Sisyphus

Edward hadn’t touched his breakfast.

I watched him stare down at his eggs and sausage with an expressionless face, the same face that scrutinized his morning cup of black coffee and then gulped it down with a shudder.

There was no rush.

His left hand grasped the fork, holding it firmly in his hand—the good one—although he hesitated before spearing a chunk of sausage and guiding it to his mouth. His jaw moved mechanically around the meat, chewing, coating in saliva, and finally swallowing the morsel so it was deposited in his stomach to be eaten in turn by the hydrochloric acid.

He moved on to sample the eggs next, absentmindedly adding salt and pepper as if he did it because that was what one was supposed to do. Salt and pepper on eggs, tomatoes, potatoes, and corn. Ed sighed, took a bite, and swallowed that too. Mechanical. Automatic. Customary.

Ed set his fork down with a small, metallic clank on the wooden table, leaning back in his chair to look around the room. To look around the room. At the kitchen, the cabinets, stare at the small refrigerator, the sink that was piling up with dirty dishes he was too lazy to have done the night before. He looked anywhere but me.

I suppose it was still that painful.

XXX

“I’ll be home in time to cook dinner,” I told him as I pulled on my coat and grabbed my bag full of blueprints. He wasn’t tutoring today: no one was failing chemistry to secure him a job for a few weeks. Well, the semester had just started, so come another month and he’d be plenty busy.

Ed nodded, emptily as if he had heard what I said but it went in one ear and out the other, as the saying goes. I know he heard me though. He just chose to pretend he didn’t, answer emptily, “yeah,” and avoid my gaze as always.

I shut the door with a click, pausing just outside it.

I could hear the scraping of the chair and the click of the metal on the plates.

He always ate all his breakfast, just waited until I was gone to do so.

XXX

My work is both my curse and my joy.

At times I utterly loathe staring at a design all day, taking in the rocket and it’s science, frustrated over the lack of a formula, but at a loss on how to derive one.

However, that is not the curse of my work.

My work… I enjoy nothing—or few things—more than the thrill as the rocket shoots up towards space or the heavens, whatever’s up there beyond the atmosphere and the clouds, bursting forth towards the whirling planets and the asteroids that collide and dissolve.

I’ve only had one rocket actually launch. Did anyone care? Did any paper take notice of my efforts? A professor praised it at the university, but gave me no funding. Hardly the breakthrough I’d hoped for.

I’m running out of time to leave my mark. That is my curse.

XXX

True to my word, I came home for dinner, although I knew I’d return to my work right after I cooked and ate it, just to get that much closer to the discovery, the perfection of my plans, my design, the ideal engine.

Edward was sleeping on the shabby couch, taking up nearly all of it even in his slight frame. One hand was draped over his stomach, exposed as usual. I could tell him he’d catch cold, but he’d always sour in expression and remain silent.

I suppose he used to say that too.

Or I could pull his shirt down, knowing he would wake up from the contact and scowl at that, shove my hand away rather rudely so that I would be hurt and then he would feel bad and come into the bedroom and try and make up for it and I would slap his efforts away because I was damn tired of that.

I sighed and started the pasta.

XXX

“Did you get any new leads today?” I asked as I washed the dishes.

Ed shook his head, flipping through my notes from that day, making corrections. I wish he would stop. I don’t need his genius to take away from my limelight and hard work.

“No,” he murmured. “It’s rather pointless by now anyway.”

I dropped the dish in the sink, glad it was in water and not on the harsh tile floor.

“What?” I spun around. “Why are you suddenly stopping?!” Care laced through my voice, concern.

He merely shrugged; I couldn’t help notice it was another gesture in a series of ambiguous, carefree, yet melancholy gestures Ed seemed to exude as of late.

“Come to bed when you’re done,” he said plainly, not giving me an option I could tell.

I only wished he meant it towards me—I’m tired of being his guilty charade.

XXX

“I had it pressed to my skin, a think trickle of blood running down from where I’d just barely scratched the surface,” he whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed as I leaned on the doorway.

“But just as life is pointless, so too is death.”

“Then what is meaningful in life?” I whispered back, a bit numb from his confession, although I felt anger burning inside me for all he’d put me through. My hands clenched at my sides. My voice came out stiff and cold.

“To live while you can, to live life as best you can even though you know it’s pointless and devoid of meaning.”

Ed was always ahead of his time in science, should his philosophy be any different?

“So are you living then?” I asked, voice still laced with cold condescension, the only emotions I could give for a guy who threw his life around when I was so desperately hanging on to my own.

“No.”

“Then what is this?”

“Dreaming.”

For all my anger and sadness, I couldn’t help cradling my broken lover in my arms.

XXX

I woke up the next morning satiated. Edward lay beside me, bed sheets askew to reveal patched of scarred skin and little dips and places no one but me has seen, or so I hope.

Edward wishes it another way, I’m sure.

My smile faltered a bit at the thought, but I smoothed my hand through his golden hair strewn across his pillow to lighten my spirits.

I’d compare him to Helios, but Edward would remind me belief in a god is pointless and that sooner or later God would be dead—I think he hoped he personally could be the one to kill him—and that the sun was indeed a few billion years old, unlike himself who was a mere 18.

For someone who had fantastic tales of another realm, he sure was a stickler for science.

I sighed.

If only he would let me heal him, fix the little broken parts of his heart and start things on a good path again, one where he wouldn’t worry about the meaning of life or taking his own. One where there were no pretenses, true or false, and I wasn’t forced into someone else’s shadow.

In a few months I’ll be dead, I thought bitterly, just like his dearly beloved. We’ll all rot in hell together.

I regretted my thoughts, even though Edward couldn’t hear them.

I reached over to hold his hand, the artificial one unfeeling in my grasp, but it was closest and not pinned under his body. I could feel the grooves and contours of the rubber. It was cracked in some places, peeling back from the metal. He needed to change it.

But I guess maintenance is pointless as well.

XXX

He kissed me, uncharacteristically, as he woke up next to me.

“Sleep well, Alfonse?” he asked, eyes bright in the morning light. I was dazzled.

“Yeah,” I managed, stunned by his brilliance and later by the realization that my name was spoken as two syllables and not my damned nickname that rolled off his tongue with sickening ease.

I noticed him drop his gaze and pull me into a tight hug.

“I need to start breakfast, Ed.” I told him gently, trying to pry his arms off. It was late. I had work. Didn’t he know that?

He shook his head and wouldn’t let go, hugging me tighter until I gasped and whimpered. He hugged too tight and I couldn’t breathe and let go I don’t have that much longer so please don’t take it from me now!

He relaxed his hold but still hugged me.

I smoothed his hair with a melancholic expression covering my face. If only he would let me fix the broken pieces.

XXX

I often feel like I’m running up a hill only to be crushed by a rock that is pushed to the top and then rolls back down just before it reaches the summit.

Edward pushes a rock up the hill only to have the rock roll back down just before it reaches the summit.

And the action repeats. Again. And again. And again. For all eternity.

XXX

Rockets can’t bring the broken pieces back together.

I caught him studying them anyway.

He was crying.