His feet hang over the end of the bed and his neck cranes so as to not bump his head against the cold brick wall. The paper thin mattress offers no protection over the hard bed frame beneath him. A singular yellow light hangs above him. He stares at the light. It gives off a sickly color. The color fills his room, his cold room, his 6 foot by 8 foot room. He has walked its perimeter many times before. He has studied every inch of this room, every crack in the walls, every chip in the white paint splashed over the cinder blocks.
He rolls onto his side, bumps his head and feels the unforgiving surface beneath him. His hip bone digs into the pad he lays on giving him little comfort from the surface beneath it. He focuses on the pain in his hip. Breathe in for five seconds and hold it. Exhale for three seconds. Repeat. Focus on the pain. Repeat. His head starts to buzz and tingle in a not unpleasant way.
He pushes himself up and sits on the edge of the bed, his bare feet planted on the cold concrete floor. He feels the cold creep up his feet and into his legs. Goosebumps break out over his body and he shivers. He stands and walks to the door and puts his back against it. He takes eight steps forward and places his nose against the opposite wall. He pushes his face flat against it. The cold rushes into his cheek and down his neck. The chill from the floor and from the wall meet in the middle and make his core freeze. He turns around and faces the door, back pressed firmly against the wall.
To his left is his bed, one end flush with the wall he currently is pressed against. At the opposite end of his bed is a toilet mounted to the wall, next to the toilet is a sink and a mirror made out of some kind of metal and not glass. To the right of the sink is the door. On the wall to his right is a very small shelf with a pair of pants, two shirts, underwear and socks. Next to his change of clothes is a pile of books, The Bible, The Stranger, Misery, and A Tale of Two Cities. Each book looks worn, the spine creased and cracked. The pages are yellowing and some are torn and dogeared from years of use. All but one. The Bible has a thin coat of dust on it, the leather bound cover looks brand new and not one crease or crack or irregularity can be seen. If moved, a perfect book outline would be formed in the dust on the shelf.
Next to his books sits two pictures not in frames. One is of him standing with his arm around a young woman with brown hair and a big smile. The next is of a young girl, five or six in age, riding a bike towards the camera person. The girl has short dirty blonde hair tied into a ponytail, a blue shirt with horses stitched onto it and black shorts. She is smiling.
He looks around the room for the countless time. The yellow light pours over everything. It seeps into his clothes, his books, his pictures, his bed, his sheets, his skin. The yellow casts a monochrome view over everything, everything is singular and indistinct from what sits next to it. It takes the depth away from his world.
He sits on the edge of a hospital bed, his feet dangling off the end a few feet from the cold tiled floor below. A machine beeps. Tubes pump air and liquids into the body lying next to him. Doctors and nurses come in and out of the room. They never address him, only the older woman standing on the other side of the bed. He is invisible to them. The woman talks to the other adults all wearing white. He can see the bags under their eyes, the smell of coffee and cigarettes and sweat and chemicals. The smell gives him a headache.
He looks back at his old man, eyes closed, his chest slowly rising and falling. The doctors and nurses leave, he is alone with his old man and an old woman who once tucked him in at night. An old woman who once rubbed his legs late into the night when he would awake screaming from the growing pains. She stands opposite him, holding the hand of the man attached to the machines. The beeping continues, the smell of sweat and cigarettes and coffee and chemicals feel like a physical thing weighing him down, staining his skin and hair. The woman cries and reaches her other hand to him, he takes it. She holds the man and his hand, she puts her head down onto his chest. Her head rises and falls with breathing. The machines beep, the smells worsen, his head hurts.
She stands up, letting go of his and the man’s hands, straightens out her clothes and looks out the window, nodding to the nurse. He had not been aware the nurses were watching them, he doesn’t like that. He feels like an animal in a zoo. They come into the room and quickly walk toward the machines. The woman comes around and picks him up, holding him close to her body. She is hot and it makes him uncomfortable. She is facing the man on the bed so he is facing the window that looks out into the hospital. Outside the window he sees a doctor with a clipboard and next to him all standing close are about ten people. They all are younger than the doctor, he can tell this is the doctor by the white coat he wears while the others are in normal clothes, nice but normal. They all carry notebooks and are writing vigorously into it while the doctor speaks. He can see the man’s mouth move but doesn’t know what he is saying.
He feels the woman holding him start to shake and cry, the sound of the machines stop and the beeping stops.
The group of people outside the window all stare at him, the doctor speaks and they write in their notebooks. The people inside the room leave and leave him in the arms of the crying woman. The room is quiet besides her cries. The machines whirring have stopped and the beeping has stopped. He stares at the strangers outside the room all looking in, taking notes, observing him, the man, the woman.
She holds his head with her free hand while the other cradles him, keeping him tucked close to her, he can feel her tears falling onto the top of his head. The woman turns to leave the room but before she does he sees one of the people taking notes outside the room brush away tears. A young man with a blue collared shirt holding a notebook and an extra pen in his breast pocket raises his free hand not holding the notebook and wipes at his eyes. He can see the young man is crying.
The woman is walking towards the door now and the boy is now facing the man lying in the bed. The tubes are still hooked to him but his chest is no longer rising and falling. He lies in the bed motionless, yellow skin wrapped in white sheets, tubes protruding from his body in every direction.
The cold wall brings him back, the cold floor numbing his bare feet. He walks seven steps forward and two to the left and stands in front of the sink. He turns the water on and splashes it onto his face. It drips down his arms and into the sink. He looks into the mirror, the imperfect metal distorts his reflection.
A loud metal clang from the right grabs his attention. A cafeteria style tray slides in. Another metal clang. The tray sits there, chest high, on a small metal ledge that leads to a corridor that leads to another door to another corridor to the front door and to the outside. He grabs the tray and sits back down on his bed, his weight sinking the mattress down to the hard surface beneath it.
Mystery meat, mashed potatoes, some unidentifiable green leaf, stale bread and a cup of apple juice. He picks up the bread, bites and chews and puts it back down, picks up the meat, bites and chews and places it back down. He continues until the tray is empty. He stares at the empty tray for a bit before he places it back on the ledge. In ten minutes the tray will be gone and then exactly 12 hours later another tray will replace it. Six hours after he finishes that tray, another will replace it and then another six hours later the third tray of the day will replace the last. 6:00 and 12:00 and 18:00. The endless cycle of incoming and outgoing food. He looks at the toilet mounted to the concrete wall, the endless cycle of food. In and out, in and out, he feels sick.
He looks at his shelf, at his two photos. He looks at the picture of him standing with the young woman, arm around her, big smile on both their faces. Ten years ago, maybe longer now. He closes his eyes and smells the ocean, feels the cold breeze on his face, tastes the salty water as it splashes on them.
He sits on a towel in the sand, the woman is wading in the water and a young girl, three or four in age sits next to him, digging in the ground. Looking for sandworms, she tells him. He stretches his legs out and shoves his bare feet into the sand, it’s cold and damp but the sand feels coarse and pleasant on his feet. He looks out over the water and sees the woman floating on her back, brown hair swirling around her as the waves slowly crash and wash over. He sees her legs slowly kicking up and down, propelling her through the current.
The little girl mumbles to herself as she digs and throws sand this way and that, searching for worms. She hums and sings and talks to herself and the sun bends its way through the sky, casting shadows on the beach that stretch further and further as the little girl digs deeper and deeper. He reaches into the picnic bag and pulls out a small metal flask. He looks out and sees the woman still in the water, he pulls the flask out and takes a few gulps from it. He grimaces and puts the flask back under the bag of chips and half eaten sandwiches. Warmth slides down his throat, into his stomach. His head feels fuzzy and pleasant, his body relaxes. He lays on his back and looks up at the sky. The clouds drift by, amorphous in shape, slowly turning into childhood toys, a dragon floats by which turns into a giraffe and then back into meaningless puffs of white. Once holding purpose and imagination now nothing more than plastic and rubber collecting dust.
He sits up and reaches for his flask again, without looking around he tilts it back and drains the fiery liquid into his mouth. It burns and numbs his throat on the way down, thoughts of childhood burned, numbed and fuzzy. He looks at his daughter and she stares back at him, sand shovel in one hand, wiggling worms in the other. He gives her a silly grin, putting his two pointer fingers into his mouth and pulling his face into a comical smile. He looks at the flask, the back at him, eventually breaking out into a childish laugh. The worms squirm in her grasp trying to escape to burrow themselves back into the sand, into the wet darkness once more. She tosses the worms back into the hole from which they were dug, holds the plastic shovels above her head and clangs them together.
A familiar metal clang brings him back to the present. The smell of cheap pasta sauce, stale bread and canned veggies fill his room. He walks over and retrieves the tray, sits down and picks at his food. He forks pasta covered in marina that might be ketchup into his mouth, bread that takes twice as long to chew than it should and canned corn to follow. He puts the pasta into his mouth, Rigatoni he thinks it is, tubes. He sucks off the sauce and spits the tube out into his hand, turns it over and over. He looks through the hole, holds it between his thumb and forefinger. How long had it been since he had a real pasta dish? Not this ketchup covered crap? Years he thinks. He holds the tube shaped noodle in his hand, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger, thinking. He pops it into his mouth and chews it, swallows and continues with his meal. A singular noodle sits on his plate, a perfect tube. He closes his eyes, memories come flooding back, memories he tries so hard to forget.
He bends down over the coffee table and puts the rolled up twenty dollar bill in his left nostril. He plugs his right nostril and snorts the crushed up painkillers on top of a ceramic kitchen plate. He does one two three lines before putting the rolled up twenty back onto the table. He grabs an open beer sitting next to the money and drugs, leans back and sighs as the couch creaks. He tilts the brown bottle back into his mouth to wash away the chalky chemical taste that is now dripping into his throat.
He pinches his nose and sniffs, picks up a tissue and wipes the snot. Warm fingers caress him, warm arms hold him. He blinks slow, breathes slow, sniffs and wipes snot. He finishes the beer. He stands on legs that feel too big for his body, heavy and wobbly in a nice way. He walks to the kitchen, opens the fridge and takes out cheese and butter, closes the door and reaches for the bread. He puts cheese on white bread, spreads butter, blinks hard and opens his eyes wide, sniffs, grimaces at the chalky chemical taste in his throat. He goes to the sink to drink water. The clock on the microwave says 7:46PM. His wife would be home soon from work, he tells himself to clean the coffee table before she gets home, or before their daughter comes back inside. Where did she go exactly?
He takes another drink and stands straight, wobbles, giggles, sniffs. The warm fingers move through his head, over his neck and down his chest, the arms wrap around his stomach. He looks into the backyard, it’s dark out, the sun has set. He looks at the small pool they have in the backyard, the pool light casting a green glow into the backyard, the ripples of the water distorting the light. The light waves cast a green glow across the trees in the back, the moving light and colors make his head swim.
He sees a shape in the water. A small shape moving up and down in the water. The water moves it back and forth, up and down like a child moves a rubber ducky in a bathtub. He sees arms and legs bobbing on top of the sickly green surface. Long dirty blonde hair spindles out and waves in the ripples of the water. What game is she playing? What is her imagination doing? Is she a mermaid or a fish? A seaman on a submarine? The mind of a child is too elusive to an adult, they’re too far removed from the fantastical world of youth. When you’re young you look at the adults around you and tell yourself you’ll never end up like them. Always worrying about the bills; turn the lights off, get out of the shower, close the refrigerator, worry worry worry. But one day you wake up and you understand why the adults around you acted the way they did. You take on the responsibility they once carried.
He watches his daughter swim in the pool. She lays face down in the water, her body slightly bobbing with the water, the wind causing small ripples that rock her like a seesaw. The warm fingers leave him and are replaced by sharp cold daggers, they dig into his stomach and his chest. He drops his beer and it shatters on the kitchen floor. He rushes forward towards the back door, he bumps into the fridge and knocks down a finger painting from his daughter she made last year. It shows mommy and daddy standing on a bright green lawn with a rainbow arcing through the sky behind them. He slams into the door and stumbles into the backyard. He slips on a pool noodle and goes sprawling onto the concrete, landing hard and scraping his knees and palms. He scrambles forwards on his hands and knees and plunges himself into the pool. The water is punishingly cold and his limbs are starting to go numb by the time he reaches his daughter and turns her over. Her face is paper white, her eyes wide open, her bright blue eyes now the same color as her lips.
He drags her limp body out of the water, and lays her on the cold cement and tries to push air back into her lungs, tries to pump blood from her heart to her brain. He pounds on her chest, pinches her nose and pushes hot hair into her lunges. Minutes pass, his whole body is shaking and he keeps pushing down, tears stream from his eyes and streak down his cold and wet cheek. Her blue eyes look past him into the dark sky above.
He slumps back, his shaky hands still laying on her chest. To his right he sees a bright yellow, small rubber toy in the shape of a shark. Next to the toy right on the edge of the pool is a streak of blood. He sits next to her, small and cold and wet. He reaches down and holds her hand, it disappears into his. It is cold and stiff, her fingers want to stay shut. He reaches forward and with shaky and frozen fingers, pushes her hair behind her ears and sees a wound behind her left ear. He looks back to the blood streak on the edge of the pool and then to the yellow pool toy. He uses his hand to close her clouded eyes.
He slowly stands up and walks back inside, he walks to the cordless phone. His eyes glaze over, his whole body is shaking and his brain has gone numb. He holds the phone in his hand while his body takes him to the couch. He sits down, phone held firmly in one shaky hand. He stares at the folded twenty and the powder. He wipes tears from his eyes and rolls up the money and puts it in his right nostril and sniffs the rest of the powder on the plate. The tears stop, the warm fingers and arms return to hold him if only for a moment.
Headlights shine through the front window and cast ugly and harsh shadows across the living room. The car lights shut off and he hears the opening and closing of a car door. He faintly hears footsteps approaching the front door, a key shoved into the lock and a deadbolt sliding free. The door opens.
He takes the empty metal tray and brings it back to the slot in the door. The slot opens, the tray disappears and then it bangs close again. He stands in the unnatural light, the cold room. He walks back to his cot and lies down. He stares up at the ceiling. Looking at the discoloration that has formed over the years, he tries to find shapes in the ceiling. They remind him of clouds, starting from nothing, forming shapes, forming worlds and stories and possibilities, then returning to nothing.