So Cold

There is no real me. There is only an entity. I am something of an intelligible fellow. I am known well amongst my colleagues and am well liked by various acquaintances, but I tend to stay hidden among the darkness that I have felt so comfortable with for so many years.  Although I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are properly comparable, I am simply not there. I have become cold. I cannot sense your feelings nor do I care for your thoughts to infiltrate my own. I have built walls to protect me and to hide from the sorrowfulness that the authentic world has inflicted upon me. I stare out my window and see the inhospitable wintry weather engulf the terrain outside and I can no longer feel any heartrending despair. My past desolations trap me inside the prison of my mind and I cannot escape.  I feel myself slipping farther and farther away from humanity and I am starting to scare myself.  When I am out in the midst of the real world and I am forced to interact with the general public I put on a show, an act if you will. What I let others see is only a facade. It’s not really me. My veneer is truly obscured behind a mask but deep down inside I am deeply disturbed and I am deeply unhappy.  Therefore, I wander alone in the cold night of this dreadful city because I am in an obligatory state of affairs to remain here. I am thirty-one years old and I never married and have no children.  I am just a poor single male with no family or love to call my own. Not all my past relationships ever lasted. No woman wants a man who can hardly keep his own feet on the ground. I work in an appalling atmosphere dealing with the asses of management who are constantly working me over like a dog and paying me just enough above minimum wage so I can hardly get by.  The stress is astonishing and is overwhelming at times. Sometimes I wish that I can get away and that I can leave here. I wish I could become invisible and disappear before your eyes.  I find myself waiting for something, but I know what is coming to me is never going to arrive and I wait here all the same.  
I have come to the realization that I awake screaming every morning after a habitually repetitive disturbing dream. The dream is confusing and is gorged with hostility and animosity regarding an ominously abundant figure that I can not distinguish, It seems to liger over me watching as I kneel in a pool of blood. I am sobbing uncontrollably as I notice a blood stained knife in my hands and a woman lying dead not even six feet in front of me.  I can’t see the woman’s face but I feel as if I know her well and the anguish I endure from her death is horrendously excruciating. The figure laughs hysterically as I yell in anguish. His laughter only infuriates me and I arise up to attack the figure with the blood soaked knife that I am still grasping fiercely in my hand. As I try to assault the figure, time itself seems to slow and I am unable to move.  My motions slowed to a lifeless crawl and my adversary taunts my every move.  Then I notice that the room that I am in starts to change. The colors of the walls change hue from a nauseating yellow to a hideous orange and the walls start to bleed. As I lunge forward I begin to see his face and I become conscious that my menacing antagonist is me, but I can’t stop my motion and I thrust the knife deep into my assailant and pierce his heart. The room than quickly darkens and I fall to the ground next to the woman that I saw before. She is still alive but can barley breathe. She whispers something to me that I can’t understand and she drops her head and takes her last breath. I then look down and see the knife that I used to strike my foe and it is wedged deep into my own heart. Then I awake screaming with tears in my eyes.
I get up and shake the images from my mind. It’s three o’clock in the morning and my room is an icebox. I stand to look out a window that a soft blue glow from the streetlight illuminates into my room. It is so unpleasantly cold that when I inhale deeply I can see my own breathe against the window. My breath starts to form ice on the window obscuring my view of the quiet city streets. I roam through my room still overcome and bewildered from my slumber but I can’t go back to bed. Therefore, I decided to throw on a robe and leave my bedroom to start my day a bit earlier than I would have hoped. My days have seemed to get a premature start everyday recently but I don’t mind for the reason that it keeps me from the dreams. I walk toward the kitchen to turn on the coffee pot and try to stimulate myself into a sensational state of mind. I slightly chuckle to myself and ask, but whom am I trying to kid? As I sit on the stool in my kitchen, I turn to look at the rest of my small bleak apartment. In the living room, I have one deprived lazy boy chair facing an aged TV that has a pair of rabbit ears attached in order to get some kind of picture. Its futile I know but at least I can see the obscured pictures of the day. There is a stack of DVDs accumulated next to the TV but they are mainly horror movies. (Maybe that may explain my nightmares.) My CD player barely works and the antenna’s broken so I have an old coat hanger shoved in it to get reception.  My lamp is broken and bends slightly to the left. The table that sits under it is missing a part of its leg so I have a couple of books positioned beneath it to level it out. The walls are bare and are in the need of a coat of paint. The blinds on the windows are broken and fall down. The floors are ice cold and have papers chaotically pitched throughout the place. The kitchen has dishes disorderly pilled up in the sink and the trash obviously needs to me taken out. I’m in the need of a first-class house cleaning but I’m either too uninspiring or too depressed to care. Besides, no one knocking down my door to visit and I have no one to impress. Consequently, I saunter through my darkened house with such negativity on my mind.
Outside I can hear my neighbors coming in from their night out at the bar. He is very loud and obnoxious when he is so lit. Outside I can see him and his girl in their nightly drunken stupor as they fall over each other in the snow. They both laugh with excitement at each other for their own idiotically. They seem to completely enjoy themselves as they hurl snowballs at each other and heaved themselves down on the ground to make snow angels. He stood up and yelled as loud as he could, “Everyone, I just wanted to say that I love this girl! I want everyone to know!” she quickly sprung up and grabbed him to try to quiet him. She seemed distressed that someone may wake up to him acting like such a fool. Although, she did smile with amusement the whole time, she wanted him to keep silent.
“You damn fool!” she boasted. “Just get your ass inside.” then she pushed him towards the doors. She than smiled and grabbed him and gave him a huge kiss. “Don’t you wake up the neighbors again Peter!“ He than stumbled and fell over the garbage cans outside causing a loud ruckus that accordingly made my other neighbor Maggie Jones’ old dog to yowl viciously.
Fittingly enough that woke ol Maggie and she yelled out the window, “Don’t you know what time it is? You goddamn derelicts! Can’t an old woman get any rest?”  Her dog started to yowl louder, “Thanatos!” she yelled, “Be quiet Thanatos!”
Peter stood up out of the pile of garbage and apologetically said,” I’m sorry Mrs. Jones. I didn’t mean to wake you.” Maggie glared out her window, scoffed at Peter, and frowned. “ Maggie,” Peter continued, “I fell over the cans.” he started to pick them up and caused them to bang and clank but because he was so intoxicated he could not get them to stand back up for they fell back down again. “Sorry Maggie,” he boasted again, “I’ll get them.”
“Forget it Peter!” Maggie yelled back. “Just get your drunken ass inside and be quiet!“ Peter then saluted Maggie and then fell over the cans again. “Julie,” Maggie yelled, ”Get his ass inside.” Maggie than pointed her bony little finger towards the main door to the apartment building.
“Yes Mrs. Jones I’m trying.” Julie answered. “Come on Peter, let’s get inside.” Peter looked at her with a glazed look on his face and then smiled and stuck his tongue out at her. Julie laughed at his foolishness. “Just get inside you nerd.” delightedly she helped him to his feet. Peter stumbled a bit and started to head toward the door.  
As they passed by Maggie’s window Peter paused for a second and looked inside Maggie’s window. “Hey Mrs. Maggie,” Peter tried to say while slurring his words roughly, “Mrs. Maggie pie,” Just then Thanatos jumped up at the window barking aggressively at Peter. He started to growl and display his sharp canine teeth. Peter jumped back in fright from seeing Thanatos so abruptly.  “You know me. My name is Peter. I live next door.” Peter paused as if he was lost in his speech. “Yea you know me. I‘m Peter, man.” He then chuckled a bit and Thanatos settled down. “Hey Maggie, sorry to wake ya and sorry about the cans.” Maggie smirked and adverted her eyes towards the entrance of the tenement obviously, trying to hint for him to go inside the doors. “Maggie,” Peter Continued, “Ya Maggie, I’m Peter and this is Julie.“ Peter grabbed Julie and hugged her firmly. He was extremely drunk and probably was unaware of what he was talking about himself. “Ya, you know me Maggie, Ya Maggie, Maggie pie, I’m Peter, man and I live next door.” He smiled as a young schoolboy would after telling his teacher what a good little boy he was. “Maggie your beautiful! Don’t ever change. I love yaw’s Maggie pie!” Julie struggled to get Peter inside as he stumbled in through the doors all the while, Maggie’s disposition lightened and she smiled a bit as she closed her window.
Peter and Julie staggered into the hallway and plowed up the stairway but made a minimal racket as they fished around for their keys before actually opening the door to their apartment.  The walls are somewhat thin and you can hear every creak in the floorboards above as they paced throughout their apartment. The old rusty water pipes squeaked as someone turned on the shower up there. The gentle sound of the water running through the pipes engulfed the room. You could hear distant chatter from the other side of the apartment but it soon died out and it was peaceful again. It was serene again.