Burrow

Wednesday

Underneath a burrow of lamentable killers of aspirations lay the breathing dead. A breed of men--obsequious to false substance--vegetated in the temporary numbing of reality, the pain to be confronted, the love left to gain beyond the veil that negates the fortitude of will, and the many intricacies their souls have been devoid of. These men were not always strangers to what they unknowingly longed for. While their deficiencies drove the acceleration of the loss in their character, the perversion of their rationalization isolated them further into a heavy abyss of anguish. The concoctions they consumed for their depreciative state, if not moderated, beget compounding cycles into the acceleration of the ugly demise in which they dwelled.

Among the dead that spoke, as they wet their frayed nerves to better thread the needle to sew their lives, symphonies of memory served the catalyst of their consumption. Hearts--though set aside to marinate in different flavors of dread--were still beating to the music despite the propensity of their hosts to forget what ailed them. One such exemplary model was Nathan. Nathan's epidermis was a rotting shell; his eyes were opaque with fermented gloom while they glistened to the slow-bleeding light of the tavern. A tangibly ill and intangibly hurt man in his mid-twenties. Though misery loves company, (and there was plenty of both in this hole) he drew both from the ubiquity of his social media accounts in his phone. Inundated in red neon lights and smoke, perched on a bar stool, he hovered over a double whiskey and coke. The patrons shouted their conversations over the terrible country music as he lounged in the obscurity of solitude in plain sight.

Like the alcohol, the mediums purposed to supplement the human's reward system were perverse with the underlying intentions to keep them grasped in the callous monetization of voluntarily surrendered dignity. The constant vibrations, notifications, and attention seeking functions of a phone infected by social media stimulated a human response, but the stimulant was more effective on an isolated, social-laden soul. Like a drug, a typical addict of such a vice would get withdrawals from being away from their phone for too long. The catch of this carnival game in life was the perception of moderation. The concept within a person of what was too little or too much of anything was like a fly eluding a swatting. The rest of the bar flies and NATHAN in the tavern had been swatted along with the ever-increasing numbers of alcoholics in the country. The dangers of substance abuse had been present for generations, but in the modern vicissitudes of society in which human psychology was relegated to a reactive state in which it could not keep up to the proliferation of new social issues, a tried and true drink gave the grounding an anxiety-ridden mind desired.

Nathan was a shift worker of the nocturnal persuasion. His hate for his job was constantly counteracted into indifference on account of how the company took care of him financially and with the benefits to continue his vices. He wouldn't have been able to see a psychiatrist or therapist without the insurance. But for the previous two years, his consumption had been outpacing his means, and he had been sinking in debt just to buy groceries and pay rent. Still, he partitioned enough to drink on most days of every week.

As he sipped his nightly ration, the news on the muted television behind the bar caught his flickering eyes. It reported a storm was forming off the coast of Texas with the possibility to bring flood waters with it. He didn't mind an excuse to stay in, but he was hoping it would be convenient enough to show during the work week. Based on the projections, a tropical depression was headed towards the southern part of the Texas coast with bands of heavy rain breaking away towards Houston after landfall. He experienced enough flooding to know how much of a pain in the ass tropical storms were, but his townhome didn't flood during the two consecutive five-hundred-year floods. He thought being forced to stay indoors along with the rest of the city could make him feel better for having a legitimate reason--unlike the times he did it voluntarily on weekends. This time he was wishing to shorten the work week. He paid his tab and stumbled his way back to his townhome next door.

The townhome was a narrow, brown brick compartment within an apartment complex. It sat next to one of the complex's laundromats and a palm tree that hovered over a bench people liked to sit on while they kept watch over their rags. When he opened the front door to his home, there was a stench of stagnation. His houseplants were all dead, the roaches could be heard scattering, and the lightbulbs buzzed as they worked to reveal the dreary white walls and brown floor. He had tried sprucing up the place by hanging art and leaving figurines in different corners. The house plants were an idea from a few months before that didn't last no matter how much he watered them. This home he called his "box" drained the life out of anything he brought in it despite his attempts to make it appear as if someone wholesome lived in it. He was not messy by any means, but his organization of his stuff was precarious in the sense that no matter how out of place something may have seemed, his placement of everything was a deliberate assignment. He made his heavy-footed way up the carpeted stairs as the wood underneath creaked. The moonlight struck the venetian blinds and bled a sonnet of horizontal striations on the staircase. The wooden hand rail detached slightly from the fasteners from his obvious mistrust in himself. An immediate turn from the top of the stairs and he dropped onto his indented bed and drifted into a sluggish deep sleep.

He woke up to the familiar delirious throbbing in the morning and went through his routine morning progressions before getting in the shower. The water ran hot while he stood in it to sweat and wash away the liquor from the night before. He rested his head against the wall while his eyes took refuge under their canopy of cranial confliction enveloped in thoughts of how utterly painful and empty he felt. Life was a blur of regimental evisceration. Waking up hungover in the late morning, going to work a long evening shift, coming home to drink the rest of the night away, and repeating. He knew it was a routine he needed to disrupt, and his psychiatrist advised him to give up drinking all together while he was on antidepressants, but he still felt he was somehow in control. He kept recounting his therapist's advice. Live in the moment, get out of yourself. He's made incremental improvements in minute aspects of his life so far, but he didn't feel most of what she said was useful. He grabbed his blue bath sponge to finish washing before hanging it back next to the pink one that hadn't been used in over a year. He glanced at the rusty pink women's razor next to it. He'd been meaning to toss them away.

The hardest part of looking in the mirror was knowing what to expect from his condition. He was avoidant of himself as he dressed for work. If his involuntary somber expression wasn't enough, it was his inflamed face from an embroiled body under constant duress. He knew the drinking was catching up when his hands were clumsy while grabbing small objects in hurry; unlike his precise old self that would toss things from one hand to another like a juggler always refining his skill. His old self was the beacon from which his fallen grace had enveloped his life into a perpetuation of self-loathing. The young man who was a health nut of extreme confidence and full of life was now a pile of deprecating pudge. A once narrow, smooth face the ladies approved of was now a bloated expression of poor health. A young, muscular man of medium stature who ran several miles a day and appeared as if he could lift a small car was now a swollen, yet still able-bodied mass. He had been working out again, but not enough to make any notable difference aside from tanning everywhere a t-shirt and shorts didn't cover. The only thing he carried from his former self was the spiky flattop haircut he had since his days in college.

He turned the television on before rushing to prepare his lunch for the evening shift ahead. The news was reporting the Red Cross was mobilizing for the storm while Nathan remained preoccupied making sandwiches out of stale bread and insufficient condiments to spread. He turned the television off and walked briskly out of his townhome to his gray sedan. The complex was small yet difficult to navigate on account of the ridiculously steep speedbumps and constant obstructions from moving trucks and cable company vans.

Once he cleared the complex, his music blared as he sped to beat stop lights in hopes to sooner penetrate the freeway traffic. After every drive he was amazed at how much of his awareness he'd lose. As he weaved through traffic, his mind would wander into an oblivious stupor of festering randomness that he neglected himself of every night he wasn't sober. The thoughts that haunt a typical person as they lay before falling to sleep would rear their demonic heads while he drowned in road noise and the piercing stereo. His mind was shifted out of alignment from his waking life, and during the bustle of hurried morning preparations followed by a passive aggressive drive through chaos on concrete, he would feel heavy bouts of anxiety from the lack of time he would give himself to think. As this ball of languished nerves drove, it ignored the message signs reading STORM FORMING IN GULF. MAKE PREPARATIONS.

His desk was stacked with paperwork in an anticipative manner for his arrival with the hundreds of emails in his computer to match. It wouldn't take long for him to get in a groove and sift through it to prioritize the daily backlog. As if it wasn't enough torment for him to feel as if he didn't have time to think in the mornings, work offered even less opportunity of respite. He opened the prioritized e-mail:

Hurricane:

A hurricane is set to make landfall in the southern Texas coast this Friday. We're expecting major flooding as the storm's rain bands make their way to Houston after landfall. Operations will continue as normal in Houston until Friday. We will assess conditions as they develop, but as of now, do not plan any appointments for Monday and Tuesday--which are days that we're expected to experience flooding.

"Are you getting ready for the storm," his coworker asked as he passed holding a box of files amid the bustle of scattered motions in the office.

Nathan quickly composed himself for his first words of the day. "I didn't think it was going to be that serious."

"They're saying it's going to be a category five now. My wife is stocking up on food." He scurried off with his files and left Nathan to his provisions of work. He relished the soft confirmation of an extended weekend with thoughts of the movies, video games, and alcohol he would enjoy devoid of any obligation needing him to step foot out of his townhome. He was being forced to be king of his box with an exemption of the guilt of vegetating.

The evening shift went by quickly for Nathan and he would cruise home in a steady pace without the daytime traffic to raise his anxiety. This time he would notice the freeway signs glowing bright. HURRICANE COMING. KEEP GAS TANKS FULL.

The roaches would scatter as usual when Nathan walked through his front door. He passed his buddy, Wayne, who was lounging on his couch as he occasionally would. Nathan didn't mind Wayne's company, but it wasn't as if he had room to be picky with company. He poured a glass of vodka and settled in for the night and reminded himself to stock up with more the next day. He turned the television on and listened to the news as he perused his social media feeds to look at his online acquaintances' thoughts of the imminent event. As expected, everyone was being humorous and posting memes about the hurricane. Wayne, disheveled and groggy-eyed, sat up and interjected into Nathan's attention. "Everyone's making such a big damn deal about this storm. It's just the fucking news trying to cash in on scaring people. If it floods it'll be a good thing. We can just stay in, drink it up, maybe play a few video games, am I right?" Nathan looked at Wayne with an indifference about his comments and shrugged.

After the final swig and getting his fill of news projections, he adjourned upstairs. For a relatively sober night, he thought numbing his mind by sleeping would him feel content. The prospect of something to look forward to certainly made sleeping easier for him.