Somewhat Concerning a Roof

Steve awoke from his slumber, which had been by all accounts uncomfortable, and it wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he was able to pinpoint why. The roof of his house had vanished, a most peculiar happening indeed.

He proceeded to react as any fellow human in such a strange scenario would: collapse.

He rose shortly after, bringing a brief but terrifying nightmare of him running for his life from a gigantic, sentient roof tile to a premature end, and hoped that, like the evil he had barely fled from, this latest problem, too, would vanish. Unfortunately for him, it was a beautiful morning, though the problem was less it being a beautiful morning and more the fact he could tell it was a beautiful morning by lying horizontally on his bed and staring straight ahead. Another problem arose, as he very quickly realised: He was going to have to fix this problem. What it would take to do so, he hadn’t the least idea, but what he did know was that he didn’t want to deal with it at the moment, and settled for letting loose a lengthy string of expletives as a quick-fix before proceeding to go about his day with hapless resignation.

His wife woke up.

“Good morning, Laura,” Steve mumbled while he dressed.

“Morning,” she said as she stirred. “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” he answered, “it is indeed. Don’t you find it strange that you can discern how beautiful this morning is despite lying horizontally on our bed?”

Laura, too, let loose a lengthy string of expletives.

“What the hell happened to our roof?” she added upon concluding.

“I don’t know, it was just there yesterday.”

She looked up at the light blue beyond and its silver tufts of fluff.

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said dejectedly. “Have you seen my Moleskine? It’s been missing for quite a while now.”

“No, I still haven’t.” She looked about, having no clue as to how one should react to waking up without a roof. “You just head to work and don’t worry about this now, I’ll deal with it.” Laura, too, proceeded to go about her day with hapless resignation.

Steve would have locked the door on his way out, but his keychain had vanished a week ago, charitably taking his car keys with it, necessitating that he walk to work. He hopped lightly over the patch of dirt by his front door, where two steps had once been. As far as he knew, he was the only one in the neighbourhood experiencing such strange disappearances. Most of his neighbours had been questioned, and the local police informed, yet he continued to lose tiny parts of his life, and, as small as an issue it seemed initially, he was, by now, well and truly afraid.

He wasn’t just afraid of the irritating but largely insignificant problem escalating out of control, as had happened while he slept. He was afraid of how easy it was to lose those tiny pieces of him, and how quickly he could forget their existence. Who knew how many other personal belongings of his had disappeared? From little things he only sporadically used, to little things he stashed for their sentimental value, his life consisted, like so many others’, of the little things that held it together.

Steve ached, as though a part of him was missing. There was an impulse distantly nagging him, a tiny voice in the background of his consciousness. He felt as though he had left something behind, or forgotten something important.

Cars swept past amidst the chatter of pedestrians. The voice was eventually drowned out.

Steve arrived at work, the unbearable monotony of which constantly hampered his not-particularly-strong will to live. He walked to the elevator. He greeted his colleagues. The handshakes were limp. His smile was insincere. He walked into the elevator.

Steve had recently developed a rather irrational fear of elevators, and always wondered what would happen if it were to disappear while he was riding it.

He arrived at his floor. Two more handshakes were given out. They got limper. He sat down at his desk. He once again became abruptly aware of his loneliness.

There were people around him, yes—he had just shaken their hands, just stared into their caffeine-fuelled smiles—but he was alone, for they were husks, empty shells, lifeless bodies. So there he sat, alone in the world, head cradled in his hands, in an office of black, white and grey, surrounded by lifeless husks, who worked around him like robots on a production line, like hamsters on a treadmill, the clacking of keyboards and clicking of mice a background track to the voices in his head, his heart and mind pining only for Laura.

He loved Laura, so much so that he was willing to put up with this abysmal job to provide for her. For the longest time he looked for happiness, and in Laura he found a reprieve, albeit a temporary one as he soon realised, but he loved her, nonetheless. His head was only ever truly silent when he was around her.

That nagging sensation returned, as though he had left something behind. Around him, the keyboards clacked.

Steve tended to succumb to the voices on his head on his walks home, considering the considerable effort he had to put into doing no work whatsoever in an environment like his workplace that reinforces mindless production. Such anarchy exhausted him. Today, one of them was singing.

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
With a beautiful wife,
And you may ask yourself, well,
How did I get here?

Another was silent, but it bobbed enthusiastically to the beat.

The third was silent, much to Steve’s relief.

There was a large jasmine shrub that grew by his front door. The sight and scent of it—strong, sweet, indolic—reminded him of a similar shrub in his childhood home, and it grounded him somewhat as a tangible link to his past that was always present and visible. Upon returning home, he found that it was missing, and realised, with some anguish, that he couldn’t remember what jasmine smelled like anymore.

The roof was still missing, much to his disappointment.

“I’m home!” he shouted while stepping in, voice cracking.

The dining table wasn’t set, as it usually was by the time he returned. The house was in a state of eerie, utter silence, devoid even of the sounds of life. It was a silence that choked and unsettled, but Steve had the voices in his head for company. He approached the kitchen, where there were salad greens in the sink, a box of cherry tomatoes on the counter, and a pile of clothes on the floor. Laura had been wearing them when he left the house.

A police report was subsequently made, but Steve knew, despite his attempts to deny it, that he was unlikely to ever see her again. He trudged back home, both feeling nothing and feeling compressed, as if the air was crushing him. He felt sick, as if his stomach was churning, a discomfort far greater than that he had woken up with. Once more, the voices made their presence known.

And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful wife!

He couldn’t remember the rest of the lyrics.

Steve stood next to his mailbox and stared at his house, or, to be precise, where his house once was, for there was instead a hole in the ground, half-empty with water. It was filling rapidly, and the scent of sewage reminded him of how his stomach churned, making him sicker than he already was.

The air bore down on him harder than ever before, and, for the first time in a long, long while, Steve came to terms with the fact that he was well and truly alone.

The air bore down on him harder than ever before, and the third voice finally spoke. He had forgotten how beautiful it sounded. He imagined that was what a Siren sounded like, and, strangely, it reminded him of Laura’s voice.

It struck him, then: The reality that he had, somehow, been immersed so deeply in his misery, his selfish misery, that he had forgotten about Laura. How could he forget about Laura, his wife, whom he so dearly loved, and whose disappearance had gone unanswered? Wracked with guilt, he fell to his knees, weeping. The Siren then spoke once more.

It gave instructions: two words, specifically. He liked the sound of them. But how do I do that? he thought. He looked across his property at his backyard, at the tall, lonesome tree that there stood. A coil of rope hung by the gardening shed (that was primarily Laura’s, and that he rarely used except to cultivate the jasmine shrub). He marched, solemnly, grimly, towards the shed, like an executioner to a guillotine to carry out a reluctant duty. The Siren repeated herself, once again giving her final instructions. She rarely spoke, but whenever she did, it was beautiful.

He pulled the rope off the nail it hung on. The Siren raised its voice in violent anticipation.

He procured a flowerpot from the shed. It would suffice, in the absence of a stool. The Siren was, by that point, screaming.

He turned the flowerpot over and stood on it, then threw one end of the rope over a high branch, picked it up as it fell, secured both ends around his neck, and tied an approximate noose. He permitted himself a moment to dread the impending asphyxiation, one moment to breathe. The Siren had worked herself into a frenzy, screeching her decree with furious glee.

He hesitated. The two words replayed in his head, and for a moment, the voices stopped.

It’s better off this way, she whispered gently.

He kicked the flowerpot over and the Siren cackled manically. The rope strained against his neck, but a lump began to form at the back of his throat in spite of it. Gradually, the darkness crept closer and closer.

He looked at the gardening shed through rapidly watering eyes. It reminded him of Laura. She was gone now. Patches of his vision blurred and blackened. The shed disappeared too.

Desperate for oxygen, he haled with no in. Around and around he spun, while the darkness steadily approached. The lump he had felt was gone; his neck was now simply burning. Parts of his brain were blacking out. The voices faded into the void, vanishing one by one like snuffed out candles in the dark.

He fell to the ground without warning and found himself involuntarily gulping air. There was no rope straining against his neck. He looked about, and up at the tree, but saw no rope. The rope had vanished.