Below is a small excerpt of a story I’m working on. That’s all the details you’ll get about it . . . for now.
Michael
Dim light filtered through the sides of the drapes and cut through the floating dust where it lighted on the back of the striped couch and across the mass of empty pop cans, half-eaten TV dinners and the other throw away things of a bachelor’s life that were strewn across the marred coffee table. Michael woke from a light slumber. He hiked the quilted blanket over and tighter to his shoulder as he turned slowly from his back to his side. The coils under the couch cushions squeaked with exertion from the shift in his weight. He coughed and blinked and focused his eyes to the television. Michael groped around his body for the remote. He found it, pointed it, and clicked the green power button. A news broadcast fuzzed into clarity on the thin screen. There were four heads in four separate boxes yelling in unison. Michael didn’t know if they were yelling at him, at each other, or just yelling to yell. Multi-colored text scrolled around the edges of the television screen. Numbers, words and symbols flipped, disappeared and reappeared as something completely new. He tried to read the information to discern its meaning and its relation to the incomprehensible noise that emanated from the talking heads, but found the clip of the content to be too much for him to concentrate. He changed the channel. The next channel was playing a cartoon Michael had caught glimpses of previously. It was a brightly colored affair involving a chimp and a sloth living in the middle canopy in the Amazon. He had seen these characters on the sides of women’s purses at the mall, on the back of t-shirts, as decals on cars, on the billboards that promoted a good diet of literature and vegetables for kids, in magazine ads asking for donations to the relief fund from the latest disaster, on website banner ads asking for him to click here to redeem his latest prize – these characters, as far as Michael knew, were ubiquitous spokesmen for a number of causes and an utter delight to children. Michael found the two dimensional drawings pleasant and the clownish voices to be more accessible than the ranting of the news of the day. Michael watched amenably from the plush comfort of the couch. He laughed at the appropriate times, like when the chimp smashed a banana on the sloths head, and he giggled when the sloth fell perilously from its perch. Then, in Michael’s opinion, the cartoon took a turn for the worse. The chimp turned to the television screen, breaking the fourth wall, and looked at Michael. Slowly, the chimp scowled its brow, raised its furry hand, pointed toward its audience and said, “dance now ye who waiver by the light.” The chimp quickly returned to its comical humped posture and screeched as it jumped from a branch down to where the sloth lay rubbing its banana smeared head and helped the sluggish creature back to the patch of tree where they began. Michael, disconcerted by what he just saw, changed the channel again. But before the next image could come into focus he turned the television off and sat there and stared. Michael’s darkened form in the black plasma screen stared back at him. He blinked, it blinked. His brown matted hair looked greasy and was combed over to the right. Coupled with his four days of stubble and baggy brown eyes it made him think, “this is what a pedophile looks like.” He let out an exasperated sigh as he slowly got up from the deep couch. His body ached from a bad diet and a lack of exercise and sleep. Save for a few stray slivers of light the shades in the apartment were drawn tight. The sepia quality of midday darkness had always made Michael feel comfortable and safe. He also drew comfort from the knowledge that no one could see him. He was free to do what he wanted, or not do anything at all. Michael stood there in his musty sweat pants and baggy, food-stained hooded sweatshirt. The last time he left the apartment was three days ago to go to work. That was also the last time he showered, brushed his teeth and changed his clothes. There was no need for him to do those things because there was no need for him to leave until tomorrow to go back to work. He scratched a dry spot of skin on his lower back and farted. He walked over to the kitchen table where his laptop sat. He slid his sweatpants off, took his flaccid penis from the hole in his boxer shorts, began to stroke it to life and waited for his network card to catch an unsecured signal. It was three in the afternoon and he couldn’t think of anything better to do.