In life, only death is inevitable. Like ants that have lost their trail we struggle through our short, brutish existence. A fourth of our life is wasted in preparation for the rest. Then we work ourselves into lame mules so that the last bit of our lives can be spent in relative comfort and we die with dignity. It is a pitiful and meaningless life, but one that we struggle with anyway, searching for reason. For many, we find peace from this struggle only in death. For Reggia Tatsca this was his fate.

The grey rock of the pillars is jagged yet uniform. The stone sentinels seem to stretch on for miles as he looks over the brim of his mathematics book, studying at the last minute for his test. The people swarm through the halls; it is controlled chaos. The crowd is like an amoeba, ever shifting and moving, making it hard to not get jostled by the passersby. After an eternity of this passes he reaches his destination, Room 1912. The half-wit teacher gleefully waits, eager to pass out the bombs that will destroy her students’ grades. He sits down at the desk, much too small for him, and takes out his #2 pencil, all sharp and ready for his test. He utterly devours his test, having prepared for it since the day the teacher revealed the new material. It is expected by everyone that he will receive full marks, and he does, as usual. He does because he must; it is all he knows.
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The candy apple BMW sparkles in the sunlight shadowed only in magnificence by the behemoth of a house, adobe paint with red tile roof. Crisp, manicured lawns give way to a bubbling fountain. Rose bushes garnish the entire property making it a picturesque scene. It is all a façade. He sees two different therapists twice a week. He is more doped than a cancer patient. And his wife and kids refuse to speak to him. Gin and tonics drown out his sorrows. He wakes up in time to strap on a new tie and trudge back to his nine to five.
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The metallic smell of the hospital bed bites at his nose. The sheets and curtains surrounding his bed are flawlessly white. He hates it all. The sterility. The inhumanness of the whole room. So many wires trail away from his arms and chest he questions his own humanity. If unhooked, how long would he survive? And to survive for what reason? To live dying is to live alone. To live at all is to be alone. The sparse visitors he receives does little to change this. They act like the sun trying to pierce the clouds on a rainy day; ever present, but never visible. He is alone. Always alone. Always status quo. And always slipping further and further into the blissful eternal shadow.