GREEN DUST

short prose piece

When he woke that morning he knew anyone could kill anyone and that dead things were living in his head. His bedroom wall was a bleak yellow and the bed was full of insects he couldn’t see but knew were there because his skin could feel them in the sleep of night. In a room downstairs people were talking in voices he knew existed in their throats but the names refused to materialize.

He threw off a soiled sheet and made his way to the left. After drippage he clothed himself and looked at himself in a smeared mirror. He said nothing then left the room. The downstairs voices had stopped.

Someone looked up and he was standing before everyone. No one said anything to anyone else. He grabbed a box of stale cereal and sat at the dingy table. The window above the sink was shattered and flies were buzzing in and out. The flies looked the same as the ones he had seen the day before and he knew that either they were the same flies or different ones but in essence they were all the same.

The cereal tasted not like soggy cardboard but drenched re-dried kelp. He ate it anyway and faces looked on with voices muted by his presence. He was a killer but they didn’t know anything about him. Nothing specific. Not that he was a killer and that anyone could kill anyone else if anyone thought about it long enough.

He took the emptied bowl and dropped it into the sink. The flies swarmed around the bowl which still had straggling bits of milk-sopped kelp-flakes in it. He knew that behind him the faces were still looking and that a couple of them were staring and that those who were just looking were the ones he wanted to kill the most.

He turned and faced them.

The flies were buzzing.