Tea Tash Royal
Lewis had been taught by his mother to cry. She used to tell him it was a “cure for sadness”, that every tear was another bad memory slipping away. It was naïve, innocent, and probably saved Lewis from a lot of emotional internalisation in his childhood. The downfall of it all was, as always, growing up. Lewis was eventually intoxicated with the cynical views that suffocated his teenage and adult years. His mother’s old wives’ tale became nothing more than that; a naïve memory. And yet, that night as the sun dozed off in the early evening, he lay down and cried until his lungs got sore. His phone buzzed, the sound muffled by his congested sinuses. Of course, he pulled his duvet over his head and ignored it, despite the sound drilling holes into his patience with every ring. Ultimately, his curiosity won, and he wasn’t at all surprised by the identity of culprit behind the messages. Lewis had one friend, who had lots of other friends that he pretended were his own friends. He found that happened a lot; introverts become friends with extroverts who surround themselves with other extroverts – it was a common life trope. Lewis’s one friend was Kate, and she was the only one persistent enough to send him 12 texts in a row. Unsurprisingly, all of them were begging him to come out that night. The light on the phone screen was bright, scathing his eyes until he dimmed it down to a comfortable dullness. “im sick,” he replied in a monotonous message, before he padded over to the kitchen, scratching the salt from his cheeks. Rather than make the mistake of opening his fridge and being let down by the lack of food, he decided to sit. He slid to the floor, his sweaty back leaving a sparkling trail behind him where it grazed the fridge door. His street-view window looked down at Lewis from the wall facing him. He didn’t stare out of it, just at it, entranced by the dirt and grime festering on the corners, the damp from his cheap walls spreading to the glass. He imagined it worming out of the wall, choking him. He stared at this window almost daily with no change to the view, so it came as quite a shock when something disturbed the familiar image. A small stone flew into the pane, followed by another. He walked over and looked down and blinked in mild surprise. Standing on the street, three floors below, was Kate.
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