Charlie glanced over the side of the bed and down at the floor to see if it might have fallen at some point. “This is… no… what was I even going to say?” He asked and rolled onto his back, the sheets rustled under his body when he lay flat and stopped when he became still. He put his hand over his forehead and stared up at the ceiling. “What was I thinking… Josef was here, dinner was… no… when was it?”

A bird chirped outside of his window and flitted away out of sight a moment later.

“Josef was here last night… I told him everything, damn, what he said was smart too… Did that actually happen? Did it? Did I imagine everything? And where’s my fucking clock?” Charlie asked in a rough, weary voice before glancing out of the corner of his eye. The bottle wasn’t on the table, nor was Josef’s glass.

To say Charlie felt ‘good’ would have been a lie. His body felt limp, weightless almost, his fingers slid easily over sweat slicked skin. ‘I stink, don’t I?’

That never felt good.

But… he felt different. The pounding weight of the dying world on his shoulders was no longer present. His spoken release to his oldest friend, brought about a catharsis that let him move, at least a bit. The ache, the sense of loss for the world he knew was still with him, but it was like an old war wound. Something he had to live with, a scar that would not go away, but the wound no longer had to cripple him.

He swung his legs over the side of his bed and looked out over the sea of waste he’d been living in, not for the first time, Charlie was disgusted. “God, it’s like I’ve been… no. No it isn’t ‘like’ living in a dump. It is a dump, and I’ve been living in it.”

‘Still… I wonder, am I losing my mind?’ The scientist didn’t have the courage to verbalize the question at that moment, but it remained locked inside of his head and demanded his attention.

But the filth demanded even more.

Charlie went to the window and opened it up to let some of the foul smelling air out.

He then went to the shower and turned the water on. Immediately the clear water jetted out and battered against the lower part of the far wall, as it did so Charlie went to the sink and opened the cabinet underneath. A blue bucket with a pointed lip at the otherwise round surface caught his eye, he snatched it up and then reached in for bleach and Pine Sol. “Ahhh, lemon fresh.” He said when he opened the top of the bottle.

He popped the cap of the white bleach bottle and poured a cap’s worth or two into the bucket, it landed in the empty container with a rain like clatter, reminding him of the sound of rain echoing off the alley.

‘Those guys… the homeless folks… I wonder if they’re still there? Probably… maybe?’ There were some things that even math couldn’t tell him. ‘Well, if I knew more variables like their daily habits… maybe with a high degree of probability I could-’ He stopped.

“Shut up Charlie.” He told himself and unscrewed the bottle of yellow floor cleaner, he dumped about a quarter cup into the bucket with the bleach, set the bottle aside and reached for the door of the shower.

He swung the door open, stuck the bucket under the and listened patiently while it began to fill. He stood and watched as drops raced down, “Approximately two point one gallons of water per minute from the average shower, bucket holds five gallons, just one minute should be enough for now.” Charlie did the math without thinking and started counting down from sixty while he went into the kitchen.

He crouched down at the sink and opened the doors beneath. ‘Yeah, somehow… I figured.’ Charlie thought and withdrew a small unopened box of black hefty bags. “Hefty hefty hefty…” he held the orange square box, raising it and lowering it as he spoke in a deep voice, imitating a commercial he hadn’t seen since childhood. He tore the perforation around the center and yanked the first bag out with a loud crinkling noise.

“Why do I do that?” He asked and went back into the living area and began to pick up the garbage and while holding the large open mouth of the bag in one hand, he began to bend down and throw refuse into the opening.

He wasn’t at it for long before he reflexively started counting out loud.

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One.” He was heading back to the shower before he’d said ‘three’ not with much speed, when he looked down, he could barely see his toes. “Wow, you really let yourself go, didn’t you Charlie…”

“And… now you’re talking to yourself, well shit… of course you ‘know’ you’re talking to yourself and so that means you’re not actually crazy.” Charlie said with as much confidence as he could muster while he turned the water off and snatched the bucket out.

The door swung open and he brought it close to the entryway into the main living area. He ducked back in and took the microfiber mop out from where it lay against the corner and set it in the bucket. The amber liquid turned the water a bit darker and the fragrant scent of lemon hit his nose after sloshing the mop around in it for a moment.

“OK, now to make some space.” He let go of the mop, clapped his hands together and gave them a good rub, and a little grin formed when he remembered one of the first math formulas he’d ever done just to mess with people. “One hand rub equals twelve joules, human skin is three thousand three hundred and ninety one J/(kg·°C), therefore with a temperature of about thirty-seven degrees celsius and a third degree burn temperature of forty-four degrees celsius I need to raise the temperature by seven degrees celsius. Avoiding the pitfall of dissipation of heat in the open air and figuring a weight of about zero point five kilograms, if I want to set my hands on fire by rubbing them, then I need roughly one hundred and fifty hand rubs each second for about ten seconds…”

Then his inner teenager came out, ‘So if Superman jerked off in a forest and then touched a tree, would he start a fire?’

He rolled his eyes at his own juvenile humor, but the bark of laughter came out of its own accord, and it felt good, genuinely good, his chest rose and fell with a constant, steady chuckle while Charlie bent over and began throwing garbage away into the black bag again.

It was slow going, starting with kicking his way over to the kitchen, ‘Always more… god’s dice I dumped a lot…’ He mouthed the words but didn’t say them while he worked, the rattling bag and foul odor of rotten cheese or moldy soggy chips and bits of bones from a chicken place had become like a monster. A monster whose weapon was stench.

As he picked through the refuse with two fingers he couldn’t help but crinkle his nose. “Ew. How did I let myself live like this…?” He asked and yanked his hand back when a brown roach skittered out of hiding, ran across his hand faster than it could withdraw, and then bury itself under more garbage.

As his hand yanked back, he caught his finger on something sharp and yanked it back. “Damnit!” Charlie cursed and had his finger halfway up to his mouth to suck on the wound before he stopped himself.

He glared at the upright pointer finger like it had personally done him wrong. A little drop of red just at the tip. “Nope! Fuck… you… finger. You are not going in my mouth after what you’ve touched… I need gloves… god damn I need gloves…” Charlie cursed with a shudder.

“Should have thought of that in the first place, twit.” Charlie snorted in self derision before the cause of his injury caught his eye when it tumbled into the middle of the open space his cleaning had created. The ‘open’ space was clearly not the same as ‘clean’. A tilted over soda at some point had spilled clear sprite onto the floor and coated that part with a nasty little ‘sheen’ that caught the light of the day and made it glimmery with its off colored stickiness.

Sitting in the middle of it was a little blue fragment of glass. “One more of you, eh.” Charlie reached down and took it in between his thumb and injured forefinger.

He slowly ‘peeled’ it away with a disgusting little tearing noise and then carried it into the kitchen. He set it down beside the others and looked back over his shoulder. “This… is going to take awhile.” He took a long slow breath then turned around and headed back into the living area to get back to work again.