Emily Kirby

The Nesting Doll

He couldn’t stomach anything beautiful anymore. He was alone, and nothing is beautiful alone. He could only tolerate beauty if it reminded him of her. In his opinion, there were only three beautiful things left in this soggy existence. The two brilliant red objects perched on his desk, and the machine sitting in the chair opposite. The rest of the apartment looked bleak to the man, so he shuffled over to the colours that beckoned at his desk. As he got closer, he found comfort in the familiarity of the objects. He knew these objects intimately. He knew what their weight felt like as gravity pushed them down into his hands. He knew each texture, each ridge, each corner. He liked how dependable they were. Every day he would wake up to be greeted by his very brown apartment. It had brown cracked plaster walls. A brown table in sat the centre of the room, kept company only by a solitary light. A brown bed sulked on the floor dressed in brown linen sheets, whilst a brown desk looked longingly out the window. Everything was brown. Even the air in the place felt brown. It was thick, ripe from years of the man's breath. Murky brown seemed to consume everything in the room with its regret. Everything except for the little red sanctuary that consisted of two objects: A vivid red nesting doll and a crimson picture frame.