I opened my eyes to see an indefinite darkness. Though it was only dark near me, as far off I could still make out the light of the stars. A comfort, to not be in total darkness. A great many things had been like that before in my life. Small comforts, small contrivances for the purpose of extending the light ever so slightly. Temporary procrastinations. In the end, I returned to that place where no light could pierce, where no light had any intention of piercing. In that dark the real me resided, and I could water him with fake compliments and half-hearted jokes. It was a good way to live. At least considering the preamble. Then again, it was my fault that the situation had devolved so severely, so I only had myself to blame for the lack of a star. 

As I looked around I saw a box floating amidst the near-darkness. It gave off no light, but it reflected a dull yellow color like painted glass. I had the urge to embrace this little box, but thought better of it. I could only observe its rotation. I could only infer its intention. Its thoughts, its struggles. This box and I, which were separated by no more than the space of one word, had no course to realize each other's selves. 

Then, it spoke. 

“Are you real?” It asked.

I could not speak, as though my lips were not there. I felt across my body but had no arms that could feel. I floated in translucence, and I observed the box glide towards me. It approached the space where my ear should have been, and in that empty space I perceived the words it said. 

“Did you not say, once, that only that which is observed can be proven as real? Then, what is this one? Or that? What am I? If the answer is in the present, not the future nor the past, then are you real?” 

I could not recall the words that I had shared with it. As I could only exist in that space, and not influence it, I watched as the box presented me with an image of a man. 

Jakob worked in the financial department of a tech company. He lived in a one-room suite in a congested city, a dirty kitchenette sat just eight feet from the foot of his bed. The scene opened on him waking by himself. A cell phone on the nightstand vibrated aggressively and his heavy arm erupted from beneath the sheets to violently snatch it. The figure was obscured under the sheets, but the creeping sunlight disturbed his peace, and he threw the blanket aside as he rose. His slippers were too far away, so he had to walk a few feet to put them on. He stood at an average height, but his shoulders slouched and made him seem smaller willed. Jakob made a deep groan and cursed under his breath before stepping into the bathroom. 

He emerged on the street in a suit, checking his watch. He proceeded down the busy street surrounded by high rise buildings and crowds of people. The descent into the subway was the same as he had expected, with the usual bums and hucksters. Nothing new there. Even the train was on time, arriving just as he approached the platform. Jakob sat at a seat facing the window. He stared at himself in the reflection upon the darkness of subway tunnels. 

“Can you not see him?” The box asked. 

I could not. I only saw the man. 

How many times had he gotten aboard that train? How many more would come? Did he catch it on time frequently, or was that just the luck of the draw? Did I care? How many Jakob’s did I see every day and just moved on my way? I had not seen them, and they had not seen me. In the reflection, was he looking at himself? Was he thinking about that figure in the suit? Or the one beneath the sheets? Which took priority? 

Jakob’s yawn brought me back to the scene. The day had transpired and he laughed away a farewell with a coworker. He and another, a man named Tyler, went off together into the night. The two were laughing all the way to a bar, and after several drinks the talk came to the subject of women. 

“So Ty, are you still seeing that one girl? The one with the name that sounds like a plant, I mean.” Halfway through his fifth beer, memories escaped Jakob. 

“No she stopped talking to me, something about not feeling heard. I don’t know man, I was so tied up with that last project I guess I lost too much time with her. It happens, you know?” 

“Nope, not a clue. One benefit of being a bachelor is that I don’t disappoint people” Jakob laughed. Tyler joined in. 

“Alright you jerk, way to step all over my feelings.” Still, he was all smiles. 

They left the bar and separated. One went deeper into the city, the other descended back into the subway tunnels from which he had come. There was silence in Jakob's form. A definitive emptiness of thought or reason. Once back at his apartment he cooked dinner and watched videos on his cell phone until around midnight. Cursing under his breath, he put on his night clothes and fell back into the bed. 

As he pulled the blankets over his head, I could see him. I could hear the sound of his sobbing as he desperately clung to his pillow. Holding it closer as if begging for something. Grasping it for warmth, for reason, for perception. I saw him there in the darkness as he faded away from my eyes into the light of a far off star that existed among millions of others on the farthest reaches of my ability. 

“And again.” The box said. 

I saw a room lit by neon signs that peered through a half-curtained window. Two figures lay on a bed in the center of the room, and there was movement. Rosetta emerged from the sheets upon the chest of a man she had just met. Still, he had the deepest eyes, and an aesthetic appeal. Surely, then, he was one who could see her? 

“Hey, do you want to hear a poem?” She smiled. 

“Oh, so we’re a poet now?” The man laughed, patting her head. 

“Have been, care to listen?” 

“Not right now, how about in the morning?” The man pushed her aside slightly and rolled onto his side, setting an alarm on his cell phone. The man faded from view and disappeared into the world of dreams. 

Rosetta just chuckled and got out of the bed. Close by she opened the bathroom door and stepped through, locking it against the darkness of the bedroom. She starred in the mirror, at her own naked and exposed self, and crumbled to the floor in silent tears.  

“Do you not see them as well? As I have seen them?”

Could I? Or was I only projecting myself onto them? 

Aizawa flicked on the monitor again. The same expression used to light a match over his head in the space above his bed. What would happen if he dropped it? To let that flame engulf his useless art and his insipid emotions that all faded away into the nonexistence of his bedroom. He blew out the match and got back to the computer, writing out a few lyrics yet again. After a moment he groaned deeply and cursed under his breath, holding down the backspace until only that little stick blinked in and out on the white screen. 

“Do you want to listen to my music?” He asked the darkness. If only those words came from his lips before, if only they could escape the room. His sound echoed in the empty halls of his mind and became overshadowed yet again by the low weeping of another wasted day. The next day he put on the same pastel uniform shirt and worked the same long shift at a convenience store. There was no change, and nobody could see him. 

Still the box showed me another soul. 

Ida shut the door of her bedroom and fell against it in tears. She wrote out a long memoir about her teenage theories of happiness and suicide. Still, the page did not answer the questions that remained. The page could not see her. Her parents could not see her. Her boyfriend could not see her. 

I could not see them.

I could not see myself, floating amidst the stars in infinity. My purpose in that place was something beyond me. Still, the box remained, showing me images of people. Pictures where there should have been souls. Where were they? Jakob existed only beneath the sheets of his bed, where there was no other to comfort his lonely heart. Rosetta existed in the bathrooms of motels, where she wrote poetry about living life so slowly and without recourse to find innocence. Aizawa existed in the flickering flame that he threatened himself with every night. Only in that moment of chance, of pretending he would have some effect on the world around him, could he deceive. Ida existed in the pages she wrote, clearing her mind of the poisonous thoughts that clouded her reason and kept her awake at night. The strangely emaciated corpse of emotion that resided just beneath the surface of her skin. 

The box came to me again. 

“Why do you not embrace me?” It asked. 

“How?” 

The box slowly faded away from my sight, drifting into the viscous darkness from whence it had come. Yet it was different from the nonexistence that preceded it. There was a comfort, at least, that the box existed at all. That it was there, within reach, for the moment when I would have the strength to grab and hold it to my chest. 

A musical chime woke me up. Across the room, on my desk, the computer glowed with irrelevant images and pastimes. The jingle came from the phone atop my journal, vibrating violently while it sang. 

I cursed under my breath and got up to grab it. I had only gotten to bed around one thirty, and the phone told me it was already four. Two and a half hours of sleep and it was time to work again. I silently collected my uniform and went to the bathroom for a shower.