She was beautiful when we met, but now how her eyes too had clouded over with gray. A hint of lemon zest tickled my tongue as the sweet nectar of my last bottle of wine trickled into my throat, and I tried to remember how we as a race had doomed ourselves. She was asleep now, and I could almost hear her empty, lustful breathing through the thick concrete walls of our quickly deteriorating apartment. Years ago, this was different. She was different. Before all of this, I could see beauty in her eyes and in every muscle of her body when she smiled at me. Her gently floral smell and sweet, delicate form used to burn into my mind, and I would savor the feeling of her hands touching mine days after her departure. But that was all before the television came into our lives.
It started with the radio. We knew not to listen to the advertisements, and we rarely ever listened to the music or news. Then it became a requirement. Then, even on publicly funded stations, we were being sold a world of things. We avoided television as long as we could, but it quickly engulfed us into its world of consumerism, just as it had with everyone else. As the days went on, we were robbed of free will more and more. We weren't just told what to buy, we were told when and where to buy it. We were given hints and tips on what would be cheaper, and before we knew it, we believed we were saving money by spending more. Then came the dresses and the suits, followed by an array of shiny appliances and uniquely stylized furnishings. Every year, we acquired more and more. We tried to fill our lives with as many material belongings as we could.
And every time I looked into her eyes, I could see her falling away from me. I could feel her slipping through my grasp, and I began to resent everything we had become. The cold air flooded into the den through our broken window and began to nip at my face and burn into my eyes as a single tear fell from my face and froze on our neatly waxed hardwood floor.
