If there is one thing Casper has come to realize in this last handful of days, it’s that he needs to keep himself busy. Because, try as he might, his long sojourn in Glenholm is steadily eating moth holes in the very fiber of his being. Or maybe just his head. In any case, it remains quite clear that, unless Casper wants to lose himself again, he needs something, anything, to stay engaged with reality. This close to leaving, he can’t afford to go into another fugue and sleepwalk through the week, never you mind the day he’s supposed to leave.
The funny thing about time is that, unless you’re doing something to give it meaning, it’s all to easy to let it slip by. Let it pass in a fuzzy, grey haze, not a thing to delineate one day from the next and the next. Meaningless. Boundless. Monotonous. And he’ll freewheel like that, out of mind, out of control, until something gives him reason to wake up again. The frightening thing is that he doesn’t know how long that’ll take. He drifted like that through the better part of the year, once upon a time. It’s only natural he’s anxious about falling back into the habit when he can least afford it.
And so, he’s come up with a cunning plan: he’s made himself a to-do list.
