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Chapter 22
After waking up around five in the morning, Adam decided to spend a few hours lying in bed to gaze at his sleeping wife. He hoped this would help him fall back to sleep himself, but instead he stayed this way for two hours. At 7:01 sharp, he turned over and got out of bed. If he couldn’t sleep, he reasoned, he may as well do something productive.
The goal was to get back to his normal routine, if only to appease Larisa so she wouldn’t send him to see Dr. Frost again. While he still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t in some sort of illusion, his best option was to play along. So even though he knew Larisa would protest were she awake, he got up and dressed in silence. As he left the bedroom, he closed the door behind himself, being both careful and quiet. Then he pulled out his phone. “I’m coming in today,”Related chapters
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 23
There would be no returning to his normal routine. It was futile to even try. Even so, on Friday morning, he decided that resigning to the futility wasn’t something he wanted to do. His life could go on regardless; maybe he’d hallucinate Evangeline again. But did he really want a world where she existed only to him in moments of stress? Well, he figured, it’s better than nothing, right? Larisa wasn’t in bed beside him when he woke up, but he couldn’t tell if that was because she was downstairs or at work. It didn’t seem likely to be the latter; she’d taken the week off, hadn’t she? He couldn’t be sure, though. Once out of bed, the first thing Adam did was pull on his jeans. Then he considered what he could do today that would feel “normal”. Technically he should go to the pawn shop. But he didn’t want to risk hurting Jesse again. He found himself too unpredictable to ensure that wouldn’t happen, so he thought of his other options. If his
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 24
There was a flower shop nearby that he’d never been to before. In fact, he’d never been to any flower shop before; he wasn’t much of a flower-giving guy. He’d often stuck with buying girls chocolates or cards. Flowers, he’d thought, would die too fast. Before they did, they’d only be in a vase somewhere, ignored. They were too expensive for their worth. He much preferred the alternatives. But now he found himself frantic, desperate to buy flowers—only flowers. Evangeline’s bouquet and the pansies he’d seen everywhere were hints; this was the only way to get her back now. There was no way any doorman would turn away a love-struck man looking to adorn a beautiful girl with a bouquet, right? Flowers would help him convince them to tell him which apartment she was in. He could only hope that it was actually her apartment, and not someplace she’d visited. But she wouldn’t lead me on like that, knowing I was following her . . . Would she? There was no one
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 25
When Larisa finally returned home, she found the car in the driveway. The sight of it brought her overwhelming relief. Its presence meant that Adam had returned; that alone almost made the past three hours of searching for him worth it. Both angry and eager to see her seemingly missing husband, she hurried inside. The first thing she noticed was that Adam’s coat wasn’t hung up, nor were his boots near the door. There were puddles along the glossy hardwood floor leading to the dining room, though. She didn’t bother to undress either, preferring instead to follow the path of the puddles. “Adam? Adam, are you here?” What caught her eye in the dining room was the plant on the dining table, now replaced by a real bouquet. It contained purple pansies and a few red flowers that she had trouble recognizing. At first, the flowers touched her, as she saw them as Adam’s way of apologizing. But then she realized that the red flowers were in fact cyclamen flower
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 26
How did I get here? This question plagued Adam’s mind, running through it over and over again. Try as he may, he could find no clear answer. A month ago, he’d been living life the same way he’d been living it for the past 23 years. Everything had been perfect. Mundane, but perfect. He had Larisa, he had Jesse . . . Two of his best friends. He hadn’t needed a psychologist. He’d been content with the routine of his life, even if Larisa was cheating on him. Now he had no one. He’d pushed everyone away, because the only person he wanted was Evangeline. But she didn’t want him, did she? No, she didn’t. He couldn’t blame her, though, because the first person he pushed away was her. How did I get here? It was around 9:30 PM, or maybe later. Adam didn’t know for certain; he’d thrown his cellphone out of the car’s window while driving and didn’t have a watch. Regardless, everything seemed to have worked out in his favor. He reclined in the chair
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 1
There once was a man. He led a good life, and had a wife. He was happy. But then, during a moment of solitude, in washed the darkness. A girl stepped out of it and beckoned to him. By the time he started to struggle, he realized that she’d already wound around him a web of flesh. He was tangled in it, and though he fought to reach back to the doorway he’d entered from, with every second he was dragged further away from it—further into the abyss. There was no escaping from the girl who wanted him for her own. When he turned and looked at her, he saw that she now had the face of a spider. Piece by piece, she began to eat him up, but he felt no pain. He felt nothing anymore . . . No, too edgy. Without hesitance, Adam Keir deleted everything from his video. He had spent all day throwing together the visuals, but had only just sat down to think about the concept. It wasn’t surreal enough, it was just dark for the sake of being dark. Defeated, he laid his head down on the desk,
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 2
The customer arrived forty-five minutes later: a middle-aged man who looked older than Adam and Jesse but was probably younger, who was wearing a green polo shirt and khaki shorts. If Adam had to guess, he was probably a father looking to impress his teenaged son, though he had no way of knowing for sure. What he paid attention to on the customer the most was how lightly he was dressed. “A little summery for October, isn’t it?” he wanted to say to the man, but didn’t. Jesse did his best to sell the guitar to the man, but regardless of his childlike enthusiasm and eager recommendations, he still seemed unimpressed. “It’s no Fireglo,” he said, commenting disappointedly on it being a Mapleglo. That silenced Jesse for a moment. Noticing that his friend and co-worker (boss? One of the two, anyway) seemed offended by the complaint, Adam did his best to take over. “It’s not, but this guitar is the next best thing,” he explained, eve
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 3
He saw the subway train again. Still the woman was there, and so was the man who had taken it upon himself to sit beside her. There was a long beat of stillness, during which neither of them spoke. The only sound came from the rumbling of the train, and the only light came in abrupt flashes through the windows. When she could bear the silence no longer, she asked, “Do you know where we’re headed?” Without looking at her, the man answered, “Yes. But it’s no concern of yours.” She tried to stay calm, but her hands were trembling against her will. The man did nothing but sit beside her, but somehow that was enough to give her a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. She felt unsafe, but also like he would attack her if she tried to move away from him. She looked back down into her purse and stared at the tiny pistol at the bottom. Would she be able to shoot him before he did something to her? Should she? Was she being paranoid? As she thoug
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 4
By the time Adam heard the front door open downstairs—probably Larisa, meaning it had to be around 10:00 PM—he was a quarter of the way through storyboarding a new video. The premise he’d gone with in interpreting his dream was that the woman was the representation of sanity. The man with the axe was a traumatic event, and the man sitting beside her was the representation of madness—so close, sitting beside her, but so far, knowing the answers to her questions but being unable to give them. The gun was her only source of hope, the only string holding her to her sanity. With it and its one bullet, she could choose only one option: either embrace the trauma, or embrace insanity. Though he was almost half done with the storyboarding, he still didn’t know what she was going to choose. He felt that if she chose insanity, it would be insulting somehow. But if she chose to embrace the trauma, that was too boring. Whatever the outcome he chose, he had the concept, and it was one t
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