Guests
You take a look around. No one else is. They wobble and sway, shed their decay. You are the only one with food obligations, as corpses feed on themselves. You slipped into the unlocked house and cooled your cheeks on the tile of the unfinished bathroom; relieved yourself in the freshly installed toilet. Now you nap without sleep, promoting every scrape of the wind to claws fumbling with handles.
In the morning you crave waffles, and coffee with cream. Instead, you peak through the curtains like a reverse ray of sunlight. There is nothing to see. The news still updates, but only of political machinations. The corpses do not officially exist.
Technically you still have a job. You can still check your bank balance – your last paycheck went through, though you haven’t been to the office in months. The machinery has also become zombified, but you know at some point the electricity will stop flowing. Stores still accept credit, but smiles are worn now only for camouflage.
You look for a weapon, but somehow the construction site has no tools. No spare lumber. The workers knew the truth the homeowners have refused to admit: the house will never be finished. Someone left a badminton racquet beside the sink that has never held water, but you aim to be volleying corpse heads.
It takes three hours, but you manage to leave the house of blank walls. Your cravings have moved from waffles to pizza. And math. To the certainty of formulae. The rules of the universe still hold, you imagine, even if those of society are in decorative free fall.
You have one pill left, so you take it. Clarity spreads like the disease you are trying to avoid. At least you assume it is contagious. Nothing else makes sense. The clarity lasts for the afternoon, by which you are desperate for peers. For another unlocked house. For a container of sugar that has been baked into something that will satiate your cravings.
But there hasn’t been sugar for months. And the pills you have been saving for a self-administered overdose are gone. The night is falling again and you steel yourself for the week ahead. Just one more, and then you will allow yourself an out. Just one more.