The Realization

A story about madness and the charms of modern living

Good morning.

I arise to the faint aroma of brewing coffee that had been going since the previous night. Canary soup-like eggs in the pan, diced pecans, orange wedges in crescent moon shapes. These things I Imagine; only the coffee is real. The acrid lining on the counter reminiscent of corporate trauma, that's real too. The dogs bark.

Good morning.

I put on my white shirt and tie, as I suddenly look down at my fresh tattoo of Elven script and wonder what it means.

The dogs bark. I'm late. But late for what?

There's no time for the coffee. No time for anything. I'm late. Carefully I look out the window, watching the cacophony of buses and trash trucks fading away into the golden horizon of the morning. It reminds me of silly fables and sayings that may or may not exist, such as if you look askance at such and such a time on Good Friday at such and such a person, the world will end the following weekend. Fanciful, chimerical rubbish. Still, a grim augury.

Good afternoon.

Entropy is on my mind. An arcane clause of the manic tide bringer. I hear the rabble outside bickering like children, just beyond my window lattice.

Time passes by, and it's then that I realize that I know I'm not going to work today.

Good afternoon.

Alone with my ties, my ivory white appliances, my sculpted deer's head on the hearth, and the stench of poverty and regret, I wander around the flat like a languished, nugatory phantom. I continue on like this for what seems like a long time, looking around for 90 degree angles in my poorly constructed apartment. One thought in mind: The thought to avoid. Not just entropy.

Good evening. 

As I clean my apartment with a splintery broom handle, I mutter incoherent noises. I can no longer avoid this harrowing thought. It eats at me in a slop shod fashion, like stray dogs fighting over week old biscuits.

All the day long I play out scenarios in my mind of what I would have done had I gone to work today. I took a short lunch, for all I had was malted milk balls to eat that were leftover from a few days ago at the cinema. No time to eat. I have to concentrate on my work, a necessary prelude to my moment.

The dogs bark. The reek of abject poverty. I then realize that I am a wage slave.

Good night.

And so is everyone else. Wage slaves. Who hasn't been degraded for the sake of the money god, and his insatiable appetite? I muse: If society is just a polite and sophisticated form of slavery, then where are my shackles? I look for them, and then my gaze retreats to the television set. I look away. Sterile entrapment. Lives wasted. Futures sapped of their dignity. The drum beats.

Good night.

The night dawns, the curtains drawn, and I'm left alone with my two day old coffee, forsaken, confused, deeply imbued in strange, intoxicating thoughts that pierce my very being--on this strange day.

Good night.

The dogs continue to bark.

Good night.

The coffee still stale.

Good night.

The scurrilous tinge of poverty and a wasted life.

Good night.

As the dogs go on barking, I can't tell if they're real or just a figment of my imagination. I tell myself, none of this can be real.

I'm asleep, clawing, scraping for a moment of awakening, a moment of release.

But it doesn't come. Not just yet. The specters of the night come instead, the ghosts of tax collectors with religious pamphlets glued to the bottom of their plaited shoes with cherry gum. The night consumes me. Demigods leave tractor marks in my head. I'm stirred by an inscrutable wisdom hanging by a string, pulled away just as soon as I grasp for it.

Diagonals star cross my tired mind, reminding me of the diagonal light shapes that play on my front lawn from the towering street lamps. My ill kept lawn. My world.

It's then that I know: This isn't real. A fabrication. I'm dreaming, and always have been.

Good Night.