Novella:

In descending order, alphabetical

By Pablo D'Stair

[Part 5]

Typewriter the typewriter the typewriter the typewriter, sitting there all day, the typewriter so morbid and sloppy, it reeked of mildew and of the sweat of his hands and the cold of his hands, the typewriter.

He was leaning on the edge of the couch back and felt like a sack, wet of slop water, heavy, he was creaking his fingers in grips and could hear the sounds, whatever, knuckles popping or heaving lousy sighs of throat clearings; Whatever it was knuckles did, air leaving them, knuckles draining, and he moved a few steps like on tiptoe, over to the bathroom sink and almost turned open the tap but didn't want to hear the sound, stood, the sink drain a bit of an old frostbitten lip, the toothbrush a coil of sodden wood, the hand towel on the floor, the shower curtain drawn, it was a squint in the dark toward a light that burnt out the eye for tying to have a see.

The gag of the On switch to the being pressed up, he, as slowly as he could, sat in the chair, positioned it alright, except his pants got caught awkward from his weight down on them, but there was nothing that could be done about it.

Typed out at a blather Nothing nothing nothing is coming to get you which didn't particularly mean anything but he certainly did not want to bother with the whine of inserting a new page, hit the Return key, let some flatulence out long and crumbling, typed Allen then backspaced over and Xed this out.

Wrote There's Something About Allen and laughed, because that was just a ridiculous thing to do, he encouraged himself to, as an encore, soil his pants and stick them in the dishwasher, the sort of halfwit he was becoming, so Xed all of that out and then typed How Awfl About Allen and thought the typo there just didn't matter, he just didn't care.

There were no people really outside and he wanted this to seem eerie, have some purpose, meaning, however much abstraction that meaning was, have some resonance, an atmosphere, but it was just outside, the block-and-a-half he could see from the window and it had nothing to it.

A joint was sort of damp between his fingers and the warm was alright, he didn't mind it, trying to come up with a title.

Not How Awful About Allen, which was a shame because it was a fine title and all of it, apparently it was a fine little piece of work all around, pity he was too much a mincing hack to come up with something like that on his own.

"A novel," he whispered, smiled, some book that there is no one alive had ever heard of, some nothing.

His yawn hurt his eyes and back and he traced his eyes around the ceiling to the upcrop of the typewriter and the out-of-alignment things he had blotted out, thinking that he should just forever give up on writing plays, should write a novel, not some long winded nonsense or anything, though he did not know many novels so did not know if there were some short ones, but if he was going to go ahead and write as short a novel as possible why not just a play? was his final analysis.

That's all he wanted to write.

Plays.

He would sometimes call them Dialogues, because to write a play, like with that nonsense capital P way of pronouncing it, was for mediocre preening wannabe's, highfalutin' folks who wanted the things done up, stage lighting and that overindulgent and unnecessary trash.

His were just to be read, so it might make them dialogues, not plays, even if he sometimes described the scenes, though right away he thought a lot of plays were written, in any event, that didn't describe the scenes but certainly weren't Dialogues-as-in-Not-Plays and was so weary and lost in his thoughts he just tacked keys in antsy cacks of claw tight fingers, opening and closing his mouth but not in the form of words just as though to imitate the idiot look of talking.

For awhile, the telephone rang like some decrepit wretch trying to drag himself up a spigot for a gulped drink of water, these drones of it everywhere around him, rang dead and a moment later went off again and this repeated, but all it would be was Trevor, Greg Batch, Thomas or something and he wanted to pick up and have a chat or something but not so much that he went ahead and did.

He typed A Novel By Remy Faulk and stared at this, repeated the words in his thoughts, a whistle to his breathing like how he breathed when accidentally falling asleep, catching himself at a snap after a minute or two.

There was something fundamentally wrong about it, though, crooked, shaved off too much in one direction, something that should have been sharp and a disdainful slant that would have water spill right over off it, no, it looked instead like a sopping bloat of mud getting hard between toes, inside toenails, crust of a nosebleed under fingernails, and when he then typed out A Play By so did that.

***

Rings around the coffee cup, he looks at them, right before pouring, a long pause, sees a thick ring about a quarter inch down from the lip of the cup, another about a pinch below that, another about a half inch up from the murk left in the cup bottom, he chortles, says Jesus for no real reason and makes his face look perturbed, rings where the coffee was left to settle at various times of the day, it looks flaky and rough, the rings.

And to his way of thinking, it would be about a complete waste of time to have another joint, but even a drag or two would not really matter at all, his eyes bloated, saggy, old wrinkles left to sog in water, it hurts to blink and he knows, really, it'll be an hour maybe at the most before he's passed out and then tomorrow is all a waste.

The lighting on variously around the apartment rooms, at least this was how he vaguely gave it a half thought while trying to get comfortable leaned on the counter, nearly instantly giving up on that as a stupid thing to do, was arranged in just such a way as to actually make the rooms look much darker than they would with the lights all actually off, those moaning hazes around the frames of doors pushed, closed only almost, and the lamp around the corner in the bedroom on but with all of those boxes and whatever stacked up so the cardboard tinge to the light and the shadows about dense as fists in gloves closed around fists in gloves.

He read the description on the DVD sleeve one more time and tried to get something going, this one called Naked Massacre, but he got despondent and knew it was just that he was so haggard and wrecked from having to hold himself together all night, even if he hadn't had to have jogged down to Krista's and then deal with her inanity and smoking him up and making him waste time going on about How Awful About Allen instead of how he just would have gotten straight punch to business had he not lent that nothing little loser his DVD player to start off with.

Until a few hours later, he jerked awake from his throat having gone totally dry, naked asleep on the sofa, now just the menu screen of the film he had set on, the two films to choose from, he stared, The Head and something else he didn't actual read and the four sections each one was broken up into, awake a bark from some lousy dream about having to get a duffle bag out from a locker, getting upset and tugging and then the clothes inside had a tear at the crotch or something and all the while some blubber of someone crying around the corner and he kept saying "One minute" and muttering Jesus to himself and all of it but with each time he went "One minute" the cry got more urgent like someone was just unable to get a grip on themselves in there.

And it really was only still the middle of the night, "Dead waste and middle of the night," he mumbled, leered at the typewriter, but then gave it a swipe with a limp sort of gesture, his hand clapping against him, arm going limp because he could care less.

He made plans to sleep only until noon, the latest, get himself up no matter what to shower and get awake, anyway, but promised himself all the time he would not have to actually go and do anything until the afternoon, four o'clock or something, before five was the only important thing, that way he would be back mid-evening and so that was like he had the evening, the night, into the early morning to get things done, a fresh perspective in the morning.

Fell asleep another time while going over the criteria he would utilise in his selection of a synopsis, reminded himself that the title did not matter, as he needed to change the title, so he did not need to bother looking for interesting titles, although of course he could look for interesting titles if he felt like it, so long as he didn't get silly about it, remember that he needed to change the title, anyway.

Loops and loops and coughs and he knew he had to use the toilet but opted not to face up to that, after a little while wondering if the coffee cup was empty enough he could relieve himself in that, at least drain enough of the nonsense out of him that he might relax, knowing as well as anyone that nature just never works that way.

"I'm not anybody and I'm not anybody else," he said, a flash, like it was interesting, something for somebody to say, a good line for someplace in some play and there was a pile of tumbled change over there that was his typewriter, some clobbered up cloth that was his typewriter, and he should write it down, no way he would remember if he didn't write it down, was forgetting it already, he should stand up, the steps the steps to the typewriter, maybe get a second wind, but knew, after all, he thought of Allen saying it, maybe it would be the first thing that Allen could say after the line of Nobodies questioning him with his name and it would be a nice first line if only it was something he had any chance of remembering long enough to ever actual write. He had already forgotten it, whatever it was, that thing he had said and now woke again with a pathetic irritation over this fact, spending a few minutes doing nothing to try to remember, really, moaning like the rippling lip of a baying dog. It was past dead, past death, everything was a dent in the side of a bureau that no one ever regarded, the bureau pressed clean to the wall, that was how the death of it was.