Conrad knows this feeling. He knows it well. It was something that reminded him of his younger; this is the feeling he grew up on - it almost made him feel at home.
Home was small, alone and nothing.
He carries himself as slightly slumped over, like how he trudged about his home, to and from school, everywhere, just as he did when he was younger, head slightly hung and eyes focused on his feet. This feeling reminds him of when he would count his steps and put two steps in each block of cement on his way home, just so he could ignore the other kids who would run about and laugh with their friends. This is what he was reminded of, and, as he was, his eyes stung but threatened with nothing except a feeling of nostalgia that would leave him nothing but a bad idea thought for melancholy. For a second, he remembers, when he was younger, he looked upward, he looked at the sky.
And then the rain hit his face hard.
A cloudy sky was piling on today as well, just the same as that day. He was sure it would rain, he was sure it would. A strong wind blows and beckons the storm onward like he knows it will come. He can smell it on the air. He can hear the wind far away whistling through leaves. Cloudy weekdays like this… they always made him feel at home.
He shivers further into his jacket, feeling like home was welling up around him.
Even though he was inside still, he felt so cold. It was days like this when he could actually go outside, even though the sun was still up. It makes him feel normal, even if just for a small sliver of a moment, and that makes him feel…
He feels so cold, through all the layers, even still.
He steps out the door of his apartment like a ghost, to where no one can even possibly fathom his contrast of white on white, and he feels at home again with himself and the world. No one else is outside; they know the storm is approaching but he wouldn't care, even if the storm was really the summoning of the end of the world. He moves along the empty sidewalks, getting lost in thoughts and lachrymose ennui. He walks past so many walls, blank walls, colorful walls, chromatic walls, monochrome walls, walls continuously tagged, walls of chipping paint, walls of wood, walls of home.
But he keeps his eyes on his feet.
He passes walls with doors, doors of barbers, painted doors, dark doors, doors without handles or knobs, doors with chipped paint, doors with peepholes, doors with brick walls on the other side. He passes them and pays them no mind. He knows where he is, where he's going, what he's doing. His feet pass over places that set off his mind with the idea of landmarks, places to tell him where he is. He walks through the air with nothing but himself, his conjectures and his aspirations nonetheless.
Stretched shadows are oozing off because of the clouds and he never reached it he knows.
He just keeps walking though, through himself and back again, and he's always standing up straight. He remembers when he came to this town from his own; his own little town with every twisted, tedious anecdote his psychologist and over-protective and vigilant mother set up for him, the place where everyone seemed to look the same, where everyone talked like liars and sacrificed like lambs, where mama's little baby better get himself out of the forest before the monsters get him.
He stops.
He's standing on a corner, the streets deserted and desolate aside him, himself monochrome with the rest of the city and invisible to everything. Slowly, one of his hands making its way to his face and he places everything on a scale, weighing everything he ever had, everything he has. A bitter smile comes out, and he feels himself at home again in his soliloquy, although he feels like he's just tottering on a wire in a circus, alone under every spectator's watchful eyes. When he's around here, feeling so at home, she's always on his mind, always shaking his tightrope when he's walking.
He knows it's only in his head.
Everything is always in his head. It always has been. That's what his mother thought, and that's what he thought too. He begins walking again with that thought hanging in his mind. He can feel the wind picking up, blowing past him and he closes his eyes as he looks down, hearing his feet tap against the gray pavement without any other sounds but his feet and the wind. He takes in a deep breath, and stops again.
He opens his eyes.
He's standing in the center of a roundabout, he realizes, and that's what he feels like, the feeling of home hanging over him here too. His hands lay limp at his sides and his knees feel weak, and, slowly, he tilts his head backwards.
Same as that day, the rain comes pouring down.
It beats at his clothes and his chest and his eyes burn again behind his glasses, now threatening him more than they ever have in his life. His knees finally buckle and he falls to his knees. They scrape the pavement enough to damage but he can't take his eyes off the sky, every wall and door passing through his mind. He lets out a sob and the tears finally spill over their edges, staining his cheeks past the rain. He's not sure, actually, if what's staining his cheeks and clothes are his tears or the rain.
He feels so at home…
Even with his enhanced senses, he can't feel anything; he's so numb. He can't see anything but the blurry sky and the drizzles of rain as they attack him hard enough to leave bruises if he still had blood left to bruise with.
So, so at home…
When the rain stops, when he knows he's finished, when there is nothing left and every anxiety and every hope he ever had is washed away by the rain, he stands again. He cannot stop it, he knows. The stoplight overhead is green.
He stands up against the road.
He takes a step out, his foot meeting black pavement as the rain nestles against his feet on its way to the drain.
The light goes red.