Wasted, sorry, lonely and fucked.

It was getting colder out and the rodents were coming in for shelter. I could hear the mice running the walls while I tried to sleep. It wasn’t uncommon for me to feel one run across my feet when I brushed my teeth. Meg would chase the sounds of the mice in the walls and I was going insane. I had flies in the room. They would come in from cracks in the light covers and take over the place. One night I spent six hours killing every fly I saw with folded typing paper. I became obsessed with them. I would crouch behind the big stand after I had cleared the room of them and wait for one to crawl out from the ceiling, and I would spring on him and flatten him. I thought I would never get to Manhattan, I thought I would rot there. The car had been on empty for weeks. I had nowhere to go and no money. All I had was the warehouse and I was lucky I had that. I could feel my mind slipping away moment by moment. It had nothing to do with where I was or the lack of food or humanity. It had to do with the morbid process, my incessant repetition of speeding into brick walls, my travels further into failure. My own brother lived close and he didn’t give a fuck. Time came forth and showed me pictures only the dead could see.

I was not human anymore. I hadn’t used my vocal chords in over six weeks, aside from talking to Meg. I was barely surviving. I learned to adapt to Meg’s food but that made it go quicker. My brother in the south end drove over illegally one Sunday and gave me a twenty. When he walked in and saw me he had to stop and put it together. I was ashen, my ribs were showing. He took me out to eat but my stomach had shrunk and I couldn’t put down half a burger without getting full. He bought me a can of coffee and some groceries. I was able to live for a few days off the groceries. All I had was the typewriter. It was all I ever had. He wanted me to come stay with him in the south end. He even said Meg could live upstairs with me. I couldn’t do it. I convinced him that I was fine. I had become so addicted to being alone that even spending the day with him was painful.

Another month went. On my 29th birthday I locked the place down. I could see headlights outside of my room and I heard someone knocking but I didn’t get up. Insanity had come fast, but it came certain. I didn’t know if it was the years behind it, or if the room was simply the last straw, the snapped end of string with no time left to replace it. I knew that I had lost my mind sometime in the passing week, but coming to terms with it only lost it further. I wanted to be surprised that it had finally found me there in the room, but I wasn’t surprised. The time it took had been well-earned, since the age of 16. The speed of its arrival was only offset by things bigger than the room that I wouldn’t let break me. The room was only there to garnish the grave, what the room reflected was what I’d traded my mind for, to let it go without another fight in me.

I was dead and destroyed, wasted, sorry, lonely and fucked. I had once had women and people who believed in my work. I was once a human with honor and strength and muscular flesh. Now it was gone. Everything was so gone I wondered if it had ever existed. Maybe I was born in the room and everything had been a dream, a neuro-chemical hallucination brought on by flies crawling down my throat and copulating as I slept. I had quit masturbating because it exerted me, and it only made me hungry afterward. I was not even alive. I was a cell in a jar and I was being monitored by giants who had painted this life for me to live as though it was real. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes and refused to breathe. Not because I wanted to die, but because I was bored with breathing. My body went through a cold wave and then it was dark.

I woke up with a headache and vomit on my chest. Meg was on top of me, licking my face. I was naked, and I reached down and counted the thin muscles that poked out of my stomach. I had eight of them. Eight was a magic number right then. I thought of scenarios with the number eight. If I cut off two toes and two fingers then I would have eight of each. If Johnny had ten apples and Susie ate two of them then how many apples would Johnny have left? Eight, goddamnit! Eight was a powerful figure! I drew figure eights in the air with my finger.

I was 29 years old and I was a loser. I had tried but I had failed. The world was good and sports were good and careers were good and a job meant success and only fools thought they could write. Brad came into my room and told me he wanted money for the utility bill. It was a total of two hundred and eighty-six dollars. I jumped up, and told him there was that number again. I told him I would give him eight-hundred and eighty-eight dollars in eight days. He backed away slowly and said whenever I got some money, that was good enough for him. He told me to take it easy, and he backed out the door. He had his hands up and he bumped his head walking out. I looked at Meg and she cocked her head at me.

I was a freak. I was wasting away by flesh, rotting away by soul. Where were my people now? They were out in the sunshine and they were making love and talking to God and God talked back to them. I was no concern of anybody’s anymore. I was now at the gates of my real self. I was born for the room. I was born to write in the room. Without the room I would blow away and die in the dusty wind.

One night I woke up to the sound of Meg growling deeply. I had never heard her growl like that. I reached back and flipped the light on. She had this huge rat cornered in the room. It was drawn back against the wall, hissing at her. It was horrible. He was big and vicious and his tail reminded me of a whip used to snap out my eyeballs. He took a scratch at Meg and I snapped. He was diseased and hungry and he had the heart of a demon. Then I got it. He was a demon, coming for me to take me away because I had even failed to do that on my own, and the devil was fed up with me. He sent the rat to me to gnaw out my esophagus in my sleep.

I stood and hissed back at him. He was watching me with those eyes and he wanted me. I picked up my typewriter and held it over my head and stepped toward him. He gave me a flash of death and I brought the typewriter down and killed him.

Meg jumped onto the couch when it hit. My typewriter was broken and he was on his back, a claw still ready, but the nerves died in seconds. His face showed pain, remorse to his master for not carrying out his work. I scooped him up and carried him out the door. He was heavy. I walked down the hall and saw myself in the big mirror. There I was, naked, holding this rat. My profile was sick. There were my ribs, and I had a six month beard and long scraggly hair. I saw the picture again and my mind rushed back into my skull. It hit me and I took one more look at the mirror and stumbled back against the wall and slid to the carpet, holding the rat and sobbing. I threw my head back against the wall and screamed. I sobbed and heaved and coughed up yellow and blood on the rat. I cried for him and for my life. I screamed for my mother in Heaven and for my soul, for a way to get back into my body and live again. I screamed at the ceiling and called my fate a worthless whore.

Outside I held the rat by his tail and swung him in circles until I let him go. He disappeared in the darkness, and I heard him thump far out in the grass. Back inside I turned the valve and scrubbed myself with hot water until my skin was red and raw and it pulsed. I spent the next hour bending and screwing my machine back to use.