Chapter One.
He awakes to the sound of silence, no warm body clinging to every part of his aching soul. No breathing on his arched neck. No inadequate cup of tea, thrown together by his partner, to greet him in the morning. Instead he faces the cold reality of the morning. Quiet. How pitiful.
He steps out begrudgingly onto the carpet, the sun glaring optimistically through his heavy curtains. His curls flounce about his head, echoing every movement of his under-nourished and perfected porcelain body. There was something finished and final about him, the way he counts every step to his bathroom, the way he calculates the perfect amount of time to leave the boiled water to cool, as not to burn the coffee. The mechanical timing to ensure everything about his morning was just the way he wanted it.
His eyes wander from wall to wall, searching for the very thing that was missing. Despite his utter confidence that he was perfectly whole and needed nothing to complete him, there was something that he needed from the world, something that could not be found in a tin or in a supermarket, or in a bottle or a cardboard box. Something indescribably delicate, something unspoken to others, something secret, something whole, something entirely his own, something in the hands of another. He stares at his floor, scattered on the floor, lie paper after paper. Papers of statistics, photographs, crossings-out, scrawled handwriting and equations. To the naked eye, a room of utter disorganisation and chaos, to him it made perfect sense. The disorganisation of his room entailed no disorganisation of the mind. His eyes now were drawn to the iPhone in the corner of the room, perched haphazardly on a pile of heavily worn books, it vibrated and lit up, almost teasing him, mocking him. He knew the caller without requirement of the caller ID, he knew the purpose of this call without answering it, he simply knew. His eyes rolled fluidly, as though rehearsing some delicate performance, his eyelashes brushed softly against his skin, and he then raised his eyebrow for comic effect, the true irony was that there was no audience present. No audience to see this magnificent fluidity that was his being. No audience, no paying attendant, nothing. No one.