EBULLIRE [PREVIEW]
© Fred Dumpling. Redistribution is prohibited.
Note: I was half-asleep when I wrote this, and it is unedited.
The apartment smells perpetually of cough drops and turpentine. You know the smell well; you've been here before, and it invariably reminds you of the apartment's resident. You'd come here looking for him——you think. You aren't sure what you wanted, what you'd hoped for by coming here. A conclusion, perhaps, or simply an understanding.
It's a small place for anyone to live——barely more than a room. A small refrigerator and a chair qualify for a kitchen, squashed awkwardly next to a single bed, which, along with a nightstand, comprises the bedroom. The room has two interior doors: one for a broom closet and another for the bathroom, which you know to be little bigger.
It's small enough that you are less startled that you aren't alone in the room than you are that you didn't notice him immediately.
Someone is lying in the bed. A man, you realize, although he looks like little more than a corpse. You approach the bed carefully. Then, your heart sinks. You know the man, but you know him as a proud, strong warrior. His eyes, fixed to the ceiling since you walked in, drop to look at you, and for a moment, the barest hint of shame flickers behind glassy eyes before receding completely, leaving his stare blank and far away.
You feel ashamed of yourself, as if you have intruded on something private: a man waiting to die. You want to leave the room. It isn't appropriate for you to be here right now.
He says your name. There's recognition, then, but there's no humanity behind the voice, nor even a suggestion of emotion. You wonder, with a heavy clenching in your chest, what could have happened to transform a great and powerful man into this shadow of his former existence.
You wait for him to say more. He doesn't. He only watches you as you decide that you can't leave now. Private as you may feel death ought to be, no one should die alone. You draw up the chair from beside the refrigerator and sit by the bed, and he continues to watch. You open one drawer of the nightstand, then the other, ferreting through the meager possessions: a glasses case, some condoms, a bag of cough drops (of course), a gun, travel-sized bottles of soap and shampoo, no doubt pilfered from cheap hotels. Ammunition, saline solution. You indulge in a moment of nostalgia before extracting what you had been looking for: a thin journal, bound in dark red imitation leather, worn soft and tearing at the spine from repeated use.
You glance at the man in the bed guiltily, but he makes no judgment, as far as you can tell. He doesn't make much of anything, save for you very uncomfortable. Taking his silent as consent, you begin to read:
January 24 25
Fuck this I can't be bothered to check the date.