I wake up and it’s sweltering and I go over to open the door
to the jungle-hot-enclosed room that I am sleeping in. The air is stagnant
outside here too. But we manage don’t we I mean this is England. I flip open
the mac and I instantly recognise that out here it’s much cooler, this is
because of two reasons:
1. The windows here are like wide open lids of an alert
monkey and 2. This side of the building is westward facing and so doesn’t
receive the early morning sun.
All I remember is my 92 year old neighbour Peggy telling me
that she detests the summer when it’s sunny because her side of the building
gets it first and for the longest.
She said to me, ‘It may very’well be a bonus in the wintertime
but today and every’morning of this summer I’ve sweltered in my bed and had to
move out of my room by 6 o’clock. It’s been very uncomfortable.’
An image of a charred old lady sat upright in an armchair
embeds itself in my mind and I can’t do anything to dislodge it so bare my
teeth and shake my head in disgrace.
Then I smell toast and it must be wafting through from a
neighbour’s branch of housing. And I think, I have frozen bread and we do have
a toaster but it’s been stored away in a cupboard. Why not make the added
effort this morning to get it out - dust it off - and then make some toast as
that’s what you’re wanting. I look around for someone to confirm that this is a
sound idea and as there’s nobody here but me I do an awkward pirouette on the
spot and dig in to the cupboard. I reach in to get the toaster, and I knew it
would be dusty but not this much, and the moment I have it mid-air to position
it down on a kitchen surface I notice things creeping slowly decrepitly like
hellmonsters all over it.
Agggghhhhhhhhhhhcccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkk
Spider babiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiies
Aghch
Fu-
Ck
The toaster has a colony of spider babies in it and the
little brats cascade out on to the floor where I'm barefooted and unarmed and I just
run out of the kitchenette to watch them fuck about and enter crevices and just
die right on the spot. I have to clear up this graveyard of tiny legs and
fragile cobwebs in a moment with tissues; it is a horrific early morning task.
*
*
*
*
*
I sit down with my cup of tea by the mac and burnt toast.
Yes, I did make toast out of the toaster (I’m a murderer so shoot me) but I'm sceptical as to whether I consumed half a dozen dead baby spiders with the
melted margarine that tasted of plastic forks. Basically the breakfast was a
disaster and a genocide.
And then
Bang.
A man appears swinging outside the window and doesn’t say
anything and I freak out and spill my tea on the library books by the computer.
Oh Christ, I have to return these and when in hell did we have window washers
here? It amazes me. Have I not been paying attention or am I just of the jumpier
kind when it comes to fully-grown men suspended outside my pane of glass. I
feel like this morning has already got off to an inauspicious start and I
really thought to myself that this week was going to go better. It has to
compared to last week. But maybe not, maybe the forces of Fate are after me and
they’re coming to get me with the shit toast and spider corpses and random men
attacking my view via sky. It all seems very kitsch tragic to me.
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