The Dimmed Light

A moth fluttered across Jameson’s face with its wings grazing the tip of his nose. With a swat, he stepped back and looked around frantically for it, in case it were to come back. It wasn’t even moth season, it felt ridiculous seeing one at this hour.

Being late at night, Jameson didn’t think his father would be anywhere else but his office; he wasn’t going to go to his parents’ room in fear that his mother would still be awake, and Geoff wasn’t in the living room. He knew he wasn’t particularly allowed into his office, no one was, but Jameson didn’t like being alone in his room late at night. Anxiety would start creeping in and infect the walls, would feel as though he was suffocated. Jameson hadn’t even been down this hallway in years, it felt more like a storage hallway than anything else.

An odor caught his attention, it was faint, musty and metallic. Jameson’s face contorted as he stepped closer towards the door of the room.

“God, what died..” he murmured, making a face of disgust. The moth flew into Jameson’s phone backing, slamming itself into the light that emitted from it, falling to the ground, and then flying back away into the neverending dark of the hallway corners.

There was no light besides the flashlight on Jameson’s phone and the line of light across the carpet from underneath the office door. With every step the teenager took, dust flew up and filled the light with particles.

His shaky, pale hands gripped the door handle before slowly opening, a creak emitting from it and echoing in the silence of the ugly and tattered room. The room was dark, darker than the hallway, but with an antique-looking, tinted yellow lamp on the desk. The lampshade was dusty, very dull and barely any light peeked through from it. The shingles gently rattled with the wind from the door before going back to their original, unanimated position. The walls, although hard to see, were a worn-down, faded green, the floral and vines wallpaper tearing at parts and lumpy in others. Jameson had never seen the office, or at least he didn’t remember it being so disheveled.

His eyes wandered the office, scanning until he looked down to the matted carpet. A deep red and developing brown were stained into the rug strands, and the familiar metallic and now rotting smell was much more defined. Geoff laid, his now white-as-snow flesh laying limp. His muscles were stiff, chest not rising or falling or moving. His mouth agape, drool pouring out underneath him but not as much as the blood that dripped from the side of his head. An impact was made near the temple and his right eye, it being bruised and bloodied with a puddle splattered on the floor. There was discoloration on his legs with magenta and purple starting to fill the gaps of where the paleness wasn’t. A beer bottle laid on the floor next to him, Geoff’s hand looking as if it were reaching for it, but he was more still than the bottle itself. There were multiple beer bottles, surrounding the area like a pack of wolves, empty or with only drips left. His eyes were wide, open and the pupils looked directly at Jameson as if he knew he would find him, but there was barely any color to his soft green eyes. The soft green eyes that used to watch Jameson, the soft green eyes with pupils that used to enlarge in happiness at the thought of spending time with his son. He just wanted to spend time with his son. And now it wasn’t possible. He wasn’t okay. His father wasn’t okay. Jameson knew he was dead but he hadn’t checked. He didn’t have the courage to. He didn’t have the courage to lay next to him, check his stoic pulse, or call for help. Geoff Smith was dead. And he had been dead for hours.

The moth fluttered into the room, not going near the lamp light but instead investigating the body, gently soaring around before retreating back to the dull and lifeless lamp, attaching itself to the bulb.

Jameson stared, his eyes getting dry with no blinking done. He couldn’t pull his eyes away without feeling guilty, without feeling scared? His phone dropped to the floor, the loud thud from the sound of it hitting the floor, filling Jamesons’ ears with a ring. The deafening silence afterward burned into his ears. His legs were still, not even shaking, but just staring. His eyes mimicked his father’s, losing color and expression.

It took almost 20 minutes to walk away from the body, to make his own body move and go to bed. He might’ve been delusional, imagining his father’s lifeless body laying in his office. Surely it was a delusion, no real scenario would make him feel like this. He would be sobbing, wailing and on his knees, trying to wake his father up like a child on Christmas in the early morning. He would be calling the police, telling Jessica or Misty. He would be angry, or sad, or upset, or depressed, he would be feeling something. Wouldn’t he? Was he heartless for not showing this much emotion at the sight of his father dead? Ungrateful, that’s what he felt he was. Ungrateful for all his father did in the times that he did step up. Ungrateful for all that he gave them. That he raised him. Or maybe Jameson should be angry, angry at his father for not stepping up enough. Angry at his father for dying. Angry at his father for not being a father. Sad that his father is dead. Denial that he was even dead. Guilt that he wasn’t there to be with his father when he was close to his last moments. Lonely that his father was gone and that was his only source of comfort. Confused on how his father died and why, if there even was a being, God would ever let Jameson suffer like this. Anxious that he would be screamed at for not telling anyone. He needed to tell someone.