ABSTRACTIA - The cockroach

THE COCKROACH

I stroll the aisles looking for something good. Fluorescent light illuminates greasy ramen packs and half-opened chip bags with a sickly green. I hear the convenience store door swing open and watch as a group of guys barges in. Their laughing and bickering and bantering fill the cramped little shop. I watch them as they make their way through. They open the cooler and grab a few beers. One of the super awesome dude bros bumps into an aisle and knocks over a granola bar. He doesn't even put it back in the right spot. All they do is talk and talk and talk. The way one of them enunciates their words, the stupid faces they keep making at each other, it all pisses me off. What could possibly be so entertaining about their lives that they feel the need to disrupt everybody else's shopping experience? As I watch them leave, I almost feel bad for the apes, ignorant of how much better my life is.

It's dark on my way back to the apartment with only the occasional street lamp lighting the way. A chill breeze blows through the air. They kind of look like stage lights, the street lamps. Only bringing your attention to whatever's under. Where the light doesn't shine, though, you should pay no mind. The dark is just unimportant set dressing between where you are and where you're trying to go. Its identity is its lack of identity. What about what's under the dark, does that have no more meaning? Are things really that dependent on our perception? What would happen if every single human dropped dead right now? Does the world cease to exist, or would it become something else entirely? I'm right outside my apartment, but looking up ahead, I see something odd. In front of me, street lamps stretch out into the distance, and in between two, there's a dead one. I can make out a silhouette under it. At first I think it's a person, but it's too off to be. Was it just a pile of trash? No, it was definitely a person. They have wild, mangy hair. They're in the oddest pose. Completely still, their body contorted themselves like a dead bug, their hands clawing at the air. I stare at her, annoyed. How was I supposed to know what was gonna happen? It wasn't my fault. I don't have the time for this bullshit. I walk into the apartment.

I'm in my room eating the ham sandwich I bought. The dry bread scrapes against my tongue like sandpaper. The ham tastes like soap. Wet chunks squish and slosh around in my mouth. The texture’s all wrong, like chunky oatmeal. I sit alone there in my room with only the ceiling fan’s rattle keeping me company. There was only one thing left to do. I lie down watching the fan above me go round and round. I close my eyes and drift off.

I wake up to laughing, a lot of laughing. I'm in a high school cafeteria. Hundreds of cardboard cutouts cluster around the middle. They all have pictures of people on them. The laughing isn't coming from them, though; it's as if the laughing is a part of the room itself. I can see my neighbor in the center of the cutouts. He's crying completely naked and balled up on the floor. This must be his dream. “If I'm so ugly, just look away, god dammit!” he screams. “I don't even care anymore! My inner beauty is what matters!” He's now standing up, still crying, but flaunting his body to the cutouts. I better leave before this gets weird. I open one of the doors leading out of the cafeteria. More cardboard cutouts line the halls. I walk past classroom after classroom. I go on for miles.

The further I went, the weirder things got. hallways branched out at irregular angles, rooms squashed and stretched, doors plastered themselves on the ceiling. The cardboard cutouts we're getting lazier, too. Eyes would be misplaced, a mouth slightly too big for a head. It was like the school was forgetting what a school looked like. It feels wrong walking through here, like I'm somewhere I shouldn't be. As I continue, I can't shake this feeling of offness. I think about how alone I actually am here. I've been walking for hours down these endless corridors of concrete and cardboard. I start finding these long stretches of dark where the lights on the ceiling don't work. The cutouts obscure into dark, blurry shapes. I feel like I'm being watched. Despite everything, though, I persist. I persist because I'm the only one who can. I'll be the only human being to ever set foot here. How many people can say that? How many people can say they've seen the sights I've seen? I don't have time for the mundanities of the world. I'm no needy cockroach craving money or sex. I’ll leave all that for the common man. Me? I'm a divine explorer of a new frontier. What I do matters.

I take a deep breath and try to calm down. There was nothing here, I remind myself. As I trek forward, I become aware of how quiet it is. There's no noise here. Only my footsteps are left to echo across the hall. They feel so loud amid the perfect stillness of everything. Something was definitely wrong. The walls boil with this hatred. Every cutout I walk past, I know is staring at me. I start sweating. I've gone too far. I wasn't supposed to be here. There's this tension in the air. What was once a simple hallway has morphed into something else. The walls now warp and twist like the ebb and flow of the ocean. Everything seethes with a cruel volition. I can't breathe. I can't take it anymore. I stand there trying to gather my thoughts. Trying to calm down. But there's only one thought screaming in my skull. I have to get out of here. I have to run. I turn back, sprinting. I run past dark silhouettes through twisting halls. I'm not supposed to be here. There have been so many branching off halls. I lost track of where I came from. I just pick a random path. I'm not supposed to be here. I trip over myself, making a crunchy thud as my head hits the floor. I'm not supposed to be here. My head is aching, and I think I'm bleeding. I'm not supposed to be here. I open a door and see a window within a classroom. It's pitch black on the other side, but I don't care. I want to get out of here. I need to get out of here. I run full force into the window, shattering it. I start to fall.

I'm in a vast expanse. So big. Incomprehensibly so. Around me, I see giant clusters of hallways and classrooms. They jut out of each other like veins. They just stretch on and on and on, suspended in this void. It shows me everything. The infinity upon infinity that constitutes this plane. It doesn't stop showing me. I'm an infinitesimally small speck on this endless canvas. Do we truly make these places? Maybe they were always here. Just waiting. It's all too much. My head hurts. This place just goes on and on forever. It's maddening. My brain can't take it. I scream.

I wake up terrified. I'm gasping for air. What was that? What was that? In my entire life, I've never encountered anything like that. After a while, I manage to get a hold of my breath. I sit there on my bed just reflecting. Wherever I was, it was old. Older than just tonight. We think of dreams as these places defined by our perception, but what if we just find them? Taint them with our perception. I notice something trickling down from my head. I was bleeding. I go into the bathroom and examine the wound. Just a superficial cut. After patching myself up, I check the time on my phone. It was still only 4. I sit there weighing my options. I look around at my barren room. Just a mattress, and a half-eaten ham sandwich on the floor. What else was there to do? I lie down and go back to sleep.