulled his chair out and lowered himself into it. The seat was cold, comfortable, familiar. But no longer did it resonate, did it match its other that sat, silent, across the table from it. Kill the fancies, kill the idle thoughts. Send the Judas goat through the herd of half remembered romantic dreams and hopes, and lead them all, one by one, to the rusty butcher's blade, to the rhythmic, lulling sound of the chop chop chop.

"Give me a reason to love you," she had said, stepping back from his outstretched arms. Give me a reason, and he had dried up. The words, his words, that had never failed him, stepped away with her, and left him alone. Alone in his mind, a mind that failed to fashion thoughts and emotions and reasons. He'd opened his mouth, and nothing had come out. Her eyes had defeated him, his reflection in them, what he had become to her. He'd remained silent, and then had offered, "I love you." She'd laughed then, a bitter sound, the sound that could bring down walls and scald the clouds from the skies, and turned to leave. Picking up her coat. Taking her keys, opening the door and walking away. Leaving him here, alone, the words all rushing back to late, making him want to chase her, follow her into the hall, the stairwell, calling out poems and entreaties, pouring lyrical honey and the deep, imperious bass of command about her head like a defender raining down Grecian fire and boulders on an attacking army.

But she wasn't attacking, and his best defense had always been offense. And it was too late now, too late, and he knew it.

Leaning forwards, feeling old, feeling tired, feeling as flat as an old truck tire run into the ground till it had burst without a sound, Reginald looked out through the window, unseeing. A whole day lay before him, an afternoon of slowly sliding shadows and collecting dust. He could sit here, sit here for the whole evening, into the night, and nobody would stop him. Somebody might call. He's inbox was always overloaded with missives from around the world, both old friends and past students. But today, this one day, he was alone, and nobody would come.

She had been beautiful though. It was no excuse, but god damn it, he was a man wasn't he? He was made of flesh, and hormones could still make his blood boil. Great men fell, stumbled. It was part of being human. And ah, such beauty. Long tresses, rivulets of copper gold, clean and supple and smelling of youth and innocense and wisdom beyond his ken. And her skin, so smooth, that he'd spent hours afterwards just running the worn pads of his fingers over her declevities and curves. Along the flanks of her back, the rounded hips and the long, long thighs. Her hair spread around her head like some aureate aureola, a mediavel halo that outdid that of any saint. Tarnished gold.

Give me a reason to love you. Love. Beauty. Flesh. One so familiar and intimate, the other a series of unexplored vistas and hidden valleys. Sweet nectar and honey dew. He'd drunk deep. If you're going to fall, dive. He'd fallen deep, deep into the shadowed recesses of her body, and had revelled in what he'd seen as his rediscovered youth. For a night he'd risen, had felt his soul soar in the night's winds and eddies, and felt the moon bask on his immortality.

But. She'd known when he'd walked in the door. The sensation of impending doom had consumed him so on his walk back to the apartment that by the time he'd opened their front door his face had been consumed with what he'd done. Not sin, but his weakness, his folly. She had been beautiful, but ephmeral, and now she was gone, gone with all her hard edges and sharp angles. Gone, and his apartment was just that now. His. Looking at his large hands, once powerful enough to crush that of others in his grip, but now so weak, so mortal, the skin thinning, losing its natural elasticity. Gone, gone gone.

Maxwell would be up soon. With his loud voice, his booming presance, his hearty laughter and propensity for drink. Maxwell would be up, and with him would come reprieve, understanding, back slaps and subdued silences. Understanding, and while Maxwell would never commend such a thing, in his silence at the end of the night, after a bottle of fine scotch, there would be understanding and through that, acceptance. Reprieve.

Give me a reason to love you. Because I want you to. Because I need you to. Because you have to. Because I'm better than you, and you need me. Because you should be thanking your lucky fucking stars I'm with you at all. Feeling himself collapse within himself, a slow crumbling, Reginald felt something undefinable being taken away, some small flame gutter and go out, and looking out the window, he felt himself at one with the empty apartment.

Nothing to say. Nothing coherent to add. Tumultuous emotional state in which eager and vapid thoughts surface into my consciousness, only to twist, glisten and sink back into the darkness. Desperate ploys manifesting in retarded child thoughts, brazen and half formulated, tremulous and bitter. Absinthe has failed me. Stomach fluttering with a vague expectation brought about by a sharp desire for some undefinable event that will culminate in my simply going to sleep, exhausted, frustrated and bereft. The sun always comes, inevitable, no matter how much one may protest at night, plead and wrangle, curse and sigh. Fulminate. Fuligan fumes. I would that I would that I were the Sultanate. I would that I could castigate, berate the opiates that singe the surfaces of my cerebellum. Casus Belli. That is what I christen my cerebellum. Casus Belli.

ca·sus bel·li ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kss bl, käss bl)n. pl. casus belli
An act or event that provokes or is used to justify war.

The war is righteous, and unfought, held off, the armies delaying engagement in order to prolong the pleasure that comes from the self denial of an expected good. The longer they wait, fists gripping their weapons, eyes narrowing as they scan each other's lines, the greater the tension, the higher the expectation. Why fight now, why rush into some heady, narcissitic self indulgence when, by holding off with bated breath, you can allow the inevitable orgasm to reach a crescendo of mellifluous proportions? Eyes lidded, lips glistening, cheeks flushed, body fluid and poised, the cassus belli remains undefined, but that bothers not the armies. They will fight, determined to find the meaning for their conflict within the very heart of their aggression. In death they will justify their urge to kill. Licking the blood from the serrated edges of their blades, they will taste the fruits of their endeavours, and know the certainty that has eluded them through all their dusks and dawns. In crimson it lies, the answer, in the ultimate act of self assertion.

Casus Belli. I hold off fighting because I derive pleasure from the expected self knowledge I will gain which will illumine the darkness in which I now reside. In darkness I exhult, complacent and puerile, assured of adult hood by the belief that I can grow at any time by exherting myself, but choosing not to, for the moment. I am the addict who believes he can start at any time, but sees not the reason for starting just yet, believing that his own belief is sufficient proof to prove that he is correct in his self delusions.

Come, let slip the hounds so that I may course with them in the Elysian fields of my own suppressed creativity.

Threats of hammer blows to the face. Tentative requests for company. Sizzling burgers on the skillet. We fear nussing, Lebowski, we fear nussing! The soothing tones of Eels as Mr E assures me that this could be my lucky day in hell. Back pains from sleeping on unevenly padded surfaces. Chess games in the park, with me coming through 3-0, victory Nixon style. Out of underwear, out of food, out of hard cold cash. New York City, a crucible for the weak, a mortar in which you are crushed down, all pretenses stripped bare by the unforgiving intensity of it all. Like standing under an extremely fashionable magnifying glass that seeks to determine your every fault and failing. Rise, stand tall, stare through the swollen glass and into the concentrated rays of the sun. Burn out your retinas, but find glory even as the sun begins to shimmer purple and crimson. New York City. The name itself dwarfs anything that can be found within its confines, it seedy, tumultuous borders, its desperation and strident beauty.

Hell fluid.