His Monday
I’ve decided to write. I thought today about how I should do something to force myself to write, but I wasn’t sure what. I also wasn’t sure what I’d write about. I was thinking first of a random word generator, but then I realized I had an infinite number of random words at my fingertips. “The 12th word,” I thought. “I will use the 12th word of the top story at cnn.com as my seed word.” Imagining I would take that word and twist it into an irreverent mess of a story, I smiled. But one word was a little too limitless. I clicked through to open the story, the short blurb on the front wasn’t, as I had expected, the first few paragraphs of the story. “The 12th words,” I revised. “I will use the 12th word of the blurb, and the 12th word of the story itself. Except in the case of stupid words like ‘the,’ and whatever else I deem stupid. I shall have ultimate veto power!”
I grinned. I like power.
And when I got home, I checked my words: His. “That works, I guess,” I thought. Next word: “the.” Lame. Ok 11th word: Monday. That seemed to work for me. “His Monday.” And off I went, to write this post. Only once looking back when I needed to confirm that the 12th word had indeed been ‘the.’ It was. But the 11th word was not ‘Monday.’ How did I fuck that up? The real 11th word ended up being ‘make.’ Was I going crazy? Perhaps CNN often updates stories ‘live,’ especially those that are popular. “His Make” is stupid, I will go with “His Monday,” because I have ULTIMATE VETO POWER.
And so the tale begins: His Monday.
He awoke earlier than his alarm had suggested, earlier then he had suggested his alarm suggest. He had set it for 7:45am. Not so late that he didn’t have time to eat breakfast (or so he told himself, rarely eating breakfast anyway), and not so early that he considered it ‘worthwhile’ to waste his time idly surfing the internet (which he did instead of eating breakfast, he just didn’t acknowledge it as ‘worthwhile’). He had set it for 7:45 a few months ago, and never bothered to change it. But today he woke up earlier than his alarm had suggested, earlier than he had suggested his alarm suggest. Today he woke up at 12:00. He had only put his head to pillow perhaps a minute before, but he closed his eyes and then reopened them and the clock had switched in that period from 11:59 to 12:00. He hadn’t recalled actually falling asleep or actually waking up, but as he pondered that he was hard pressed to ratify the notion that he ever recalled the actual moment of falling asleep or waking up. Perhaps he had slept, and awoken today anew.
He let his eyes dart about the room, testing them for the normal signs of tiredness: there were none. He hardly felt sleepy at all. He checked his breath and ran his tongue over his teeth: disgusting! That checked out as well. He leapt from bed and arched his back, stretching his limbs in a flailing manner–he felt various joints crack. He reached down between his legs for a scratch, his limp cock dangled there. ‘That’s different,’ he thought; his cock usually awoke before him.
He found himself slightly worried now. What was off? The lights. He reached to the wall where he knew the switch to be. Upon finding it he paused, wondering how he might react if this too were different. No, that checked out; flipping the switch resulted in the lights turning on. Perhaps his fear had been allayed and he could return to rest. Or even more perhaps he was now eager to find something amiss, and he set about his house in search of other anomalies.
The toilet flushed, as expected. The ice-maker produced ice. The ranges clicked to life and produced flame as they always had, and the oven made its warming ‘hum’ as its temperature slowly rose, ready to cook whatever he might place in it. The sink watered and the cupboards applauded. His socks slide across the linoleum floor. The toaster toasted and the refrigerator light came on when he checked inside before ajaring the door.
His cats meowed and his floorboards creaked and the mirror with which he danced shattered just as it should when he tossed it aside. His TV crunched with delight and the sound sent shivers into his toes, now plitting upon the water soaked floor. Each window shatter brought on another light from without, and the symphony he conducted became a puppet show as he commanded his neighbors speak, ‘what is he doing?’ He mouthed the words as they did. ‘Call the police,’ ‘I don’t believe this,’ ‘what is this guy’s problem.’ Upon strings he led them around, looking each in the eye as he tore a curtain from its rod, put his foot through the wall, howled at the moon, and pissed to the wind–something he’d always wanted to try.
It was all real, this he could now tell. Things weren’t so different as he might have feared or hoped. The world was exactly what he knew of it, neighbors and all.
When the police arrived he calmly spoke with them, stating that he was not aware of the noise ordinance, but also suggesting that the noise wasn’t nearly as bad in the last 5 minutes since they’d arrived and been speaking with him.
“Goodbye, officers,” he called with a grin as they walked down his steps and away from him. Mouthing their words, he knew what they’d say, “Fuck that guy, I fucking hate Mondays.”