Bare

Like puppets, shadows polka’d up the walls and across the table as the stumpy candle flickered in the jar, its veins spilling into a waxy puddle.

Edward stared at the paper in front of him. It was dying. Parched, jaundiced and, undoubtedly, jaded, it curled self-consciously, like Eve covering her nudity.

His pen reclined, nonplussed, in the criss-crossed cushion between thumb and forefinger.

Forty days he had sat like this. For forty days he had floated in the vacuous space inside his skull. A moth clicked against the glass. Swooped. Erupted. Still Edward was unable to write anything.