Confessions of Exhaustion (368 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.85 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by r0fl (View user info) at 2007-04-26 01:15:51 EDT
My last final is in exactly 9 hours.
The cliché blue lights of a cruiser rotate around one of my windows facing the street, it's siren waking me up again. Across the room, one of my roommates whom ironically never even signed the lease - scurries about through the walls in and endless search for sustenance, dodging Skippy flavored mousetraps and tablets of warfarin. No doubt his whiskers point through his rodent nose, detecting hints of threats I've so eloquently laid out before his numerous paths.
Smart fucker, I tell ya.
My mouth tastes like sand its so dry, and I cross the threshold of my bedroom into the kitchen to get a drink from the faucet, speckled with toothpaste and facial hair clippings. I rub my hands over the stubble on my face, wishing I could shave. Those black clippings are the last remnants of one of my roommate's escapades in this bathroom, a testament I guess to the life we shared in this shitty place. I haven't shaved in a week, since the hot water was shut off.
My beard's dark brown at the moment, with a few specs of red (probably because I'm half Irish and Scottish. I'll never shave here again. Ever, this is fact.
Deciding that the almighty Colgate-flavored faucet is too vile to substitute for a drinking fountain, the hallway floorboards now creak under my dirty, bare feet. It's been 3 days since I've showered and I don't plan on it. There's no point I suppose.
After my palate has been satisfied with glorious Boston tap water, I've noticed that my room will be off limits for sleeping tonight - due to a domestic disturbance gone bad and a plethora of police and bustle below. Seems like the entire neighborhood is up and about - reminds me of a Dane Cook skit. Something about shoes.
Living room it is then, mostly abandoned this late in our lease. What was once our social epicenter for our place has been reduced to the skeletal remains of a Wal-Mart purchased futon, a crucifix shaped ashtray and the ever-present lampshade-less lamp. The television has since been permanently muted (our compartmentalized bills haven't been paid since November, I've just been informed, if you haven't noticed by the hot water comment) and I've run out of cigarettes. There seems to be a circus on the street. Not a whole lot to do besides think to how this all went wrong.
A light breeze blows from the half-open window, blowing ashes from cigarette butts from the sill to the floor, a desert of hard-wood and tobacco. They form light circles contrasting their background, twisting in the nether of my 3rd floor apartment, no doubt to materialize in dust clumps at the corner of the room before we move out tomorrow and hand this dump over to a new quintet of under-achievers.
I notice the lights in my room have died down, but the snoring has risen again. He sleeps near the foot of my bed, as his belongings were graciously moved out with the help of his brother, father and myself. He slumbers along the floor, reminiscent of a 6th grade sleepover. Every time I wake to the morning I half-expect him to want chocolate-chip pancakes and orange juice - two luxuries I haven't experienced in almost ten years.
He rotates his head from resting the left side of his face to the right, facing away unconsciously. I can hear the stubble of his cheeks graze against his linen pillowcase, thinly muffled by his snores. His gold cross, wrapped now around his Fruit-Of-The-Loom tank-top sleeve, glistens in the faint, almost nonexistent moonlight that has crept in.
His snores growl once more as his right hand creeps underneath his pillow and rests again.
I can't take it anymore.
I perform a reverse pushup motion - forcing the blanket covering me (for comfort purposes only - it's almost 60 degrees in here) into a twirl of fabric into its apex in the middle of my room and resting at the foot of my futon.
I stand over him, a faint shadow extending toward the corner of our room, which we ironically nicknamed the "trash-corner," a place where our over-sized bottles of beer and lean-cuisine garbage overflowed past our indifference toward cleanliness.
My pillow, covered in a Target-Brand pillowcase (I can't remember the name, I know some of their food products bear the name 'Archer Farms' or some shit) is clenched in my fists. I step towards the snoring, the monotony, towards the repetitiveness that's plagued me for so long. My leg steps slowly over his Surge Protector, accidentally clicking the On/Off switch twice - resetting any alarms he may have been counting on.
Not like it would matter.
His shirt (we used to refer to them as "wife-beaters," but I'm not sure why) was painted a light pink from the glow of his alarm clock now shouting 12:00 every two seconds. He dreamed of fucking that freshman he's been talking to, I suppose, from his whimpers and gibberish that often spouts from his dreaming mouth.
The Magnavox alarm clock (I didn't even have to go and check, I just knew) blinked nonchalantly, showcasing the contrast to his tattoos on his triceps and his light skin.
My pillow encloses his face now, my muscles contracting like they never have before. My veins pulse, a newfound fire coursing through the vessels. For a moment, his body lays still, attempting to breathe cloth and feather - until it ultimately realizes this will not satisfy the biological process of respiration. He begins to struggle a bit, flashing his legs and arms about as if he was drowning, and now that I think about it in retrospect - he was.
Eventually, he lay there, not snoring. It's begun.
I looked toward the window directed out toward the street. Light shone through now, but not of fluorescent blue halogens, but of sunlight (which takes 8 minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth, just so you know. I love Jeopardy!). The light to the east shown a deep purple, and three roommates laid resting, sleeping, some drunk and high or a combination thereof.
A room next to me, the smallest of the bunch was as quiet as cricket-less nights in the country, his breathing obsolete (good for me, I suppose). His oxycodone-induced high would make this easy I thought as his door swung forward, an Absinthe poster fluttering in the changes in air pressure within his room, missing a pushpin in the bottom right corner.
He swallowed my pillow as well, barely a struggle, as his Windows Media Player highlighted the entire incident in luminous, rotating artwork to the latest Jedi Mind Tricks album.
I grabbed one of his steel-toed, wheat colored boots and threw it down the hallway, it ricocheting back and forth like a laser beam in a hall of mirrors. I landed with a thud, never to be worn again.
Down the hallway, the bedroom was empty of our fourth roommate, who hasn't been seen here in days. I quickly about-face and dead bolt the door.
Don't want anyone interrupting the fun, I suppose.
Toward the final room where the slumber resides, the floorboards groan and contest. I twist the oval-shaped knob, to no avail.
He bought a little bolt for his door, for privacy, I heard, from the Home Depot over the winter. I've never had a reason to head into Michael's room, but tonight, the last night we all dance this crazy dance at a party we call life, I need to see him, ya know? His door does not budge, held by a bolt of steel or iron or some other metal against its maple or oak or ash frame.
My heel connected three quarters of the way up the door - the place I assumed the bolt laid - approximately the height of one's shoulder. Don't ask me why I chose that height; seemed like a logical place for the first lock on a door. We have six on our doors themselves (front and back), so maybe it was an unconscious thing.
He rose in a stupor, his Chicago Blackhawks jersey (a staple he slept in often, don't ask me) curled up above his large stomach.
"Brandon's not breathing," I state, feigning concern, telling him my roommate has stopped snoring, omitting of course because he has since passed.
"Fuck," he yells, and runs toward my room, his EMT training kicking in, as I stooped down and picked up a steel-toed workboot tossed aside like a Christmas tree in February.
Tossed aside by myself - I know. Whatever.
Clutching it like a claw, my wrist flexed in its natural curvature, I struck him as he raced down the hallway toward the now-magenta light exuding from my room. He dropped almost instantaneously, sprawled about the hallway. I noticed an egg-shaped protrusion began to appear, and I grabbed his left arm, twisting his back (adorned with #9, Hull) toward the floor.
In the limited light his eyes stared blankly.
My fist clenched, focused on the heel of the boot, and I ran it through his face until his cries stopped. His "home-ice" jersey of bleached seemed more crimson and visitor worthy as he splayed across our hallway.
Done.
The ladder to our roof still stood there, soaked with rain from the recent storms still up from the winter when our landlord John had to shovel the roof due to several leaks.
I climb, right foot and left hand with left food and right hand, to the summit, to a boring, plateau of concrete, the epitome of industrialization.
The sun, still rising from the east, behind the Prudential building and all others, beckoned new beginnings and warmth.
The sky has been distorted into deep red and Sunny Delight mix. The sun feels warm on my face; my pupils contract in response. I raise my left wrist to check the time, but no watch is present.
Shit, I haven't seen that watch in months.
The sun represents something I suppose, a new beginning, a new life, after school and graduation. I scale the ladder again, downwards, towards the core of the planet.
I sidestep Michael, who still blocks the hallway, now splattered with sprays of blood from his face being pummeled with someone's right-boot.
My room is lit now, from the rising sun, the clock and my telephone alarm saying I have two hours until my final.
It's quiet. Time for a nap I suppose.
My lease is done today. I move out today. I get to go home.
User Reviews
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2007-04-26 19:26:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-04-26 14:06:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-04-26 10:06:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-04-26 02:21:32 EDT (#)
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Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-04-26 01:54:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by r0fl (user info) at 2007-04-26 01:38:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by HawthorneHeights
R.I.P.
Submitted by HawthorneHeights (user info) at 2007-04-26 01:32:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Read story while listening to:
H.
Schism
~Tool
Well I'm glad I died first. And Beatbox deserved what he got, or Michael as we refer to him in the story.
Don't be late ... that final is in a couple hours.
Submitted by r0fl (user info) at 2007-04-26 01:31:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by GnarlsBarkley (user info) at 2007-04-26 01:23:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Didn't read it, but it's been up for a while and hasn't been rated. What the hell, +1 eh.
---
You should probably check it out.
http://www.ubersite.com/m/100615
That's a preface, I suppose.
Submitted by GnarlsBarkley (user info) at 2007-04-26 01:23:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Didn't read it, but it's been up for a while and hasn't been rated. What the hell, +1 eh.