CapitalSigma
04-09-2011, 06:12 AM
(something a little strange i wrote in an off mood)
A. woke up. It was light inside his room. It was later than he meant it to be, but it probably didn't matter anyway. He checked his phone, still lying in bed. No one had called, even though it was late. That's good, A. thought. I'm glad it didn't make a difference to anybody.
He got up. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, like the copper tastes in a phone jack that you lick when you're a child. It tasted like that every morning when he smoked again after brushing his teeth. A. was never sure if you were supposed to do that or not, so he tried not to, but he usually did it anyway because he wasn't sure and he thought that a cigarette before you sleep relaxes you somehow. It was a good thing to be relaxed when you sleep, because otherwise you could think too much and once you started doing that it was over. He was about to brush his teeth again anyway, so it was too late to matter.
He walked onto the ceramic crosshatched pattern of the bathroom floor. The mirror on the medicine cabinet was large. His eyes looked very different in the reflection of the sterile white phosphorescence that drenched the room. He thought that they were like ice in that lighting, but he knew that ice wasn't really blue so that probably wasn't very accurate at all. Asked, he would say that in that light they looked like a very old china plate, where the blue dye has been worn off a little bit so you could start to see the porcelain clearly in the middle underneath. His mother had a plate like that but it broke. He wasn't sure how, but he knew that it broke because she kept the pieces in a cabinet and she always said that she would glue it back together. Her good china, she said. You can't just throw that out, even if it's broken. She sold that house, so he didn't look in that cabinet anymore.
“What is your purpose?” the reflection asked.
He began to brush his teeth, the bristles muttering softly against the stained enamel surface of his jaw.
“What good do you bring humanity? Has a single human being ever profited by your existence? What value do you bring to those around you, whether abstract or concrete?”
The toothpaste was minty but his mouth still tasted like last night's mistakes.
“There's a bottle of tylenol half-full in here, you know. Why not just down it now and be done with it? Ten years from now it won't matter to anybody whether you did or not.”
“Acetaminophen overdose is a painful way to die,” he responded. “It would take a very long time for the liver failure to kill me, and if someone noticed beforehand then it would be a suicide attempt and then I would have to go to the hospital. The hospital is very boring and they would keep me there for a long time.”
“What's so stimulating about your existence now? What experiences have you had in the past twenty four hours that make you glad to have lived them? What sensations have you experienced in your lifetime that make you sure of your will to live?”
When he rinsed his mouth the taste was stronger. The gentle swish-swish-swish of liquid between the gaps in his teeth reminded him of people speaking when they didn't want to be heard.
“That's what I thought, faggot. Get some sleeping pills and suck those down, then, if you're so afraid of a little pain, you ****ing statistic.”
“Over-the-counter sleeping pills cause paranoia and hallucinations in high doses long before they become fatal,” he replied. He had eaten twenty of them when he was in high school so he could get high. He didn't enjoy it very much but he tried again a few times. “If I ate a box of those, it's more likely I would induce a seizure and cause some brain damage, but wake up again tomorrow morning. The way they make your throat swell up is very uncomfortable.”
“Then shoot up a gram of coke, ****, what do you care? It wouldn't matter how you did it if you could ****ing do it right. Nothing would matter at all.”
“That's true.”
He left the mirror and got into the shower. The water was hot and it hurt a little bit, but he didn't mind. The scent of soap was unmemorable.
A. woke up. It was light inside his room. It was later than he meant it to be, but it probably didn't matter anyway. He checked his phone, still lying in bed. No one had called, even though it was late. That's good, A. thought. I'm glad it didn't make a difference to anybody.
He got up. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, like the copper tastes in a phone jack that you lick when you're a child. It tasted like that every morning when he smoked again after brushing his teeth. A. was never sure if you were supposed to do that or not, so he tried not to, but he usually did it anyway because he wasn't sure and he thought that a cigarette before you sleep relaxes you somehow. It was a good thing to be relaxed when you sleep, because otherwise you could think too much and once you started doing that it was over. He was about to brush his teeth again anyway, so it was too late to matter.
He walked onto the ceramic crosshatched pattern of the bathroom floor. The mirror on the medicine cabinet was large. His eyes looked very different in the reflection of the sterile white phosphorescence that drenched the room. He thought that they were like ice in that lighting, but he knew that ice wasn't really blue so that probably wasn't very accurate at all. Asked, he would say that in that light they looked like a very old china plate, where the blue dye has been worn off a little bit so you could start to see the porcelain clearly in the middle underneath. His mother had a plate like that but it broke. He wasn't sure how, but he knew that it broke because she kept the pieces in a cabinet and she always said that she would glue it back together. Her good china, she said. You can't just throw that out, even if it's broken. She sold that house, so he didn't look in that cabinet anymore.
“What is your purpose?” the reflection asked.
He began to brush his teeth, the bristles muttering softly against the stained enamel surface of his jaw.
“What good do you bring humanity? Has a single human being ever profited by your existence? What value do you bring to those around you, whether abstract or concrete?”
The toothpaste was minty but his mouth still tasted like last night's mistakes.
“There's a bottle of tylenol half-full in here, you know. Why not just down it now and be done with it? Ten years from now it won't matter to anybody whether you did or not.”
“Acetaminophen overdose is a painful way to die,” he responded. “It would take a very long time for the liver failure to kill me, and if someone noticed beforehand then it would be a suicide attempt and then I would have to go to the hospital. The hospital is very boring and they would keep me there for a long time.”
“What's so stimulating about your existence now? What experiences have you had in the past twenty four hours that make you glad to have lived them? What sensations have you experienced in your lifetime that make you sure of your will to live?”
When he rinsed his mouth the taste was stronger. The gentle swish-swish-swish of liquid between the gaps in his teeth reminded him of people speaking when they didn't want to be heard.
“That's what I thought, faggot. Get some sleeping pills and suck those down, then, if you're so afraid of a little pain, you ****ing statistic.”
“Over-the-counter sleeping pills cause paranoia and hallucinations in high doses long before they become fatal,” he replied. He had eaten twenty of them when he was in high school so he could get high. He didn't enjoy it very much but he tried again a few times. “If I ate a box of those, it's more likely I would induce a seizure and cause some brain damage, but wake up again tomorrow morning. The way they make your throat swell up is very uncomfortable.”
“Then shoot up a gram of coke, ****, what do you care? It wouldn't matter how you did it if you could ****ing do it right. Nothing would matter at all.”
“That's true.”
He left the mirror and got into the shower. The water was hot and it hurt a little bit, but he didn't mind. The scent of soap was unmemorable.