A Day in A Life

A Short Story

You wake up fifteen minutes before your alarm. October snakes tendrils of chill through the room. It’s still dark behind the rolled-down blinds. There is some commotion outside, but none more than normal. You dismiss your not-yet-satisfied smartphone alarm and steel yourself to get ready for work. Dry mouth and insistent headache, once again, not unusual. It’s just your day job. You’re really a writer. But writing doesn’t pay the bills, not yet. You have a manuscript just about ready; one chapter, maybe two, to go. It’s a fantasy book, the first in a series, it helps you escape the real world for a time.

You keep having this awful dream. You’re disheveled, in the dream. Drunk and haggard, a couple subpar life decisions to the side of normal life, perhaps. You lie down on a public bench one day, feeling rotten. You think it’s strange how rare a public bench feels, the ability to rest your body intoxicates. You feel sunlight warming up your tangled facial hair like the outermost layer of a hay bale. A velvet breeze dances down your sunburnt cheek. One of those rogue raindrops wets your face out of nowhere.

And then suddenly you feel yourself die. Right there, on the public bench. You feel your soul slip under. You’re waterlogged and frozen and heavy and these beautiful people keep walking by you but they never see you. They never even look at you. The whole universe is trapped inside your fresh-dead body and you are trapped inside the empty Universe.

Several days pass. It is somehow too hot and too cold, you have been baking in it. Little creatures, maggots and roaches and worms, begin to wriggle underneath your skin. A cloud of flies has found you, one of them pushes a bead of water around the surface of your still-open eye. You are self conscious of whatever deathrot fumes you might produce, but you can’t do anything, you’re dead. You’re trapped. You can’t move your body or hide your concave rotting face in shame. People keep on walking past. They react in theatrical horror to your stench but they still don’t see you. It’s like you don’t even exist.

Finally someone approaches you out of sheer pity, clearly disgusted. They reach for you while their body tries to pull away. It’s you. Plugging your own nose, muttering angrily into your phone. It’s still here, fucking get rid of it. The dream never goes longer than that.

You step into the bathroom. Morning shits, even the surprise ones that happen at night, are gentle affairs these days, ever since you really sorted out your fiber routine and diet. Those gummy supplements were the missing piece. You wonder if you are a bold enough artist to discuss something as commonplace and strangely taboo as shitting. Obviously not a topic for polite conversation. Is that odd, given how much of one’s life one spends shitting? Your sister swears to God that buying a bidet changed her life. It’s like being rich, she says, even though she’s certainly far from poor. She and her partner say they’re gonna get you one for Christmas. You like spending time with them.

You sit for a moment on a bench near the street corner, only shortly after sunrise. The situation, mosquito-wise, is untenable. The fuckers swarm you like they’re asking for spare change. Right in your face. You try to focus on your app-based Spanish lesson and realize that your Spanish might be in more dire condition than hindsight had suggested. Well, it’s not worth starting if you can’t skip ahead. A kid keeps glancing over from the bus stop at the end of the block. On her way to school, clearly, she sports a glimmering Spider-Man backpack. You think it’s cool that kids these days are so self-assured. Of course, up to a point. She makes a face at you. Kids do that. Lots of adults seem to forget how to hide it, especially when they get really old, but kids usually don’t even try to mask what they think. You can’t quite read the expression. A look can be so violent. A mosquito sneaks right up next to your left ear like a deflating balloon. You brush your jacket off and start to walk to work.

You sit down with assertion at the end of your workday, much too exhausted to write anything more than “no onions please” on your delivery order. Your body feels engorged. Mummified. Like it’s still figuring itself out. Your calves pulse echoes of your heart, which, in turn, reach down to your aching arches. You think about how shredded you’re gonna look when you get back home. The thought gives you a bloodrush. You shed your uniform and toss it in the dirty laundry bin.

Your sister sends a photo of her three year old son. His personality is already so big. She and her partner are good together. Nothing like the people say online. Your buddy Luke talks about it a lot. Everybody knows there’s a point about three-and-a-half hard seltzers deep when old Luke gets himself worked up about the transgenders. It’s best to just ignore him. All this talk about transgender extremism is a bit out there, you think. You reply to the photo with a “Love” reaction.

The first proper fall-time sunset, the first one not rained out. It’s gold. It’s wealth. It’s destiny. You wrap an extra layer on yourself and watch it from the west-ish-facing window of your temporary housing. You watch the wind bend not just leaves, but branches. Possibly some debris to clear tomorrow. Everything is quiet. Your food arrives.

Hours later you crane your neck and press your cheekbone to the skin-chill window in an effort to spot a satellite. It’s unfathomable, you think, the distance between it and you. That structure, that structure that was made by human hands, or at least the human mind, now in a celestial dance… it’s just like the stars, you think. It makes you feel small. Worse, you think, it makes you think. Why are you here? Why are any of us? But you, specifically, you think, why are you here? You are thoughtful, you think. But do you really think? How can you write if you don’t also think? You read the news. You know history well enough to see what this is. You’re just following orders.

You feel it rising. It grabs hold of your sternum and begins to pull itself up your gullet. Those fuckers must have ignored your note and given you onions. Maybe they don’t even read fucking English. You clutch the corners of the vanity and stare down your own reflection for a pensive moment as it sputters out. Black. Viscous. Warm. It racks your body only once before it drips from you like reservoir overflow. Two slow breaths to bring you level. You flex your fingers on the marble top, you trace the grainy edge. It’s out of you now. You purse your lips and beatbox puh puh puh; gargle a glass of lukewarm water and spit once more. You place your handgun in a padlock safe in the closet and hobble into bed, praying you’ll get one night without that nonsense dream.

Sleep swells from within; all the while breathing little whispers. Why are you here? What will it take?

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With Sincerity,

J.K.