by J.W. Carey
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The switched clicked on, an audible indication unnecessary when the urine yellow light dribbled from the small bulb swinging from the ceiling. The room was exactly what one would expect from a place like this. He took in the toilet, brown stains running along the inside, curving downwards into the pool of tinted water, only recently freshened with his expulsions. The inset button to activate the flush was broken, and so the culmination of his day’s sustenance squatted amongst the microscopic waves; a mountain in an ocean. The toilet set was a ghost, nothing more than a pair of hinges attached to the ceramic, around which more of the brown stains clustered. The tiles were, as a rule, chipped or, in some cases, non-existent; the once-white underlay clearly visible. Of those that did remain, they were stained with yellows and browns and oranges, a miasma of filth like a plague victim’s final dreaming. The basin of the sink, its stand emerging from the tiles like an ascent into the Heavens, was remarkably intact, despite the brown handprints along its rim. They were in a perfect position of desperation. Someone over the past few days had stood there, his hands clenched into dual contractions of agony or rage, no doubt staring at himself in the mirror which hung above it.
He caught sight of himself in that reflective surface, his body in the doorframe along the right hand side. The centre was a splintered mess, as though someone had driven a fist into their reflection, though whether to stave away the endless stare they had to have known was unreal, was merely a trick of the light and physics against one’s sanity, or out of some sheer, ungovernably destructive inclination, he could not tell. The light switch clicked again, and the bathroom returned to darkness, only the light of his silhouette in the doorway spreading into the room.
His companion was in the corner of the room, awake now, but sobbing gently to himself. The sound was a dull whine in his ears, but he daren’t interrupt. Perhaps he had earned the right to cry, he thought, at least for a little while. He couldn’t help but think that the noise might be less grating if it were a genuine scream, some heart-felt roar of sorrow, than the continuous misery currently offered. He didn’t turn to comfort him, didn’t attempt to wipe away his tears with a gentle hand or a soothing word; neither of these things could he be said to possess.
The light came on again, a whim of his fingertips to which he was not privy, and he stared at it. It wasn’t painful to look at such a dull illumination, no blinding pain stabbed at his eyes. His pupils barely needed to contract in that vision, barely needed to tighten around the world he saw. The light bulb still swung gently, propelled by some alien force or the rapid spinning of the earth. It hung from the ceiling on one thick grey stream, within which wires clustered like wealthy men in an elevator. He followed its passage, exercising his freewill in such monotony. He did this because it gave him pleasure, to prove to himself that he was alive and in control and not a shivering wreckage of a man. He could feel the weakness beginning, feel what meagre defences he had beginning to twitch and tumble out of position. His will was failing, already the memory of the water, of the small bag flying through the air to land with an unsatisfactory splash, was haunting him. They had been walking together, and his companion had laughed at the sight, a chuckle which had seemed supportive at the time, but the ghost of which now mocked him for his weakness. The sobbing had stopped from the corner, as though in approval of his opine, as though some progress had been made; progress towards some distant goal that he could not identify.
His finger twitched, a manifestation of his encroaching madness. The bathroom went dark again, then light, then dark, then light. He stared inwards, up at the source of spasmodic illumination still swinging like a pendulum, like a scythe caught in eternal rotation. He watched the sparks die even as they began to live, he watched the darkness rush in as though it were the standard state of the world and be fought back, again and again, with a disinterest that spoke of humanity more than any poet ever could. The light was unaware of the darkness, it knew only of shadows; where the blackness was long and eternal and saw the light as nothing more than a misstep, as a sudden faltering of its own advance.
He heard the clicking of the plastic like the ticking of a clock, felt the seconds and the minutes pass him by until the very world was a flickering light, in his control. Though the weakness; that vague and amorphous threat he felt in the distant horizon, hidden amongst the clouds and the mountains, was approaching, in those moments he was God, his was the only authority and it was he allowed the repetition of light and dark and light and dark until the light burnt out and the shadows vanished.
When the shuddering began in earnest he managed to pull himself away from the door frame’s gravity, from the authority he wielded there. He made the few short steps quickly, lowering himself gently to the thin mattress. His body issued demands that his lungs endeavoured to fill, his chest stretching and contracting in selfish effort. He watched his hands like one would watch a venomous insect, with interest and fear and a certain shutting down of the mind. They shuddered like weak architecture in the onset of a storm and he could do nothing but watch as they curled in on themselves.
He wished he could turn back time, as though by fighting the curvature of his bone and muscle he could oppose linearity itself. He could, instead, curl these fingers around the bag and the things within before they hit the waves, before they vanished in some poor poetic imagery. He lay his hands flat against the bed leaning on them with his entire weight that their desire to tear themselves apart might be stalled, for a little while. The sun was gone now, fallen beneath the water. He looked out of the window, hoping to see some burst of illumination, the sun rising back against itself. He felt the bandages around his hands tighten against the pressure he subjected them to, felt the blood shift again; felt it pulsate against his flesh like a whore in a nightclub. He assumed that those wounds came from the glass in the sink, the broken mirror with his blood on shattered edges. He assumed those handprints were his own or, at least, those of his body.
He should have kept the pictures, to give him strength, to remember their smiles and the sunlight. But they were lies, remnants of a time past and simple untruths. Those images hadn’t captured the heat, the boredom, the misery of long queues and the brief enjoyment of speed, if only for the sensation of a cool breeze it had delivered. He could have something else to look at besides the flickering of a light bulb, besides the dead memories and the ghost of the ocean, outside of his rented window.