The day started with an old and peaceful feeling somewhere in the deepest corners of my heart running away from me and hiding somewhere outside of my minds eye. I looked out my window and saw the side of the Castle Apartments Building leering at me, and for a moment it was as if a thousand voices whispered to me from across the wall imploring me to step inside their doors and join them. But I can't. I have made my peace with it and I have to stay here like a little marginalized cockroach. I certainly deserve it. I gazed into the little alarm clock that stood beside my cot. Its quiet green hum piercing the roof of my mind. And with that I stood up from my bed and wiped the spittle from the corners of my mouth as calmly as I could manage. My hands still shook a little. And if I hadn't grabbed onto the edge of my cot I'm pretty sure I would have fallen over, but I didn't. I steadied myself as the little black dots seemed to crawl across my vision and a quiet fury hammered away at my head
I walked downstairs to the first floor of the dilapidated building I now called home, the air rife with heat and stench of the slowly closing summer, and greeted my nightly guests. They quietly grumbled a familiar greeting except for this one old man who lay still entirely to still. I walked up to him and gave him a gentle prod as fear quietly crept into me. He didn't move for a moment, and I gazed at him soberly. One of the others walked over to him and gently pushed me to the side. I was too shocked to act as another man gingerly pulled off his shoes and began examining them and trying them on as if he were buying them at a store. At this point the man (who had been sleeping, perchance dreaming) woke up. The man holding his shoes looked at him for a moment transfixed by the quiet fire he carried in his eyes. Then he dropped his shoes in as neutral a manner as he could and walked away. Within a few moments they had all gone to different corners to beg. I watched their shoulders sloping away with quiet resignation.
After they were all gone I paused and let the silence once again wash over me. No one had lived here (and I mean stayed here for at least ten years). I saw their pictures in one of the rooms upstairs. They were all smiling they seemed content with their lot in life. But that must have been a long time ago. There was little sign that anyone lived here a few pots and pans some cups, and an old piano coated in layers of sawdust from when they built Castle Apartments. Back before I was here. Back before it all. I thought of my alarm clock and thought about how it was broken. It only goes one way. Well nothing to do about that nothing at all.
In that quiet room I looked up at the ceiling my eyes glazing over as I looked at the hissing eye of the phosphorescent light. It had grown in an ignoble crescendo as I stood distracted and now it gave illumination where darkness should prevail. I hung there a moment transfixed by its ignorance of time and space not knowing who and what it would outlive. Sometimes it seemed like things never born lived longer. Like steel, and fire. I sat there for most of the day and pondered the only thing worth pondering. And once again my own self-loathing grew, driven by its own engine. Until it was night again and I walked upstairs laid my head down on the pillow and felt a sharp bite. I reached down and held a little creature in my hand. I laughed for my name is Pestilent Mann. I and knew it would continue to follow me, because It always has and always will. God I could use a drink, but I don't deserve it.
