New Book I'm Working On--Chapter 1--Refuge

After what seemed like a thousand trips down and back from carrying clothes and boxes to his car and watching moving men carry his life away, Brandon stood alone and quiet surveying his surroundings. The loft apartment he use to think was charming and cozy, with its brick walls and French doors, now seemed stark and unfamiliar. Michael’s remaining furniture seemed to litter the apartment rather than warm it. All of Brandon’s stuff, which once complimented Michael’s, had been moved to storage. Now the place they once called home seemed incomplete and cold. Brandon hoped it was a metaphor for Michael’s future.

Brandon’s chocolate cocker spaniel, Charlie, lay near his feet waiting for the word to vacate the shell of their former lives. Michael’s cat Emma sprawled across the mantle on the opposite side of the room and stared defying at Brandon and Charlie. Brandon spotted one more item on the ‘To Do’ list before he fled his homeland. He moved from the doorway of the loft through the living room to the open bedroom door. He reached out but his hand froze suddenly. The four-poster bed he and Michael had purchased together a couple years ago also seemed concrete and frigid to him.

Brandon shook himself back to reality and roughly grabbed the 1000 count Egyptian sheets. The cool fabric added to the affect of the icy numbness of the moment. He ripped the caramel colored sheets from the bed in one manic episode. He remembered how anal Michael had been in choosing the color.

Brandon gathered the sheets up in a crazy mess along with the pillows that they both laid their heads on at night. How many times had they laid side by side in that bed and talked about their future? He shook his head to clear the memory and then marched to the front door. As the sheet trailed behind him down the hallway, Brandon stormed determinedly toward one final act of revenge. At the end of the hall, he jerked open the garbage shoot. He could spell Michael’s cologne on the sheets. “How could he,” was the one statement that continued to echo through his head. Like the life he was leaving behind the expensive, comfortable, achingly familiar sheets disappeared down the garbage shoot into darkness.