Residue
He never noticed his world shrinking until it was already so small that he found himself bumping up against it's edges. That was happening today.
He needed to wash the dishes badly. They were piled everywhere: on top of the microwave, on the radiator cover, obscuring the stove burners. The sauce pans were crusted with the remnants of mashed potatoes and other, less recognizable, things. They would need to be filled with water and left to sit, but where?
He could barely walk around his small efficiency without knocking piles of dishes over, so he'd assumed a sort of hunched position on the floor in front of his computer.
He was beginning to feel ridiculous and guilty, like one of those poor people whose psychosis becomes the subject of public ridicule on that awful reality show "Horders." Time to get up.
He started to stand, but his fingernails snagged the carpet. He returned to hunching. Before he could do anything else, he would need to clip his fingernails. He couldn't stand to do any even vaguely manual task with his fingernails that long.
He didn't know where to even begin to look amongst the piles for his nail clippers.The very thought of it overwhelmed him. He'd have to go to the drugstore and buy new ones before he could even start on anything. But damn. That would mean a shower first. There was no way he could leave his apartment with his hair all grease-slicked into these odd and disturbing peaks.
He started to stand again. On his way up, his field of vision narrowed. He stumbled forward a little, his body not yet fully vertical. He remembered that he hadn't eaten anything all weekend really. Well, anything besides Cheetos.
He decided that what he really needed was some food, maybe some coffee. Surely, with proper nutrition and caffeine, the tasks before him wouldn't feel so blown out all proportion and gargantuan and impossible.
He covered his very bad hair with a toboggan. Okay, that was progress. His coat and keys were right were he'd put them after work on Friday afternoon.
Just open the door and walk out. Nobody cares. Nobody will notice you. There are thousands of people walking around out there. Some of them probably have greasy hair and disgusting kitchens. Nobody will notice you, seriously. This will only take a minute.
He tried to remember when he these sorts of pep talks first became necessary.
He wondered if he was actually crazy.
He opened the door.
He made it out of building without seeing any of the other tenants, which he had expected. He pretty much never saw anyone else in the halls. That was lucky and good, but sometimes it made him feel even weirder. So few people had even ever seen the interior of his apartment. He tried to count them: His mom, his dad, the odd friend here and there. It was definitely less than five. That, plus the apparent lack of other people in the building, made his apartment, and thus the hours he spent alone in there, feel not completely real.
It was warmer than he'd thought it would be on the street. The sandwich chain where he knew he could get quick takeout was maybe two blocks west of his building. There was a steady stream of people heading east down the sidewalk. He wondered if there were always this many people on the street on Sunday. He wondered what time it was.
He tried to look at each person's face for just a second and then look in front of him, the way he imagined a normal person might. He found that his timing was very off. He couldn't quite remember the appropriate ratio of face glances to forward glances.
He decided to stop with the face glancing all together, but then he worried that he was hunching and scowling. He thought people might assume that he was homeless.
Finally, the warm commercial glow of the sandwich chain was upon him.
He was very grateful that no one was going out as he was coming in. The correct formula for determining whether or not to hold the door open (let x represent the distance between person a and the door, then add .5 for every grocery bag, infant, etc. person a is carrying...) was was too much for the universe to ask him to recall.
He approached the counter and said hi to the girl behind it before he could stop himself. The "hi" came out scratchy and too deep. It occurred to him that he hadn't spoken a word out load since Friday morning.
The girl smiled at him from beneath her visor.
But shit, he didn't know what he wanted yet.
"Ahhh. Just a minute." He stepped back and sort of off to the side. The menu was just far enough away that he had trouble seeing it, and as he squinted up at it, it occurred to him that others might confuse his "trying to see" face for a "thinking comically hard about what I want from the sandwich shop" face.
He moved back in front of the register.
"You ready?" asked the girl.
"So can I get half a (long pause as he squinted hard at the menu again) Tuscan turkey breast sandwich and a cup of broccoli cheese soup."
"Sure. Can I get a name?" she asks as she punches the order into the register.
"Um to go please. And a cup of coffee."
"Uh okay." More punching. "And your name?"
"Uh John." Something about the abruptness of his short name made him feel the need to preface it with an extra syllable.
"So is that A J O N,?" She asks.
"No. Just John. Sorry." He cringed and wondered what kind of person got their own name wrong.
He paid with cash and was careful not to touch the girl's hand as he handed over the coins. But maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Maybe normal people touched the cashier's hand, or at least didn't actively try not to. Maybe purposefully avoiding her hand was aloof and insulting.
As he walked toward the takeout counter, he comforted himself with the thought that, soon enough, he could steel back to his apartment with his soup and maybe clean up a little bit and become a normal person again. He was trying to convince himself that with a shower and a warm meal, the horrible fog that was muddling all his interactions would lift and he could look a person in the eye again without wondering if he was doing it wrong.
Another girl with another visor placed a brown paper bag on the counter.
He couldn't tell what name she had said. It sounded like John. It could have been Jan. Jean maybe? He looked around. A lady stood in the corner. She wasn't making a move. He smiled at her. He felt like maybe he looked frantic. Did they normally complete to go orders so quickly here?
Maybe they did. He grabbed the bag left and the building.
That wasn't so bad. No, it wasn't. Nobody thought anything of me. I was just another patron. Just another guy buying soup. Everyone was too wrapped up in their own thoughts to care if I looked at the menu too intensely. Yeah, she definitely said John.
He unlocked the front door of his building, but before he could ascend the first flight of stairs, he was gripped with dread.
He knew what he would see before he even opened the bag. Jan's (Jen's?) almond chicken salad where his turkey sandwich and broccoli cheese soup should be. He was a monster.
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