As an experiment in form, I’ll be releasing this story first on Notes, a sentence a day.
For readers not on Notes, I’ll continue posting other edifying stuff in the meantime.
Big loves
Adrian
Warning: Missing Trigger Warning
Reader discretion advised
Large pizza boxes lie discarded throughout the dingy studio apartment. Most are empty. Those that aren’t conceal half-eaten slices variously congealed upon greasy cardboard squares. Beneath the smeared glass-top coffee table, as though flood piled, small cartons of empty garlic dip gather. The place smells as you might expect, if you’re expecting a lavatory. Raggedy sunfringed drapes hang like the flayed skins of creatures long forgotten whilst black mould strategically seals sash windows against the violation of fresh air.
Street sounds press against the panes like the nose of a lost child: the ghostwhining of electric cars at low speed, yawping dickheads with their phones set to speaker, strings of distant sirens, sidewalk disputes of varying intensity and duration, and the explosive purgations of pre-dawn post-party puking, all of which excitedly take their place alongside the incessant yap-yap emanating from number sixty-nine’s irredeemably chippy Cockerpoo, the omnipresent doomquake of descending passenger jets, and, to top it off, unfeasibly frequent performances from the Captain Rod and Coochie Chorus upstairs.
Mistaking itself for a convection heater, a home cinema screen dominates a whole wall as well as the room’s centralised sofa bed which appears to be gawking back at it. Thus, the place, on this humid August day, bears no small resemblance to the sweaty breathlessness of a summer launderette. The bed sheets are as you might expect, if you’re expecting something akin to ingrained garlic dip. A team logo, acting as a screensaver, drifts with indolence across the wide digital display.
Photo: with sincere thanks to Natalya, my cleaning lady.
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