The Maggots
When I wake, I still feel the same. I am so tired. I feel like nothing I do has meaning anymore. What’s the point? I’m alone in this. I feel better on my own anyway. But I am going nowhere. I feel groggy and my head is splitting down the middle. I’m used to it now. I reach for my pills and I remember the bottle is empty. I sit at the edge of my bed, grumpy and jittery.
I push myself off the bed and limp to the living room. I find my phone on the coffee table amongst the remnants of yesterday. The battery is empty. Again. I curse myself for not charging it when I went to bed. I head back to my room to charge it. While I wait, I head to the bathroom, need to take a leak, freshen up a bit. Mirror broken everywhere. Ah. Yes. That happened, didn’t it?
I count to ten. One, two, three, four, five… I remind myself that I need to think rationally. I start going through the possibilities in a mumble: “The mirror fell off the wall. The mirror just broke because of the heat. The nail rusted off?” I can hear the uncertainty in my voice. Shrugging it off, I do my business and look at the shattered shards. They’re everywhere, some even in the bathtub. I cautiously avoid looking at my reflection in the broken pieces. Nonsensical to fear it, but after yesterday, I am not about to look for a trigger. Damn it. I’m gonna have to clean this mess up. Later, I decide, as I close the door and head to the kitchen.
First, grub. I am not hungry, but I know I should eat something. I take a handful of cereal out of the box and shove them in my mouth. I look lazily around the kitchen, while I slowly chew. The heat has brought the flies with it. They’re buzzing all around. Those blasted bugs will have a feast in here, between the dirty dishes, and un-discarded pieces of garbage everywhere. I sigh. Another job for today, I guess.
But I cannot go through another day without my meds. I know that. Not having any yesterday didn’t help with my paranoia. Not with my PTSD either, as I remember my close calls with panic attacks. If I have to go outside today, I want to do it now and get it over with.
I visualise my trip to the chemist - two blocks up, one block right and third shop on the left, keeping my head down, sunglasses on, as fast as I can with my one leg, then back home, safely and without triggers, piece of cake - but my heart sinks to my stomach. My anxiety is always with me, like a creeping monster, hiding in the depths of me, waiting to pounce and attack. After a few breaths, I calmly scan the living room.
I spot a hump of relatively usable clothes. Sure, the t-shirt is stained with sweat and what looks like tomato sauce, and the cargo shorts have seen better days, but I am not going far and I am not planning on socializing one bit more than I have to. While I change into them, I rehearse what I need to do at the chemist. I repeat to myself over and over: ‘Enter the shop, you don’t even need to look anybody in the eyes. Go to the counter, hand in your prescriptions, wait a bit, collect your meds, pay, leave. In and out. Then back home, safe and sound.’
I open the door and pause. Nobody in the street, not even a car passing by. Silent and peaceful. Good. I’m good. I clear my throat, standing in the doorway. ‘Come on, one step. It’s all it takes, and then you’re outside and you’ve done the hardest part’, I groan to myself. Breathe in two, three, four, hold, two, and out, two, three, four.
There is nothing that can harm me out there. The war is far, continents away. The dead bodies, the explosions, the smell of death and fire, the cries in the night and screams in the day. All that doesn’t exist here. So why can’t I bring myself to cross that damned threshold? How did I do it before? I ponder for a minute. I have been relying heavily on people visiting me. The nurse twice a week. The psych over the phone or sometimes she’d come here, for a face-to-face session. I try to remember when was the last time I left the house. It seems like an eternity ago. I realise then that I haven’t set foot outside since they shipped me back from the military hospital. Now, I’m aware that I have been holding my breath. Anticipation, tension… All throughout my body.
How about that... I step back in consternation, and my whole body relaxes, I take a slow breath in. I quietly close the door, almost in relief. I won’t be going outside today. I feel better now that I have accepted that. Just for a second though. I still need my meds. I need the numbness and dullness they bring me, the same effects I resent when I feel them taking over my senses. I need that now. Just for some peace.
Back in my room, I sit on the bed and stare at my phone. I turned it back on and forgot for a minute what I wanted to do with it. It comes back to me. The nurse, my pills. I wait as the tones ring out in my ears. And my luck does not change as I hear his answering message greeting me again with his maddening upbeat voice. I curse in frustration. At him, at myself, at the world and what it made of me. A lazy, weak, incomplete shell of a man.
That is it! It’s too much for me. I feel my rage bubbling inside me, eating at me, begging to be let out. I should control it, but I just don’t want to. Not today. I throw the phone across the room, send it splattering to the wall, just like I had so much wanted to yesterday. I feel the release rolling over me. I bask in it in thrill. I roar, furiously. I stand and hit the wall, as hard as I can, over and over, until I break through and my fist is a bloody mess. I barely feel the pain. I want more. I lose my footing and slump to the floor. Anything within my reach, I smash, throw, tear apart. Still screaming, almost laughing now, shrieking random words in hysterics, throwing them to the world. Finally, to my surprise, I break into soft sobs, almost howling from the pain inside, the one thing I feel with all my being that cannot be dulled. I let it all out, hot salty tears rolling down my cheeks, washing away the grime, sweat and dirt. But not the feelings. Never the feelings. They cling to me and eat away at me like cancerous cells. Until there is nothing left of me.
I eventually stop crying. I lie on the floor, exhausted, catching my breath, looking at the pattern of the cracks on the ceiling, following the details. They’re… beautiful. Like bolts of lightning during a storm. I start humming the tuneless song from before. I cannot place it, but it is always in my mind. It has been for a while.
I wake up on the floor, a few hours later. Groggy and sore everywhere. Yeah… When you pick a fight with a wall, you can’t really win… I look around the room. The sheets are torn and bloody, the bedside table on its side, one leg broken, the lamp smashed to pieces and its cord torn from the outlet on the wall. I wrap my hand in a dirty rag, that’ll have to do for now, and start cleaning up in silence, my mind going over my troubles.
I broke my phone, beyond repair. I have no way to contact the nurse, or anyone else for that matter. And there is no way for me to leave the house today. I just can't do it. I have to stay here, where I feel safe. Tomorrow, the nurse will come. I just need to hold on a little longer. I manage to sweep most of the mess to one corner of the room. As for the hole in the wall, there isn’t much I can do about it.
When I am satisfied with my efforts, I head to the bathroom. I’m on a roll, might as well get the mirror shards out of the way. Past my fear. Past my triggers. I’ll have none of that. Resolutely, I kneel down and start picking up the pieces. The big ones first, one by one. The tune comes back to my mind again, and as I hum it quietly, I catch myself in the mirror once more. I drop it in shock and drag myself away from the rest of it. That grin, those empty eyes. That was not me. That was definitely him. The young man from the village. No. That was just my own mind playing tricks on me. My conscience, my guilt, catching up to me. That’s right. I drag myself up, leaning on the tub while I reach for my clutches I laid against the wall and I hurry out of the bathroom. I close the door and rest my head on the panel. After a while, when I calmed my beating heart and emptied my mind, I release the doorknob and step away. Other jobs to do anyway. Next is the kitchen.
My psych says I need to face my fears and my past. Face them head on to be freed from them. But then she also says to let them go, to not let myself get controlled by them. It all seems contradictory, confusing. Just theories and recipes of what may have worked on other people. I guess I am not like other people. I don’t believe in the bullshit. I just don’t buy it. It seems cultish. Like going to confession and uttering a meaningless Pater Noster in half-hearted repent, hoping for forgiveness. Like that will absolve you from your sins. Nothing can. Not therapy philosophies, not religion. You have to carry them around. Until you die. No way out.
As I am muttering those thoughts to myself, I realise something. It dawns on me that my bitterness and my rage, I am actually aiming them at myself. Maybe I am so sceptic because I don't want redemption. I cannot forgive myself and so I surround myself in loneliness and misery and accept that I won't feel better, ever, because I just won't let myself. I don't get to feel better, I just don't deserve it. I might not want to die, but I don't want to live either, not happily anyways. "What a breakthrough", I bitterly chuckle to myself. I hate to think it, but my psych would be impressed at my insight. I am not usually one to introspect.
I shrug the thoughts away and head towards the kitchen. The heat is sticking to my skin, but it is the smell that sickens me. Rot. Maggots. I could smell them from the corridor. I’ve smelt that stench before. They’re everywhere. Breeding and infesting. On the plates, in the sink, the trash. Crawling all over. Disgusting. A fine layer of sweat covers my forehead and my back. Before I can reach the sink, I heave violently as I drop to the floor. Wave after wave, I puke the little food I have in my stomach, then the bile then nothing. The dry heaving hurts like hell. My face, my tongue, my throat, my ribs, my twisting stomach, my back… The tension is coursing through my entire body and I feel it will never end.
It finally does, though, after what seems like an eternity of pain. My body slowly relaxes and the heaving stops. The pressure in my head is close to unbearable, but that beats the dry heaving. I collapse on my back to catch my breath, next to the puddle of spew, and the wriggling maggots everywhere.
I close my eyes for just a minute, breath shaking, sweat all over. The smell of the puke barely masks the smell of the rest of the kitchen. When I open my eyes again, I realise I actually nodded off. The sunlight is starting to fade. Damnit.
I feel the maggots crawling on my face and hands and rise in a muffled curse. I brush the bastards off of me in a panic. Foul slimy critters! Some are even in my hair and beard. I frantically pick them off one by one. I shiver in disgust. Bugger that. This ain't my day, nor was yesterday. I am done, had enough, calling it quits.
I am parched and the taste in my mouth is bitter and sour. I’ve been told to steer clear of alcohol because they’re depressants. Oh, and there is the issue with alcoholism, I guess, but I reckon I’ve crossed that bridge a while ago. Right now, the only thing I want is a cold beer. Many cold beers. I pick myself up from the floor and limp my way to the fridge. I fill the cooler with cans, drag it across the floor and settle it next to the couch. I finally sit with a sigh of satisfaction.
Turn the TV on and the flicker lights up the room. When I start nodding off, I don’t bother going to bed. The bedroom is trashed anyways. I’m not uncomfortable on the couch, the beer is seeing to that. I drink myself to sleep that night.
Original story & Copyright by Julia Mesrobian
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