The walls of the room were painted with the orange hue of the rising sun. Our hero has just awakened from a nap that was supposed to last for a couple of hours.
The desk beside his bed sat there judging the behavior of the lazy protagonist.
A dusty lamp with a burnt out lightbulb that was supposed to be fixed any day now placed with the pomposity of an inexpensive antique. Under it was his essentials, a pen, a business card and a cellphone. A piece of technology that felt out of place from the dusky surroundings.
He picks up his cellphone and intently tries to decipher the numbers on it's screen. Realizing that the time of his deadline has long passed, he tries to get up from his bed by the window overlooking into plain nothingness.
His limbs do not desire to listen his command. He struggles to make his arms move. Only to have them straight up in the air and not going down anytime soon. He tries to swing himself up to a more attentive position.
He felt as if he was Atlas, bearing the weight of the world that was his body, as he was cursed with its burden.
He makes a second attempt at his labor. Only to lift his head a hair's breadth.
He was making progress. Our hero felt proud.
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy", he thought, "for he made progress each time even after his failures".
"Third time's a charm" He was surprised at his willingness to believe in such a cliched concept.
He pulls himself with all of the strength gathered from the endless sacrifices his ancestors made for him.
He finds himself in a position that would be noticed as "one where he just woke up"
He turns his body over to the edge of the bed and places his feet on the ground, a task which was completed easier than the act of just getting up.
He gets up with a drowsiness comparable to that of a sloth. His vision does not exceed length of one handspan. A hunger of a beast consumes him from within.
He wakes up to no one, as he had slept all alone. A few feet away from him was the kitchen. He decides to make something for himself, for if he went another minute, he would have perished on his bed.
His joints creak as he moves his sluggish body over to the refrigerator.
Opening it, the damp air blows onto his sickly skin and he finds nothing but a single egg. "It would be enough" he thought to himself. "I could go another day" he reassured himself as he fetched the solitary egg from its cold abode. How pitiful was the egg, he pondered, alone in such an unforgiving place.
The egg submitted itself to its fate of supplying what little energy it could provide to our hero.
He dives his hands into the sink and pulls out a frying pan from the mountain of unwashed, fermented dishes.
He tries his best to scrub the ancient grease off the rusty frying pan. After rinsing it, the next step was to heat it up. Our hero grumbles to himself, blaming someone for ignoring the state of the kitchen.
He lights the stove and places the pan on it, and waits for it to absorb the heat. He pours oil on its surface, successfully completing the necessary steps to fry an egg.
All that remained was cracking the egg and pouring its contents over the hot oil. He tries to the best of his ability to crack the egg as cleanly as possibly. His care was for naught, as some pieces of shell fell in with the albumin.
He gave a look of disapproval at the hopeless contents and at his inability to perform such a simple task.
He liked his eggs with a runny yolk, so he made care as to not over cooking it.
While watching the egg on the stove, he noticed something strange moving inside the yolk.
He thought his vision is lying to him, so he tries and takes a closer look at it, being careful so as to not injure his eyes.
He sees what looked like rice, but the kind that moves. "No kind of rice moves" he thought to himself and analyzed the thing in his food. He then came to a realization. The egg had long outlived its purpose and become a source of nourishment for the miniscule forces of nature, namely, the maggots.
He continued with the cooking and took the sunny side up style egg out on a plate he managed to discover that was miraculously clean.
He watched the writhing mass inside the yellowish green yolk as he sat on the dinner table. His powerlessness made him pity himself, as he tried to make his way into what he made.
A spoonful makes its way to our hero's mouth. Reluctantly, he places it on his tongue and tries to enjoy what fate had blessed him with.
There's a brief pause in his actions, as if contemplating his decision.
He feels what it would be like if his mouth was the deep dark ocean and the morsel in his mouth was the mythological Kraken.
Thousands of insignificant specks of life wriggle over his tongue as he tries to gather his strength to chew.
He sees his strength falter, as the substance makes its way down his throat, in its whole glory. He doubts his actions, as he feels his insides churn. "Did I have any other choice?", "Was there something else I could have done?",
"This time its not my fault is it?".....
The last thought piqued his mind. "This time?", he thought. "Was there something similar that happened?". "There was"
This was not the first time he had felt this. No, he knew this feeling better than anyone else.
The feeling of the impending end.
How many times was it? Too many to count. Was there something he could've done to avoid it? If only he knew earlier.
He always realizes his fate as soon as it takes the turn for worse.
When there's no future to look forward to, when there's no thought of "what will soon culminate in this mundane life of mine?"
This has happened before.
His body felt lighter and became lighter still.
The faint strength of his muscles dissolved into pure nothingness. His mind was still intact, feeling the loss of its only vessel.
It broke down into tissues to fibers to cells to protein to energy. He couldn't help but think "Maybe next time?".