Arrival of the unpunctual

Even his outstretched fingers couldn’t reach the first vestiges of the bleak winter sunlight falling from the window. The floor was cold and hard, and the insides of his palms and knees singed with pain. How long he’d lain that way, he’d forgotten. A crushing weight pressed down upon his mind and all he could think of was the infinite and eternal loneliness, the closing in of a vast emptiness that pushed out both friends and enemies. He was not cared for. Pushing himself toward that final effort, at long last his fingers found the beam of light on the floor, a gentle warmth flowing through them as he embraced it. The cold was still not gone, though, but when or whence the cold had come, no one knew. Waiting for a knock on the door had proved terribly futile. The timber-legged chair had crumpled down with him when the clock struck six. He wished that the finality of death had befallen them all, that were they not here upon his doorstep and awaiting his welcome, much rather the truth be forgotten forever than hang between fact and fantasy!