Charlie woke up to the buzzing of the alarm. Buzz, buzz, buzz, over and over, time after time, noise upon noise. He turned his head to one side, looking at the cheap ten dollar clock with its little glow in the dark off-white numbers. It was cheap black plastic and had small raised buttons at the surface that were different shapes to let a person know what they were hitting.

‘Just the product for the layabout who can’t even be bothered to sit up to hit the buttons.’ Charlie thought and slapped it several times with artless indifference to how many times it took to hit the right one.

The buzzing finally stopped, proof that he had done it right on the last time. ‘I did something right. Yay me.’ He said and ran his fingers through his sandy colored hair, then grabbed a pillow and laid it over top of his head.

Outside, the sun had not yet risen, and despite the alarm, neither did Charlie. ‘I should go out for a run today. My friends are going to be meeting up in about fifteen minutes. I wonder if they’ve stopped looking for me yet?’ Despite the pillow over his head, a small crack existed there and by the light of the clock face he could see the stained remnants of his blue tracksuit and a pair of stained shoes. ‘There’s probably enough mold in those shoes to grow a mushroom farm by now.’ The tracksuit was still neatly folded, but it was under a pile of garbage, old pizza boxes and chinese takeout. The white styrofoam containers lay open and torn, and the sweet smell of stale sauce drying into a crust was still detectable from his bed.

Charlie’s eye lingered on the tiny bits of visible clothing from days not long passed, then he shut them again. A few minutes later, he caught sight of a glow from the floor and looked over the edge of the bed.

The screen of his iPhone glowed, messages were coming in. A buzzing noise began to rattle the phone, moving it a few finger widths over the floor.

His arm came over the edge of the bed and hung there, dangling, fingers wiggling, he drew the phone within reach and picked it up.

His soft brown eyes lingered on the face of the phone. ‘How many now?’ He wondered. [Seven Missed Calls]. ‘One fewer. There were eight yesterday and twelve the week before.’ He realized, and with an indifferent shrug, he put the phone on the floor face down so that the glow wouldn’t disturb him while he lay there under covers which he suspected were probably foul smelling by now.

‘I probably stink too…’ Charlie thought, but everything was just… too heavy. He touched his head, it just felt… big but not like there was an ache.

There was no pain, just… nothing.

If the phone vibrated at all after that, he didn’t notice. The sun slowly peeked over the horizon to illuminate the ‘nest’ of rubbish. He reached for the remote and found that it too had fallen in the night.

Charlie’s arm extended even though it was clearly well out of reach, and as he did so, a fly landed on his arm, rubbing its forelegs together for several seconds, and then taking off again. It landed on his greasy hair, he didn’t bother to brush it away.

‘Probably more anyway. There’s no point to killing it.’ He thought, and let his arm go slack, he stared at the black screen while light slowly flooded the room. Last night’s rain had abated, and outside the window birds chirped their mating calls, out of the corner of his eye he caught the first robin of spring… as far as he was concerned, going past his window. ‘Nest there, like every year.’ He told himself, and just kept staring at the black, empty screen on power save as if it were the best channel available.

Only the rumbling of both stomach and bowels at once compelled him to move at last.

‘I killed them.’ The thought hit him as he slung himself out of bed as if iron balls and chains were attached to all four limbs. He lumbered over the path between himself and the kitchen. ‘Toilet still broken…’ He recalled when his eye caught the closed door of the bathroom. He sat on the trashcan and let nature take its course, the foul smell wasn’t unfamiliar, and between ‘that’ and the rest of the garbage, it was getting perilously close to the edge. He reached for the last of his paper towels, tore a few off, wiped his ass, and tossed them into the waist high silver can. He then pulled the yellow plastic strands at the side, sealed the bag, and after removing the bag, he tossed it into a pile with the others. ‘The White Mountain has been growing.’ He looked at the pile of bags in the corner.

And didn’t care.

He opened the refrigerator and sorted through the array of condiments and dwindling supplies of any actual sustenance. A can of whipped cream caught his eye, he reached for it and trudged back to bed.

He fell ‘toward’ the mattress more than he sat, scooping up the remote along the way, he turned on his television and slowly flipped through ‘continue watching’. Charlie wasn’t sure what he selected, nor did he care.

The phone buzzed again. ‘Not work, they stopped calling. I’m probably fired. If they knew what I’d done, I’m sure I wouldn’t be here. I’d be locked up somewhere.’ Charlie ignored the buzz that told him a call was incoming and instead pressed the nozzle on the whipped cream can while holding it up to his open mouth.

The sloshing-like hiss of the gas propellent within prompted a spray of white to sail into his mouth. He kept his jaw wide open until his mouth was full, then he closed his lips, swallowed, and repeated the process.

Six times he did it, then on the seventh time… just a futile hiss and there was no more.

He dropped the can from his hand and let it roll over the floor, ‘How did it come to this?’ Charlie asked as he thought back to the moment when everything went wrong. ‘How did ‘I’ become the man to ruin everything? I didn’t want that. I just wanted to study, I just wanted to learn, I just wanted… well, I didn’t want to be this either, did I?’ He touched his growing belly that was increasingly going to fat, then ran a hand through the unshaven, uncared for beard on his face.

Everything was wrong. The only thing he felt, if anything, was wrong. His clammy, sticky, and unwashed skin was a prison from which there was no escape.

‘I wonder if my family called.’ The thought wasn’t a question, a question might have led to picking up the phone, but Charlie didn’t feel like doing that.

He wanted to cry, thinking about those he knew who had no idea he had destroyed their lives, but even that comfort, that catharsis, was denied to him. Charlie Manning was a lump, and knew it.

The memory stirred of watching a man reach out to fix a propeller. A workman, he was large, strong, broad shouldered and wearing green coveralls. Laughing and joking with the others, he stuck his hand inside without realizing the machine wasn’t unplugged…

Then his hand was gone and the worker held only a bloody stump at the end of his arm, and yet, what Charlie remembered more than the blood on that clear summer’s day was that the one to lose a hand just ‘stared’ at the stump. As if confused about just where his hand had gone and why it was missing.

Spectators screamed, one fainted, but the now one handed man waited with quiet calm while the industrial strength machine was unplugged again and stopped. He then grabbed the fallen hand from just beyond the blades and said, ‘I’m going to the infirmary.’

‘I thought he was the toughest man I’d ever seen… how do you not scream at that?’ Charlie asked rhetorically, recalling the answer learned later. ‘Shock. He’d gone into shock and so he wasn’t brave in the face of pain, he simply felt none at all.’ A few weeks later the worker was back on the job and his coworkers were making ‘handyman’ puns without stopping.

‘Is that it? Am I still in shock?’ Charlie wondered, he caught a glimpse of his freckled face in the reflection of the television when the screen went dark for the rolling of the credits from a movie he hadn’t paid attention to. His face had certainly lost color and everything seemed unreal. ‘Maybe?’ He wondered.

His stomach growled at him. ‘Order in.’ He told himself, and reached down for his phone.

‘Two missed calls since last time.’ He read, and ignored it, swiping his phone he went to the keypad and began scrolling through the names of various establishments. He called Dominos… the phone rang. ‘Closed for the holiday.’ The machine voice told him before rattling off a list of menu items and specials.

Charlie hung up. ‘General Tso’s’ was another on the list. ‘Closed for the holiday’ was said to him with a slightly Chinese accent in the voice of the aged immigrant owner. ‘The extra spring rolls are always welcome…’ The thought came and went while he scrolled through other establishments.

All closed for Easter.

“Great. I have to go out.” Charlie murmured and moved his legs off of the bed again.

His body was sore from the long time laying still, he stretched and tried not to notice how bad he looked.

Charlie kicked off the pile of trash from his tracksuit and pulled it on, he didn’t bother with underwear, and when he put on his running shoes, he paid no attention to the socks.

His wallet was still in the pocket, and he trudged toward the door, forging a new path among the carpet of garbage by kicking it out of the way. ‘When was my last time outside of here?’ He asked as he stumbled over a trash bag and fell face first into a stack of plastic bottles and twenty-four pack boxes of soda. The crash and thud might have disturbed a downstairs neighbor if he had one, as it was, with nobody above or below or on either side of him, Charlie lived more alone than most in the city. Not even an immediate neighbor in any direction.

With agonizing slowness he pushed himself up out of the pile, stumbling and flailing a bit until he cleared space for his hands and scattered the pile on either side of himself and stood up.

On his feet again, Charlie reached the doorway without further instances and put a hand on the brass knob. Breathing began to come hard and labored as if he were running again, as if he were in a marathon or a tight race, and yet there was no one. ‘Just me. It’s just outside, it’s just outside… I ‘have’ to go… I have to…’ The bed seemed so appealing, and a weight settled over him like a dozen anvils, if he’d been beneath the blanket before, he doubted he could have lifted it.

But now here was the door.

The way outside.

‘C’mon… just one turn.’ he told himself.

‘One turn of the knob.’ He begged.

‘Do it.’ He pleaded.

‘Now.’ He prayed, he begged…

His hand slowly turned the knob.

The telltale click reached his ears as the inner latch went back into its hole.

‘Pull!’ he told himself, recalling a childhood story about ‘Blue’ the ox of Paul Bunyon and the giant lumberjack’s determined order to test himself against the train.

‘I’m no ‘Blue’ nor am I Paul Bunyon… but it works here. Pull, damn you! Pull!’ He cried out and drew the door back from the frame. The rattling and crackling of the door against the wall of trash pushed back the tide and opened up the view into the dimly lit hallway with its cheap red carpet and bright red glowing emergency exit sign.

The stairs were close, Charlie took a deep breath.

“Just one step. You can do this.” He told himself, and then with heaving breaths… Charlie Manning stepped beyond the doorframe of his apartment, and out into the hall.