O.A. - Ruby

After exchanging phone numbers, Herman put his hand on my shoulder with the words:

“Friend, once again I ask you to forgive me. Honestly, I did not want to mislead you.”

“Yes, sure no problem, don’t worry.”

I hope that one day you will be in my position!

“By the way, since such a thing happened! Let me introduce you to the friend I was talking about! I am sure he will like you!”

“No, today I’ll have to pass.”

Enough getting acquainted for today.

“No, I insist! I feel guilty. Please wait here, I’ll be right back!”

Pushing his way between the dancing guys, Herman briskly walked towards the lounge area.

Taking advantage of the moment, I ran to our table and with the words: “Girls, I got diarrhea along the way and I won’t go to the toilet here because my future chosen one might be in the next stall.” I grabbed my backpack and headed for the exit. Cam and Sopha wanted to go with me, but I assured them that everything was fine, we had just gotten there and they shouldn’t leave. In any case, they needed to look after Amir.

“See you at home! Have fun!” I looked around with a farewell glance at the dancing beauties nearest to our table and headed for the exit.

At home, before going to bed, succumbing to the intolerable desire to put my thoughts on paper, I took out my diary, but then I decided that there was in fact nothing new to write about, except whining about loneliness which was something I was already physically feeling. I put it back in its place in the lower drawer of the desk and went to bed.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. I am calm and relaxed. Inhale.

Part 2

There was a large old gray sweater hanging from two meat hooks in the middle of the room. The hooks pierced its shoulders. Caleb realized that it was most likely he had chosen the wrong door. His heart was beating so hard and was so loud that the sound seemed to fill the entire room.

“Holy shit…” Caleb put his hand over his mouth to keep from screaming.

The sound of a heartbeat really filled the room. But it wasn’t coming from Caleb at all. The sound came from the sweater hanging from the ceiling, which now began to pulsate in the chest area.

Everything was just like something out of someone’s worst nightmare. Hands with long gnarled clawed fingers began to protrude slowly from the sleeves. Blood stains appeared around the holes from the hooks and increased with each heartbeat. Out of the collar of the sweater now protruded what should have been a head, but only had the shape of a head, and on it there was nothing but a mouth. A horrible mouth filled with hundreds of small sharp needle-like teeth and spread across the pseudo-face, a mouth that uttered an inhuman cry, a cry of agony and rage.

Caleb couldn’t move. His entire body was frozen in terror.

The creature grabbed the chains on which it was suspended…

The alarm went off. The time for the Morning Pages was over. It was time to get ready for the appointment with the psychotherapist. I have time to exercise, which today I will replace with morning masturbation, shower and breakfast and if I combine the first two points, I may have enough time to drop into Starbucks on the way to the session.

Maria was 10 minutes late, and judging by her wet hair, she had not been prepared for the sudden rain.

“Hello, Oleg! Sorry for being late, I got caught in the rain.”

“Yeah sure, no problem, I almost got caught in it too. Although the forecast had promised that it would be sunny with no precipitation, it turned out there was a total downpour.”

“Really, such tropical storms are not typical in the middle latitudes.”

“Global warming. Climate change.”

“Well, so how is your life?” Maria smiled amiably and this time took a chair.

“Good. And how are you doing?”

For some reason I suddenly lost all desire to talk.

“Everything’s okay, thanks,” Maria crossed her legs and took out her tablet for notes. “How was your week?”

“Out of the whole to-do list that I had compiled for the week… There was not a thing on it that I had completed.”

“You didn’t want to? Or you didn’t have the strength?”

“Didn’t want to. I had no strength and I had no thoughts… Probably, at the next appointment with Arthur, I will ask him to increase my dosage of zoloft.”

“Are you sad? Are you getting upset quickly?”

“Yes, there is a little of that.”

“Feeling lonely?”

“I don’t like the word loneliness. It made it seem like something was incomplete… I prefer the term ‘problems with self-sufficiency’.”

“What does that mean to you? What is the feeling like? Can you give me an example of a situation where you experience it?”

“Last Saturday, for example…”

“Soooo, tell me what happened last Saturday.”

“I was at a club with friends and a handsome guy came up and I thought he wanted to meet me. I went and danced with him and during the dance, it turned out that he had wanted to invite my girlfriend to dance, not me. Then for the entire time that we danced he tried to find out as much information as possible about her.”

“Soooo, what happened next?”

“We exchanged phone numbers. On Monday he called me and we met in the evening after work. He found out where my friend works. It turns out that this dude, his name is Herman, has a cat and my friend is a veterinarian. On Tuesday his cat seemed to be sick and he made an appointment and took it to her. After that he called me, thanked me and said that he would continue further on his own.”

“And after that you felt bad?”

“Well, yes. Not exactly after that but from the whole situation. Since Saturday…”

“Tell me, are you having these feelings now too?”

“I feel that way all the time, the feelings never go away.”

“What are the feelings? Do you feel sad and lonely?”

“I feel it… You know… Physically… How can I describe it? Loneliness… The problem with self-sufficiency is that it is felt physically. An unpleasant heaviness in the chest and it is as if you have decreased in size. Like you have become small and insignificant, pathetic… And everything around you seems big. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly.”

“No, that’s fine, everything is very clear. This is called ‘baby mode’.”

“Can we not discuss this today?” I wanted to go to bed, take a couple of sleeping pills and sleep for a couple of days, with my head covered.

“Oh sure, okay. How are things going at work?”

“Everything is pissing me off.”

“And what exactly makes you angry?”

“All these stupid old broads with a worldview a meter in diameter, who do not see anything further than their noses and consider it necessary to share their opinion with everyone on every issue and topic. The phrase “back in our days” has to be heard 15 times a day and they consider it their God given duty to voice their political positions aloud, to discuss who came to work in what, who is too fat, too thin or too ugly, as if they are the unquestionable expert judges of some beauty contest. Why do they think they have the right to do all this?

“Of course, then they never forget to make a special mention of homosexuals, to say that they need to be professionally treated and that probably it’s all due to an overabundance of emotions.”

My hands started to shake almost imperceptibly and I felt weak tremors becoming stronger, to hide them I hugged the cushion that was lying next to me on the sofa.

“We have a common toilet at work for men and women with two stalls which have excellent acoustics between them. That is, being in one booth, you can hear everything that is happening in the other. So, broads even discuss THAT! Can you imagine?! These are toilets! They are made to shit in, that’s what they are for! Why in the name of God discuss that?! It’s like they don’t go to the toilet at all.