the apartment

I started this blog because I didn't want to lose random short stories or whatever that I had written down, and this story is a good example because it had been lost since around January or December and I just randomly found it while looking for something else.

"The Apartment" was written in November, at a time where I spent three days in my apartment completely alone and without ever going outside. It was kind of a theoretical exploration of what would happen to me if I spent three months, or years, or who knows how long, in my apartment without leaving. Three days was just a little taste of isolation, this story uses my own life to create a "what-if" scenario of someone who lives here and has been isolated for much, much longer.

No more explanation, story time.

The Apartment

There is food, but it is both unhealthy and makes me feel sick.

There is a phone with which I could order delivery food, but I have no money. I could call millions of people in hundreds of countries, but there is no one to talk to.

There are windows, but one is too high to look out of, one has no view, and the other is in a room I do not enter.

There are books, but I have read them all. There are cds, but I have heard what is on all of them. There are DVDs, but I've watched everything they can show me.

There are fine dishes and silverware in the kitchen, but they are dirty and must be cleaned before use.

There is water which comes from three different faucets on two different floors and fills the toilet bowl. My hands, face, hair and the rest of my body are too clean to wash. When I drink it, it tastes strange. I feel no current need to urinate or defecate.

There is a heater, and the apartment is cold, but it is not economical to run.

There is liquor in the fridge, but nothing to mix it with. On its own it tastes bad and makes me sick.

There are pillows on my bed, soft ones, but I cannot use them for their most common purpose, which is to lay my head down and go to sleep.

There are noises coming from all the walls, which is to say most likely from one of the neighboring apartments or the outside.

There is a growing erratic quality to my thoughts and actions, a strangeness in my perception, an otherness to the apartment, an oddness in the quality of light. I have turned all the lights on.

There is something outside my bedroom door.