The Last Three
By Almon Chu
Copyright 2011 Almon Chu
I
The outside world came in through the window. The morning traffic, the police sirens, the footsteps and chatter of pedestrians, the roar of low flying planes, the beeping and banging of construction and destruction. I was naked, cold. My head and joints ached. My mouth was bitter. My eyes were blinded by the morning sun. I sat up quickly, recoiling. The sheets stuck to the side of my face before peeling off like velcro. I wiped my cheek and looked down at my hand.
"God damn it," I said.
A breeze rolled in from an open window and I felt the blood dry upon my skin. My feet hit the grimy floor, but my legs refused to work and I met the ground with a thud.
After all you've been through, is this what's going to do you in? A voice said in a distant part of my mind. I began to crawl, my head and joints still aching.
I crawled on my arms across my bedroom floor. Across dirty laundry, empty bottles, crushed cans, broken CDs, forgotten CDs, pens and pencils, candy wrappers, white Styrofoam boxes filled with moulding crumbs, papers that were once important and papers that were never important. Across the thin film of hair, dust, crumbs, and shards of plastic that pervaded the floor. And across the most worthless of them all: pennies. I crawled as the carpet fabric dug into my flesh.
I reached the old sofa-chair that had been repurposed as a computer chair, and hoisted myself upon it. I turned on my back, my legs hanging over the arm of the chair. Stretching, I reached out and shut the window. The noises of the city still bled through.
I inhaled deeply, pushing my body forward until I was sitting on the arm of the chair. The cheap imitation leather creaked beneath me. My body lowered until my feet touched the floor. Tightly gripping the chair's arm as an anchor. I attempted to stand but refused to release my grip from the chair behind me. Taking one step forward I felt my legs wobble and retreated to the security of my chair.
"Fuck me," I said, half laughing.
After all you've been through, is this what's going to do you in?
Outside my apartment window an early winter had arrived in the city, the trees stripped to skeleton forms. The colourful leaves of autumn had long since been blown away, destroyed, or collected. Though the first snowfall had yet to occur. It was a lifeless period of limbo.
I lived on the very edge of the city. To my left was the city's end: a vast field of houses, boulevards woven with trees and street lights; only broken by oases of poverty and the distant smoke stacks of the industrial slum. To my right was a dense labyrinth of high and low-rise buildings. Streets and alley-ways that twisted and turned in nonsensical fashion until they reached the city heart: an amalgamation of business towers, with each tower attempting to best the other in size. Despite their obnoxious efforts, they were forever in the shadow of the heart's centre, a tourist spike, our modern tower of Babel.
I gave up on standing and watched the city for a couple of hours, my weakness had overcome me. The hypnotic blur of distant moving cars and pedestrians.
The cell phone rang on my computer table.
"Hello?"
"Zdravstvuet!" It was Aleksi. He always enjoyed throwing me off.
" Aleksi! English!" The anger began to stir.
"Haha! What's up? Why aren't you here at work?" Aleksi said.
"My legs won't work," I said. He was picking the wrong morning to aggravate me.
"What do you mean?" He asked.
"The hell do you think I mean? I mean I can't stand up!"
"Have you tried standing?"
"That's a stupid fucking question and you know it."
"No, I mean, have you tried standing again? Like recently." He was failing to articulate himself.
"Why would I do that?! I already told you I can't stand!" My sweat ran, mixing with the dry blood, and produced a sickly dull paste.
"Just try it," he said, slightly irritated.
"What part of 'I can't stand' don't you God damn understand?!" I struggled to get the words out.
"Just fucking try it!" Aleksi was beginning to lose himself.
I could feel my heartbeat all throughout my body, my vision narrowed, my breath heated.
"If I fucking fall down you're coming all the way out here to pick me the hell back up, you bastard!" All I wanted to do was prove Aleksi wrong.
I threw myself off the chair and found myself to be standing perfectly straight.
"Well?" Aleksi asked condescendingly.
I stood there, shocked and stunned by my error for a brief moment.
"Fuck you Aleksi!"
"Suka blyad! Kitaiskie -" I pulled the cell phone from my cheek, the bloody paste causing my skin to lightly stick, and slammed the phone shut before he managed to finish his insult. The anger had engulfed me; a familiar raw energy surged through my right arm. The muscles in my forearm twitched as my fingers tingled and jerked.
"God damn immigrant," I said to myself before throwing on some clothes that had been resting on my bed. I looked at the picture of Eris taped to my bedroom wall; I wondered what she would say if she could see me now. Exhaling deeply, I left my apartment for work.
There was no time to wash the blood off. I had already killed enough time and was very late for work. I could not afford a cut in pay. I shot glances to my left and right upon exiting my apartment. It smelled of cheap cleaning fluid, with hints of vomit and alcohol. The dim fluorescent lighting of the hallway produced a sickly buzz. White paint peeled off walls scuffed with a history of colours, revealing the concrete that lied beneath. I walked down the hall to the elevator, my footsteps clicking upon cracked and broken tiles. I reached into my coat pocket for my cigarettes. My hands were warm and my heart still pounding from my earlier conversation, though I had reclaimed control of myself.
I pressed the button to call for the elevator. Leaning back against the wall, I waited. The florescent light flickered above me. I put a cigarette to my lips and reached for my lighter. People were fighting in the unit behind the wall. Their exact words were indiscernible, just the sounds of shouting, yelling, crying, and screaming. I lit the cigarette and inhaled. The sweet nicotine release. A dull thud came from the wall behind me and broke the fight with a sudden silence. I thought of Aleksi and smiled.
'That god damn Punk."
The elevator doors opened before me.
The buttons in the elevator were old and worn, their painted symbols no longer readable. It was a small elevator with no mirrors to give the illusion of space. I reached over to the panel and pressed what I had memorized as Ground before resigning myself to a corner.
I began to grind my cheek with my hand, producing a dark red mixture of blood, dirt, skin, and oil that peeled off of my face like eraser shavings. My lips were clenched tightly to secure my cigarette. My skin became red and raw under the friction.
You look like a madman.
I flicked ashes at the no smoking sign next to me. Nobody had ever cared enough to enforce it. I looked up to check the elevator's counter and put the cigarette back to my lips. "5"- "3"- "2"
The elevator doors opened. Most of the blood had already been cleaned from my face, with the exception of the most stubborn of specs. I walked across the lobby, which contained nothing more than a wall of mail boxes, a half-dead fern, and a door made of reinforced glass. The same theme of peeling white paint and cracked tile floors adorned the lobby. From the other tiny elevators came a languid flood of tenants, some herding their children to school, some sipping from their bottles of coffee, some stuffing their faces with a quick breakfast. I had been lucky that morning to have an elevator to myself.
The front door creaked as it swung open. The city streets were choked with people. Everything
was trapped under a thin orange fog. I headed towards the subway station, walking past old wooden phone polls, mutilated by the countless rusty staples of posted bills; lamp posts, dented and dirty from the abuse of the streets.
The sidewalks were spotted black with old gum, its crevices and fissures filled with cigarette butts and small pieces of shredded garbage. I was stopped at an intersection by a red light, a blur of cars roared past. The roads were patchwork, lines of tar crisscrossed segments of asphalt, like wrinkles on an old face. The numerous pot-holes and depressions were filled with black water of obscure origin. I inhaled the last sweet breath of cigarette smoke and flicked the filter to the ground.
The homeless stirred from their homes of cardboard and ragged sleeping bags. Some begged with paper cups and signs: "Kick a punk for a buck." "25 cents short from taking over the world." "Please have mercy." "25 cents for a smile." Some played broken tunes on old instruments. Others sold useless junk as wares. Defeated people being steadily consumed by the city.
"Spare some change?" one of them said to me.
'We have a live one!' I thought to myself as I walked past him, not making eye-contact.
Wannabe thugs patrolled the streets like vultures, scanning for any excuse for violence.
Reflections of the city's demeanour: they walked around with false purpose in their stride, heads held high in arrogance. They act to intimidate, hiding their own childish fears. Their pre-packaged clothes, slang, and music: pathetic