Sam Pink - Person

If I eat it though, I might be able to fall asleep before I get hungry again.

That could work.

My roommate is sleeping on the couch in the livingroom.

He looks dead.

I imagine a plausible series of events that results in me being accused of killing him even though I didn’t, and then me accepting the accusation just because I’m too tired to fight anything.

I get the ice cream out of the freezer and put it in a bowl and walk around the apartment eating.

For a little while I check the peephole leading out to the hallway.

No one is there.

Where are the people coming to find me.

My roommate breathes in quickly on the couch.

I eat a bite of ice cream.

“Hey, pssst,” I say. “Hey. Wake up.”

I tap the spoon against the bowl a little.

He wakes up and turns over.

“What.”

“I’m eating ice cream,” I say.

Then I point the spoon at him.

“And I can see you,” I say, kind-of singing.

He coughs a little.

“Do you like the ice cream,” he says. “Is it wonderful ice cream.”

“Yeah, it’s really good. I had to tell you. You’re the first person I wanted to tell.”

“I’m the only person here,” he says.

There’s a pause.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” I say.

“Me too.”

He coughs more then closes his eyes to go back to sleep.

I eat some more ice cream and stare at him.

It looks like I could just walk into the livingroom and jump on his head.

It looks like me and him are dust in someone else’s carpet and we can’t say hello for fear of having to come up with a good reason.

When I leave the room there is just the dark quiet of the livingroom behind me and I have done nothing wrong.

When I shut the door to my room, I’m safe.

I imagine a large person playing with a replica of our apartment as a dollhouse — me and my roommate for dolls.

I want to say to this person, “What’s bothering you, tell me.”

And I’d be fine with a million tomorrows if I could plan them all out right now and if they all began with me jumping into a large container/vat of puppies with Dutch accents.

A man and a woman share the platform with me waiting between trains.

They are twenty feet down, doing that hugging-swaying thing couples do when they are still happy together.

And they each have a fountain drink in their hands, hugged behind the other.

I’m watching them.

Don’t let them escape.

Oh I won’t.

No, I’m kidding.

Sometime in the near future, I will have no money.

I understand that.

At that point, my access to the world will lessen even more.

I understand that too.

I also understand that if there really were a force of evil, it would make sure I lived a long life, since that would mean badness for other people and myself too.

No, I’m just being dramatic.

The couple disengages from their hugging sway and the man walks up to the tracks.

He’s laughing and so is she.

He pours some of his fountain drink onto the electric rails.

The woman, staying behind, she cranes her head forward.

“Nothing?” she says.

The man says, “Nothing.”

He goes and stands by her again.

And the train pulls up and before it fully stops I say, “Nothing” and nobody hears.

I smell sort of bad.

My roommate is letting me use his car to go pay our electric bill.

We did not mail our electric bill on time and now I have to pay at city hall because otherwise it will be late.

His car smells bad and it depresses me but the fact that I am in a car going somewhere to fulfill a task that will have real consequences is enough to make me feel justified in having a day at my disposal.

I feel ok.

Pretty much the mega-champion of all conceivable tests.

At city hall, the woman behind the counter doesn’t make eye contact with me while I pay.

I like it.

It’s ok.

It feels like practice.

I see the word “mega-champion” scroll through my head in neon letters.

In the lobby, just before the street exit, there is a woman on a cell phone and she says, “Well then kiiiiill the bitch.”

Back at the apartment, I park the car and sit in it, staring through a window into the empty laundry room downstairs.

I don’t feel like getting out of the car.

For some reason, I remember this one time when I was on a little league baseball team in fourth grade.

In the dugout during a game, my teammate kicked the coach in the dick and then hit the coach on the back with a bat, and the coach was the kid’s dad.

It’s funny for me to remember that.

I try to smear some dirt off his windshield but I realize the dirt is on the outside.

“You win,” I say. “You always win.”

And I get out and walk across the parking lot.

My landlord crosses the parking lot at the same time.

The rent check is in my pocket.

I forgot to drop it off before I left.

Now, seeing her, I know I have to actually go into her office.

She has some vague expectation of her tenants, where we all act like family, rather than people with no interest in each other.

I’m trying to say she is delusional and I don’t identify with her as a human.

She stops and she smiles at me and I hope in vain for a rattlesnake or some kind of poisonous snake to emerge and bite me.

It wouldn’t be bad.

I would accept it.

I’m just an asshole.

It feels like practice.

“Oh hey, come on in to the office real quick,” she says. “I want to show you something. Come on.”

I follow my landlord into her office and she shows me a Halloween decoration she recently bought.

The decoration is a plastic werewolf dressed in felt-clothing.

It’s like, February, I think.

“Sale,” she says.

She bends the plastic werewolf over, trying to get it to do something.

It’s supposed to do something.

Just stand still and look at the thing and wait for it to do what it is supposed to do then react the same way your landlord reacts.

Ok, I will.

Then leave the office quickly, without running or tripping.

Ok I will.

Believe in yourself.

She continues to try to get the werewolf to activate, lifting up the back panel of cloth/fur and flipping a button a few times.

Minutes pass.

During the minutes, I see the words “just walk out” scroll through my headhole in neon letters.

I see myself walking out of the office, a bird landing on my shoulder, kissing my cheek.

I see myself free and happy.

“Come on Mr. Tricky Pants,” my landlord says. “Oh, here we go.”

The werewolf starts to move, plastic limbs creaking.

A Halloween song comes from the small speaker between the

werewolf’s feet.

The werewolf dances and mouths the Halloween song.

I immediately say, “This is great.”

And I smile and look at my landlord for a few seconds.

When I leave the office, I don’t turn around until I am back in my apartment.

The apartment seems unrecognizable.

Looking around, I can’t recognize any of the things on the floor or anything.

It seems like someone else moved in while I was out.

Goddamn.

What if all our keys work for any apartment and we’ve all just been trading constantly.

“You win,” I say. “You always win.”

I walk back outside and sit in my roommate’s car again.

It still smells bad.

That’s the only comforting thing about the day.

I try to fall asleep with the back of my head hanging over the headrest.

It gets darker and colder out.

This is my backdrop.

And I hum the Halloween song to myself, laughing about the way the werewolf danced.