Hark!
Hark, I wailsome-ly call to the heavens and hells of mighty horsemen bounding toward apocilypta! Hark, I call out so loudly that seraph above become unseated from their cloud and scatter halo, serif marks and dainty wings across the landscape below, falling to the vortex of your abandon.
Why must this house of fragility be sundered so by the pall of disorganisation that ye wreck so uncaringly upon us?
Why must we wallow, we entrench ourselves, in this mire of sloth, and filth, and bile, and disease?
We, who throw open the door open to sickness and yell ‘come and see thou shrine!’ then remove this last barrier of its hinges and dump it upon the pile of detritus that scatters this townhouse.
Do we live at the tip?
Are we the concentrated ibis picking at the sick flesh of the undulating beast that we call a floor?
The dust!
Give me strength to not mention the dust as if it were not omnipresent nor did it make the outside world opaque through our curtainless windows, if it did not layer me so as if I had transmorphed into a forgotten trinket, placed atop a forgotten shelf in a forgotten museum.
The blanket of grime now be’th so present that no vacuum would dare allow itself to be switched on to function, brooms quiver and shake at the prospect of dislodging even one granule of this growing dust fire; it shall consume us my house-mate I am sure of it!
I bring this letter to the fridge with a heavy heart, I know it to be destined only for the unnoticed, I know that you shall read this note with the chances of a nearby swan that transforms itself into a rocket and then travels to the moon.
Why must you ignore my pleas so fervently?
A towel upon the ground.
I place thee in the washing basket and in one day it hath appeared again!
Magic, I call, magic, I cry.
I wash this towel, drying it thoroughly and folding it neatly, and, as if devil wants only to lead me distraught, I find the towel back in its damp beginning of a pile, growing mould and beckoning the final slip of my sanity.
Please, please undo me from this knot and allow me the rest I so much desire.
I can not dry the sink again, I cannot!
The crumbs, dear friend, my god the horror of crumbs that line every crack of our kitchen.
The plates….
I leave these ruminations now with a final plea:
Place your towel in the basket, not for me, but for your king and your country.
-Your housemate.
Pscrpt: I will be late with my portion of this weeks rent as I have just bought an antique typewriter.
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 