I started the day with a cup of cold, stale coffee and a few rancid puffs off the dirty butt of a cigarette of indiscriminate origin. The small room I had rented at some point in the last two weeks was so small I could nearly touch one wall while my palm was firmly planted on its opposite, not that I would actually put my hands anywhere near the hole riddled walls or their moldy, puke green wallpaper. I dropped to the floor to search under the bed for another butt, realizing my mistake far too late. While the room’s floors were bare wood covered in black paint and filth, there had been, at one time, carpeting. This ancient carpeting had been worn away from most of the room except for the very edges and a rectangle that had collected the unwanted fluids, rotting foods, pharmaceutical powders and other debris that the previous occupants had drooled, dropped, spilled or spewed while laying semi-comatose on the ratty foam mattress that passed for a bed. Gagging, I lurched backwards, almost hitting my head on the small, broken, shit filled toilet that sat in the corner of the room. The image of an entire colony of large, sentient insects living in small fungus houses, happily parading cigarette butts and apple cores between mounds of used prophylactics and crushed beer cans elbowed its way into my head, saving my last shreds of sanity by edging out the actual traumatic reality of what had been festering underneath me all night for a over week. Shuddering, I decided quite suddenly that it was time to move on and find, if not better digs, at least a fresh package of smokes and a beverage that didn’t taste like the inside of a dead hobo’s mouth. (more…)
