Home
The scream of the alarm clock is the same as usual. The rest of this day will all be different.
When she eventually brings herself to wake up, it is from a bed that feels both foreign and impossible to leave. She decides to feel the texture of her blankets first – something she used to love, and has not done in over thirty years.
Her hand lingers a little, clutching soft fabric and a smell of detergent that already escapes her nostrils. She has to go, but she doesn't care.
Caroline takes it as slow as she never did.
The way to the bathroom is no less unfamiliar. She is oddly forced to listen to every breath of sound, from the soft whirring of the neon light to the rustle of her slippers. She locks the door, more paranoid than usual – she has to collect the meager remains of her tenacity before she can stare at the mirror.
Her image stares back in silver. The frame has never interested her this much. Its carvings lead her to the truth, in the last morning of such a long row.
The mirror has changed, to her eyes at least. Her loneliness hasn't. Disharmony grows with every wall.
It is in her small kitchen that she breaks down. It is the pattern of tiles she always hated, or maybe the smell of coffee, which blends in the air harmoniously. She finds herself still, playing a game of familiar spots and corners – she looks for chips and marks in the dull porcelain, faintly surprised to find out she knows them all.
It becomes a game of colours, in the artificial cold dawn around her rooms. She lets the steam flow among the hues – the faded pink roses on her couch and her mahogany desk, the fluorescent lights that have slowly claimed part of her vision. She treads the small corridor in reverse, to her bookshelves, to her bed, to the hopeless lack of windows.
Now that she must forget, she pays attention for the very first time.
She has to keep calm, she knows. While she cannot drink, she needed the smell at least. Without saying a word, she throws the whole dark content of the mug into her sink.
The aroma spreads around her, like a familiar joke.
It doesn't change much, Caroline tries to tell herself, as her last pair of heels clicks on linoleum. They all live inside mere boxes of rooms. And then, just out of what they call her door, there is a bigger box, a bigger prison. She sees little point in suffering by now – if dull habit and hard work forced her place into the role of simple housing, there is no reason for what she feels to change today.
Yet, Caroline muses on the catwalk, there is all the difference in the world.
She is trapped in Aperture. She has always been.
But today she is never coming home.