Empty Rooms


Elijah is beginning to understand what it feels like to be alone. When his mom had finished helping him move in and finally left his apartment in New Zealand, he wasn’t by himself for that long. There were always people over, spending the night on the couch when they had to be back on set in six hours since he lived the closest to the main stage. Everyone was always looking out for him, too, at the beginning, making sure he wasn’t homesick and afraid (which he was) and getting him out of his apartment at every possible opportunity. It wasn’t long before Dom was asking for the spare blanket even on nights before days off, and not much longer before their goodnight kisses turned into goodnight blowjobs turned into Dom and Elijah laying tangled up together with thin, musky sheets and smooth, naked limbs. But things changed, the nights became less frequent and the number of Dom’s clothes in Elijah’s dressers got smaller and smaller. Elijah rented a different apartment whenever they were back for pickups, but when he was home in LA, eating sesame chicken in his bare living with an unpacked box as a table and the TV sitting on the floor in this house which he had never settled into, had refused to allow himself to become comfortable in, he couldn’t help but feel that this was what it would be like from now on.

Empty rooms are too quiet, too much of a reminder of people who aren’t there.

Elijah blares music now at any waking moment, sometimes even as he’s falling asleep.

The sound Elijah hates most in the world is the two and a half seconds of silence that ring off the walls when he leaves his apartment, turning off the lights and shutting off the music. He scowls every time he walks down the still corridor to the elevator. If he’s only popping out for an errand, he’ll leave his music on just so he doesn’t have to walk into a silent room with dark lights, a space not lived in unless he’s there. He tried buying a goldfish on the suggestion of Hannah. He named is Edgar. It died a few days after he bought it.

Elijah isn’t sure if he likes being alone.



(c) Kate Finneran 2004

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