The golden heart seemed to glimmer in his hand as he stared at it. He had this strangely familiar feeling when it came to the necklace. It was almost as if he and it were connected.
His attention was suddenly drawn back to couch that he was laying on. How long had he been petting the cushion? He wondered as his fingers traced the odd pattern. It seemed to spiral off in a variety of directions.
This was his couch….he was sure of it. But how?
As the question continued to ingrain itself in his mind, a flurry of images clouded his vision.
He clutched his eyes shut as if doing so would dispel the pain he felt. A flurry of images flashed before his eyes. Pristine white walls and gloved hands reaching overtop him. "If I don't see them then it hasn't happened." He told himself, his words soft like the first dusting of snow on a winter afternoon.
Somewhere in the middle of these images that same fleeting image of the woman appeared. Only this time the woman was dresssed in white. All he could make out was the fiery curls that adorned her head. They clouded her face, obscuring her features.
George sat on that cold wooden floor for what was about half an hour before he finally opened his eyes again. His cheeks were stained with tears as the methodical tapping of the water faucet kept its time.
He was slow to rise. He crossed the threshold of wood to tile as he entered the kitchen, the necklace now around his neck.
As he looked at the sink full of dishes, a memory flashed behind his eyes once more. It was of him looking at that same pile and dismissing it without a second look.
"Ugh….how long have these been here?" He asked the empty room. He shook his head and grabbed the sullied grayish sponge that slept beside the cold water valve.
The faucet ceased its counting as it sputtered to life, a stream of cloudy water splashed onto the pile, the caked on food seemingly laughing at the water's pitiful attack.
Despite the sheer volume of dishes, he washed them relatively quickly. It was strange. He hadn't felt this calm in a long time, at least that's what it felt like. This newfound calmness was interrupted by the loud gurgle of his stomach. It growled at him, upset with the lack of food.
He turned towards the small fridge that sat next to the sink.
There's probably nothing in there. He thought as the door swung open. The empty shelves greeted him with a dusty grin as the small light flickered behind the doorway.
As he closed the fridge he could hear something skittering across the room. He turned towards the source of the sound, it was a mouse.
As its claws scraped across the tiles George bent down to grab it. For a spilt second his vision flashed. The ground beneath him was covered in blood, as were his shoes. The mouse that once skittered around his feet laid dead in a pool of its own blood. Distinct markings littered the corpse, similar to that of his sneakers. A vision? No.... it was too real. Could this be Deja vu? He asked himself, his vision clearing as quickly as it was clouded.
He picked up the mouse with relative ease. It squirmed in his grip, high pitched squeaks filling the room. For a moment he swore he heard a voice whispering to him as it continued to squeal. His stomach began to snarl as the creature riggled its head around its fat neck. Something like this must have some meat on it…. He thought. The longer he stared at the creature, the more his mouth seemed to water.
Was he seriously thinking about eating this mouse? To be fair, there was no other food in the apartment and he was sure the rest on his floor had been looted so this was the best he could do, right?
Slowly George raised the poor creature up to his mouth, and with a sickening crunch the creature's cries were silenced.
"Fucking hell!" He shouted as blood spewed out of the large wound in the corpse he now held. It seemed to jump out of the wound and splatter all over his shoes, and just like crudely burst can of soda George placed his mouth overtop the bleeding wound to stop the flow.
Chapter 11 [Rusted Gold] end.