Thu, 19 May 2005

sour days
He rose from the bed, but never really awoke throughout the whole of the day. As if he was sick with some obscure flu variant, as if he had spent days watching the perimeter for muzzle fire, he made it through the day on autopilot, praying for the slight lizard comforts of a warm air vent to stand near at work, or a corner away from the flourescent glare in the supermarket. He was forced to repeat almost all of the day’s minor trials; three minutes after brushing his teeth that morning, he realized he had not brushed behind his lower front teeth, just as he forgot to use shampoo during his first shower. He barely registered seeing a woman he went to high school with sitting in the cafeteria, and could not bring himself to care about her repeated attempts to catch his eye. Driving home, he took the third off-ramp instead of the fourth and ended up in a neighborhood he only recognized after pulling onto a street where a buddy of his lived, until he left town and moved back in with his parents. He fell asleep on the weather channel after a half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt at masturbating to his favorite meterologist, and slept for twelve minutes, until midnight, when as was the case every night for as long as he could remember the devil began reading the endless litany of his crimes against himself, against humanity, and against God. He would occasionally seek council with the devil, or else argue the crime in question as not being relevant, but the list of crimes had long passed the valid and even the trivial and had now become gibberish, trespasses at specific points in celestial space-time, false slander against characters from novels he semi-read in college, harboring diseases. He would try to sleep, but the voice scraped along his nerves, admonishing him for failure to appreciate the severity of the charges against him, the hot stink of apple-rot and shit fililng the air as the devil spoke. On this night, however, the devil read the last of the charges (breath-smuggling) and informed him that now notified of his charges, he could either plead guilty, in which case he would be punished upon death, or he coudl plead erasure, in which case the specific events of his transgressions would be erased from history entirely, as would his memories of said events, and any memories held by the living or the dead. He pleaded erasure, and immediately fell asleep for three full days, and when he awoke, he could remember absolutely nothing.
(12:25.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #