Chilled

Usually my morning begins rolling over to check my phone, my hopes raised in anticipation that somebody, or someone, or something has decided to contact me. It makes me sad that my first instinct in the morning is to take another hit of dopamine, like a smoker rolling out of bed with hoarse coughs and phlegm-filled snorts reaching for their cigarettes, I reach for my phone. Every morning I am met with dissapointment from the dearth of notifications. Why I expect someone to contact me in the late hours of the night that my unconcsious body was able to leave my phone alone, I don't know, but I check anyways. This morning's different. There is a message. A message from a blocked number; I guess something decided to contact me today.

My gray bags are heavy around my eyes and I blink slowly to discern what the message says. I couldn't sleep last night, like most nights, the sound of traffic, the audible glow of the whorehouse billboard shined through my window lighting up my black floorboards, creaking under the weight of the light, the neighbours muffled yells, and the pervasive dampness that is ubiquitous through the city prevented my sleep. It was not the sound that kept me up, but rather the depression of it all. I just stared up at my peeling ceiling trying to remember when the last sunny day was; I couldn't remember. In some twisted pathetic fallacy turned reality the changing climate had made my city overcast most days - and nights for that matter. The clouds hung low touching the tops of the buildings, casting a gray saturation over the city, and made everything so goddamn damp. In particularly long bouts of cloud-cover the cold would reach deep into your bones. I would pulll my overcoat tight over my shoulders in these imes, but the cold was biting and you could not keep it out.

Last night was one of those nights. When the phone lit up my cavernous face in the blackness of the early winter morning the artificial light almost felt warm on my face. As the haze distilled from my eyes I could see it was a warning, the world was ending in seven days. I'd been receiving these messages for three years now. They all came to me in the same manner - a blocked number, early in the morning, no time stamp, after an especially anxious damp sleep. The first one I resolved to be a prank and did not show anyone - more from a lack of interested parties in manners involving myself, rather than reticence. The utter lack of social interaction left in this city made it entirely unknowable whether everyone was receiving these messages with the same level of apathy that I was or if I was alone and it was simply neurotic apparitions of my mind.

The messages came more frequently with the approaching apocalypse and each one increased my conviction of my insanity. I always envisioned insanity as a despairing, despondent, incoherent, frenetic experience, but I accepted my insanity with complacency. Perhaps it was because of my uncertainty that any of my peers retained their sanity and it felt as though I was reaching social maturity, rather than social exclusion. It wasn't the dubious nature of the messages, or the solitary isolation of the experience, but the certainty with which I knew the world to be ending that reified my notions of insanity.

I put my phone back down and turned on my back to stare at the ceiling again, but was quickly overcome with laughter. My body convulsed with uproarious laughter, it reverberated off the cold walls, and out into the dark street. I was overcome with joy at being released from the dampness. I prayed through my squealing laughter that the world would end in a fiery blaze so I could feel warmth once again. I was giddy with excitement that the flames would dry up this entire city. I welcomed the thought of descending into the warmth of hell. Oh god, please end it tomorrow, I cannot wait seven more days.