Jenn Ashworth

You wake up and sit on the bed. Your back aches from sleeping on a bed too small for your body. You try to stretch the sinew on your bones but are too stiff so you walk to the shower and turn on the water. Wash your hair, body, and face. Some other things happen, things that have become routine. These things have come to be so routine that you hope they will eventually just happen effortlessly and no one will be able to recollect the actual actions that occurred.

You walk to work. Read news, read blogs. Look at stacks of books. You look at stacks and shelves of books and check the call numbers and think about the Dewey Decimal System but mostly think about the word “boredom.” You look at the clock on the wall, the clock on the computer, and the clock on your cell phone. Each is altered by minute increments.

The clocks each reach a certain time at different times. This certain time means that you can go home. You go home. You turn on a DVD and lie on the carpet. The movie starts and you think about food and look at a bunched bananas and think “fruit,” but still lie on the carpet.

Someone knocks on the door. You wonder if the person will leave. The person continues to knock. You look out the peephole and someone is standing in the hall. You open the door. He says you vomited out the window and now the vomit is on his car. You think of vomit. You haven’t been sick since last Christmas. You say, “Last Christmas.”

He becomes angry. He tells you to clean the vomit. You walk to the balcony. You look at his car and at your window. You look at the window belonging to the apartment one slot west. A dried stain, discolored with carrot bits and something green spans the side of the building. You walk back to the door and say, “Wrong apartment.”

He says something. Then he says, “Mother fucker.” Then he says, “Drag you down the fucking stairs.”

You say, “Come here,” and slam the door as he steps into the frame. Maybe you hit his nose. You are too scared to laugh out loud and lock the door.

You wish you were more prepared for human interaction.

You sit on the carpet. The movie ends. You start the movie again. You don’t go to sleep that night. When the sky is dark and before the sky is reflecting anything, you think “I am driving to another city tomorrow.” You wash some dishes and start putting clothes in a bag.

This post was donated by Stephen Daniel Lewis who has a blog and edits Robot Melon. I very much like the library theme to this story, and the ending. I am coming to the conclusion that the readers of this blog are better at doing the blogging than I am. I think I will solve this by pretending to be one of you the next time I post.

Good Work Stephen Daniel Lewis!