| 1 July |
Challenge Draft Try #1 |
I was challenged by a friend I haven’t seen in awhile to write a 500 – 1000 word piece of semi-fiction in 24 hours that had to have these three qualifications:
1. It had to be semi-autobiographical but still fictional.
2. No more than 1000 words.
3. No edits other than spelling and grammar.
I gave it a shot:
He woke on a Friday as he always did, naked and angry.
The blackout shades of the room fooled him into a state of false time. The alarm was a petulant child demanding immediate attention and he was, at that moment, seriously considering infanticide. Surely the alarm was wrong.
Of course it wasn’t.
Another day crashed down on him; another day of wasted time for little pay; another day of cheap, bitter coffee and fast food. Another day where the only pleasure he would get was in sneaking away from work to contemplate life near the creek that ran near his Soviet Bloc-inspired wage prison.
He shuffled off what remained of the covers and moved toward the edge of the bed. His feet hit the cold March floor inspiring every ounce of fluid in his body to rush to his bladder causing an immediate cramp requiring even more immediate relief. His back hurt him, the price of actually living a life in his earlier years. Pain shot down into his legs and he winced. Pain was the one constant and consistent thing he knew and he was surprisingly at peace with that.
He opened the bedroom door and looked down the hall towards the bathroom. The bathroom might as well have been in a pocket universe as it was the one room in his home that offered a constant quiet. There is nothing more peaceful than the toilet. It is the one place where you can truly be yourself. Everyone is truthful in the loo. You simply cannot lie and take a shit at the same time. The only downside to such truth is the mirror that hangs on the wall just waiting for you to show yourself to it. Mirrors have the power to distort all they see. He flushed and faced his reflection.
He is in his thirties. There is the body of what was once an athlete but now a little softer after injury, abuse and ennui. Two or three workouts a week could restore it but that requires a persistence that he just doesn’t have. His hair is shoulder length, raven black and worn in a ponytail that accentuates a bit of a widow’s peak. His hair is thinning; the only one in his family who has. Two tattoos adorn an otherwise plain frame. His eyes, even when so bored and angry at the world still look young. He still laughs easily. Humor is his favorite drug and the gateway to genius. Today, however, he was not into humor and it was hard to look himself in the eye.
The day-to-day activities of life are so automatic. Brush hair. Apply deodorant. Wash face. The only one he looks forward to is brushing his teeth.
He remembers as a child how magical brushing his teeth was. The sound it made was so strange and the results were instant gratification that didn’t just please him but his parents as well. He doesn’t use a manual toothbrush anymore. It was replaced by a very grown-up model that reminded him of a handheld screwdriver with a bristled attachment. You could probably use it as a sander. It didn’t clean teeth as much as it punished them. Rinse, spit, repeat.
He took a cat-like stretch and went back out into the drafty hallway without bothering to turn on the overhead light. He didn’t need it. Habit drives his life and he knew that today’s clothes were waiting for him, shirt on the closet hook and pants and socks over the railing. He never wore underwear. It was a silent rebellion against his very serious and conservative job. He figured the day would come when he had enough and would walk into a staff meeting, drop his pants and put his balls on the conference table while announcing to the powers that be that they can keep their fucking job. The image of it brought a brief smile to his face as he dressed.
Clothes feel so foreign to him. He was born naked and it is only social convention that keeps him in garb. He especially dislikes button down shirts with ties. It is as if you are being slowly strangled and often makes him feel light headed and tired. If forced to wear clothes he almost always prefers jeans, skateboarding shoes and some offensive t-shirt with such slogans as “I dig chicks with big tits” or “What kind of meat does the Pope eat? Nun!” His head is covered by the ever-present cap. He wears the cap mostly because he likes to but it also helps to hide his bald spot. It is a sore point for him to say the least.
Friday, he thought, would be a very inconvenient day to die.
