Home Alone

Steven was alone.  Susan would not be back for almost two weeks.  That has been selfish of her, Steven thought.  How dare she leave when he so clearly needed her here.  The apartment felt empty, and foreboding.  He never noticed before how many shadows there were, how many dark corners existed beyond the family photos and brick-a-brac.

            The timing was also less than ideal.  Steven was running into ever increasing pressure at work and he desperately needed his him to be a place of Zen.  Without Susan everything seemed just a bit off.  Nothing that Steven tried seemed to break this feeling that he had.  Books held no interest to him.  And Netflix seemed to be suddenly bereft of anything besides inane sitcoms.  Cleaning had also not done his job, which was surprising.  There were few things in this world Steven enjoyed more than moving the furniture around and vacuuming all the corners of his domain.

            It was such a dumb reason for Susan to be going anyway.  Her bosses did not need her at this convention.  The whole thing was a scam as far as he was concerned.  She was a doctor.  Unless they had somehow discovered as new organ, he did not see what she was going to learn by going to Phoenix.  She was probably bored out of her mind in a seminar somewhere, learning about heart stents and new colostomy bags.  He could at least take solace in the fact that she was almost certainly incredibly unhappy.

Steven flipped through the newspaper for the 30^th time.  He briefly considered going for walk, but that involved going outside.  Outside meant other people and places and things.  That would be pretty much the worst thing right now.  Steven was a prisoner of his own devices.  The door was open, but he dare not open it.