Refuse everywhere: old takeout boxes, filthy clothes, garbage in every cranny, full bottles stacked precariously in the corner. She could not will herself to leave. She works, sleeps, and suffers in this room.
And she hasn’t had a shower in four months.
Once, her hand had grazed the doorknob, but the fear and trauma of being out there was too much. Who knew what awaited her in the hallway?
It was probably nothing, just her agoraphobia.
She couldn’t smell herself anymore, but any time someone came by with food she ordered, they perched in on a table under her bedroom window and scrambled away.
She’s going to try it today. She’s going to take that first step. She doesn’t remember what the kitchen in her house looks like.
The filthy bed calls for her, begging her to forget this nonsense.
Bravery and steelheartedness wins the day. She gently clicks her door latch by pushing the rotating handle down a couple degrees a second.
And she delicately pushes the door open. The door makes an impossibly shrill creak, and the air suddenly tastes foreign and wrong and clean.
One grimy foot taps against the hardwood. A head of matted and greasy hair peeks out from behind the door frame: the decay of isolation has neglected the housework and the rest of the house, or at least this hallway, is in shambles too.
The shower is downstairs.
She knows the fifth stair creaks, and she knows that it’s too bright in here. She cannot see the staircase for the L-shaped hallway that lies before her.
She tentatively pokes her head around the corridor, seeing the stairs.
WHAM! Something has her by the neck, lifting her off the ground and her feet are thrashing and she’s panicking and six mouths draw near and she whimpers for help as loud as she can but her throat is closing and three-hundred-eighty-eight teeth in six mouths draw within an inch of her face and her butthole puckers and this is the absolute end and somehow she would always knew her life would go this way;
And the biggest mouth leaned in closer, right up to her ear, its tongue tasting its teeth, before screeching the following words:
She feels disgusting.
Refuse everywhere: old takeout boxes, filthy clothes, garbage in every cranny, full bottles stacked precariously in the corner. She could not will herself to leave. She works, sleeps, and suffers in this room.
And she hasn’t had a shower in four months.
Once, her hand had grazed the doorknob, but the fear and trauma of being out there was too much. Who knew what awaited her in the hallway?
It was probably nothing, just her agoraphobia.
She couldn’t smell herself anymore, but any time someone came by with food she ordered, they perched in on a table under her bedroom window and scrambled away.
She’s going to try it today. She’s going to take that first step. She doesn’t remember what the kitchen in her house looks like.
The filthy bed calls for her, begging her to forget this nonsense.
Bravery and steelheartedness wins the day. She gently clicks her door latch by pushing the rotating handle down a couple degrees a second.
And she delicately pushes the door open. The door makes an impossibly shrill creak, and the air suddenly tastes foreign and wrong and clean.
One grimy foot taps against the hardwood. A head of matted and greasy hair peeks out from behind the door frame: the decay of isolation has neglected the housework and the rest of the house, or at least this hallway, is in shambles too.
The shower is downstairs.
She knows the fifth stair creaks, and she knows that it’s too bright in here. She cannot see the staircase for the L-shaped hallway that lies before her.
She tentatively pokes her head around the corridor, seeing the stairs.
WHAM! Something has her by the neck, lifting her off the ground and her feet are thrashing and she’s panicking and six mouths draw near and she whimpers for help as loud as she can but her throat is closing and three-hundred-eighty-eight teeth in six mouths draw within an inch of her face and her butthole puckers and this is the absolute end and somehow she would always knew her life would go this way;
And the biggest mouth leaned in closer, right up to her ear, its tongue tasting its teeth, before screeching the following words:
(this fragment cuts out prematurely)