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By iksk
- 333 reads
The grimy plaster on my ceiling is what introduces me to my state of consciousness. Like a piece of cellophane wrap smeared in shit. I should clean it. How can a ceiling get dirty? We crumble down and wither away just like any other organism and as a result we usually leave remnants of ourselves in corners, under bathtubs and in sinks. But ceilings? It feels like dying upwards. My skin sticks to my sheets and a sour smell of sweat emits from underneath and opening in the covers near my rugged and unkempt face. In a way it feels like the plaster has an excuse for its condition. I do not. I should be active and animate. I should feel the force of life pushing against me and myself in return pushing back. Caught up in the struggle which breathes energy and vigor into everything living, the constant challenge to stay above the surface and not give in and succumb under the pure weight of it all. I have succumbed.
My back starts to ache in a way that signals me I need to either reposition or get out of bed. It had started in a subtle way but now had grown to a point of where it demanded my attention. I repositioned and tried to lie on my side. The alarm clock to my right informed me of that it was about 4 o clock. Time was not something I wanted to know, just like I did not want to know what kind of weather is was. But the damage was already done, the time or the knowledge of it began causing unrest in me and I considered yet again rotating and hope time would fade away together with everything else. But it didn’t, it kept gnawing in me and the ceiling felt more shit covered than ever.
I stretched out my left leg and tried to reach the floor to see if my slippers where there but I missed the soft slippers just by an inch and slapped down my foot on the cold plastic floor. I began feeling annoyed. Always this annoyance but yet never proper anger, just these moments of short flinches and grunting. Grunting left me with a feeling of marking out that something I disliked had occurred but it never gave me any satisfaction in regards of improving how I felt. The cold from the floor had moved into my foot and I got a feeling of a wind blowing along the floor. I was beginning to feel like a child with piss drenched clothes standing helplessly and reaching out for aid. But there would be no aid, I am an adult.
My apartment was still covered in darkness, except my bedroom. It got all the sun. My shades failed at keeping the rays out and I could feel the warmth on my back when I sat on the edge of my bed. It nauseated me. Outside I could hear children screaming and cars driving. A bird was trying to impress a potential partner. Its melody was in the beginning worth of notice but I soon could hear repetition in the pattern of which it sang and this grieved me. I began feeling thirst and walked to my corner of the apartment I called kitchen. It wasn´t a kitchen yet a small cranny with an oven and a sink. The sink was full of old food and dirty plates. The residue of aged meals where caked on like glue and some flies feasted on left over cheese and sauces.
In the refrigerator stuffed in the corner I kept a beer. I read the label to see percentage. Except the beer I had old milk and a box with a prepared meal now too old to eat. I turned around with the box still left in the refrigerator and walked towards the bathroom with the beer in my hand. I realized that I didn’t want to take the can into the shower and make it warm so I left it on the top of my toilet.
In the bathroom there was a fingered package of cigarettes. It was Lucky strikes because I believe in cancer not tested on animals. My fingers reached for them and I lit one with the lighter I use for the candle on the side of my bathtub. The nails on my hands where yellowish, I used to have beautiful hands. Almost like a woman’s.
While smoking my eyes inspected the tub to see if it was ok to try to take a bath. Worn down by thousands of previous residents the cracks in the bottom of the tub had filled up with pieces of dead skin and old nail clippings leaving what looked like brown lightning arches sprouting from all different directions. I didn’t mind. But I didn’t want to swim in it either, so perhaps I did mind. I removed my underwear and my t shirt. While avoiding my bathroom mirror and putting out my cigarette in the sink I heard my neighbor’s son come home from school.
Or I could more feel it since the slamming of my neighbors door reverberated through the wall and cause my bathroom mirror to shake. I decided to just take a shower and not a bath, a bath felt like overdoing it. The showerhead began shaking uncontrollably and produced a muffled mechanic sound, almost like a machinegun underwater. The water started pouring down and shocked my hand with the cold water. It soon grew way to hot and burned me slightly. I used the water to comb my greasy hair back. My beard was escaping my control, and I thought about my worn razor in the cupboard behind the bathroom mirror. It was slightly rusted on the blade because it was one of those cheap ones not made in stainless steel. The thought of chipping my face with the rusty blade even surpassed the amount of trouble I felt in getting showered.
In the shower I just stood there listening to the water. The drainage gurgled and complained about something being stuck in the drainage. A faint smell of sewage crept up through the pipes and the air felt thicker as I inhaled.
I saw my body glistening with water running down but I didn’t feel clean. The water separated and crawled like a snake down my stomach. It reached my cock only to quickly disperse into thousands of different streams when trying to force their way through my pubic hair.
I considered masturbating but the thought exhausted me. I took another cigarette. The moistness in the air began making the paper around it split and crack but the tobacco inside still burned and gave away ripples of smoke which collided together with the water drops and caused the smoke to flicker and evade. It felt like I was getting smaller, getting peeled of like an overripe fruit losing its protective outer coat. I got a feeling that I was crying but it could just have been the smoke stinging my eyes. Cigarettes contain a substance actively found in Napalm. I thought about if people burned alive by napalm felt the same sting in their eyes which I could feel now in my shower, in my filth? A growing feeling of being pathetic grabbed me and I felt forced to clear my throat and turn of the water.
My last smoke leaked fumes as it was dying slowly in my bathtub. The showerhead had never been able to keep quite tight so the rhythmic dropping had begun yet again. I hadn’t noticed it when entering. My hair hung around me like curtains and I could feel the water from my body heating up the floor while I searched for my towel. I couldn’t find it and dried myself of with what was left with my toilet paper. I wondered how I would be able to clean my ass with paper rolls next time nature called for a brief moment, but it all felt very distant. A piece of paper got stuck between my ass cheeks but I didn’t bother remove it. With one rapid motion I opened my beer. It was warm, the same feeling of annoyance started itching and I felt defeated by myself and weak. All over a stupid can of beer.
Drinking out of the can I sat in my couch and watched the sun starting to fade. I drank more out of protest than because I actually enjoyed it. Heard no children now but the cars were still in the soundscape of my living room. The position of the sun made me wonder how long I had been in comatose under the water in the shower. The sun was barely covered by the horizon. By what I could see of the horizon.
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