Thursday, January 21, 2016

A Day in the Möbius Strip

   The alarm clock. I thought it was Saturday. Must be Friday.

   Without thinking about it, I throw my arm towards the device. Snooze. I press it two or three times, to no effect, before opening my eyes. The flashing number seven, colon, zero zero, bothers me. What a bore. I press the button once more but the sound, bothersome as well, continues.

   What did he tell me? The clock is my roommate’s. He’s a professor at a prestigious university. Theoretical physicist. To me, he’s one of those mad scientists. “Don’t press snooze,” that’s what he said. “Don’t bother pressing it, since it doesn’t work,” would have been a more adequate warning.

   The radio sounds while I undress. Sometimes, I think that the only thing that changes in my day by day are the songs I hear. Shower, shirt, shoes. Something’s missing. Shove off? The cold wind hits my naked legs. I return for the pants I did not put on before getting out of the flat.

   I will be one of the first to buy one of those automatic automobiles. Auto-automobiles. The one’s that drive themselves, I mean. After all, I drive the same route daily. Why not let a machine do the heavy work? With the new parking policy, I even arrive to the same space every day.

   Speak to the colleagues, drink some coffee, have lunch at the same eateries and fast-food chains. Honestly, now that I think about it, I believe I’ve not stopped going to the company’s mess hall in a long time.

   Is it important to describe what I do for a living? It’s a rhetorical question. “No, it is not,” would be a good captious answer. Captious because this one time, a skunk broke into the office and it was a pretty funny day. That happened... too long ago. I can’t remember the exact date. Did I live that or did I dream it?

   The point is that the way back home is, also, boring. For dinner, yesterday’s leftovers. By now, they are nothing more than little pieces of meat and vegetables. Vestigial vegetables of something that I don’t remember eating since a long time ago. I shit you not, I don’t know what I had for dinner last night.

   The TV’s programming offers nothing innovative nor too interesting. The websites that I check don’t either. The jokes are yesterday’s, and from the day before, and so on and so forth until the first, and only, day in which I found them funny.

   Still, I don’t go to bed until my eyes are completely red. If you asked me, I wouldn’t even be sure of what I saw on the internet. Pornography, maybe. It’s curious, the amount of media that I consume without thinking about its quality. Junk food everywhere, for the stomach and the brain. For the heart. Everything in this world clogs your arteries.

   But, anyway, it’s the weekend. Staying up late will do me no harm. I barely ask myself why I didn’t go out with a friend or a girl for a beer or a gin tonic. Whatever.

   The consuetudinary insomnia. I casually turn over my bed. I’m hot, real hot. Damn. It’s one of those classic nights. It will seem that as soon as I can fall asleep, the alarm will go off. It’s always the same. Oh, but it’s the weekend, right? Have I already said that? I feel that the tiredness finally knocks me out, that’s the last conscious thought that I have in this starless and Moonless night.

   The alarm clock. I thought it was Saturday. Must be Friday.


Short Story. October, 2015.