The only light in Jim’s bedroom was blue.
Warm sunlight hadn’t passed beyond the curtains, nor fresh air beyond the window. The hum of passing vehicles, the spring breeze caressing the trees, and the chattering of birds gliding across the sky had all failed to reach Jim’s ears that day, for they were firmly tucked beneath his headphones. Even if they weren’t, he wouldn’t have heard a thing.
Jim hadn’t gazed outside since rising from his slumber in the early afternoon. His t-shirt, which he had worn to bed the night prior, was marred with stains, and marinated in the stench that was him without care. The young man’s odour soured the sedentary air, but he’d long since gotten used to the smell. Besides, he wasn’t out to impress anybody.
That’s what he told himself anyway.
Though Jim’s eyes were firmly locked on the luminous blue rectangle hovering above his desk amidst a sea of blackness, clarity had completely drained from his vision. The imagery and text cast against the blue light appeared as little more than faint, transparent, and flickering blurs. Jim clamped his eyes shut and shook his head, and everything became slightly clearer when his eyelids parted. However, he still couldn’t remember what he’d been watching just seconds prior. Resting within his head were a jumbled set of recollections, all bearing a grey tint. They would soon slip from his mind as they always did.
Clicking through dozens of tabs, Jim found that little caught his attention. Some of the memes were funny, but not laughably funny. The longwinded posts littering his social media feeds ran the gambit from benign to aggravating, but he wasn’t looking to get himself into any futile arguments, so he moved on. He continued perusing other pages for what felt like mere moments but amounted to several minutes.
Eventually, Jim stumbled across a video in which a beautiful woman was featured. She stared at him through the blue light, smiling, laughing, and speaking enthusiastically on matters about which Jim was completely oblivious. He couldn’t recall why he had initially clicked on the video, or when, but he didn’t close the tab. He simply allowed the video to continue playing as he began to feel things. A lightness in his stomach, warmth washing over his pale skin, unusual palpitations. To ascertain the meaning of these sensations would have required a level of introspection beyond somebody who had been awake for close to fourteen hours.
So, Jim didn’t think. He simply sat with his feelings, and her.
A faint smile soon emerged on Jim’s face, though it was cloaked beneath his unkept facial hair. He wasn’t smiling because the beautiful woman was witty or insightful. She might have been, but he wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying, despite being able to hear nothing else. He just liked that she was there, reminding of something that he was certain he could have had at some stage in the past had he not become who he was.
Affection was easier to come by this way. Standing up is harder than clicking a button, and doing so doesn’t take one to the door, or outside, or in front of somebody. The difference between that which Jim wanted and that which he had wasn’t appreciable to him in that moment.
Remaining in the presence of the blue light was the path of least resistance. It was bright, familiar, and comforting. Yet the comforts of the blue light differed from those provided by a bonfire like those Jim and his old friends would sit beside as kids while out camping.
The fire always began small, but it would grow as it consumed more matter. It moved with the wind, becoming brighter and dimmer over the course of the night. The fire never looked quite the same as it had before or would after, and it would inevitably die, but not without leaving a trace of itself in the form of charred wood or floating embers.
In that sense, the blue light shared little in common with fire, for the blue light was without life. The blue light was but an artificial reprieve which demanded nothing of Jim except his time, which he gave willingly, but could not give indefinitely.
Jim yawned as he leaned down and switched off his computer. The blue light dissipated, plunging the room into darkness.
And Jim was as he had been, but without the pretence