I'm sitting in my room. I don't know where else to go. I am not happy here. That isn't the word for it. I am, well, content. To be sitting here alone, that is what I do best. I have my books, my music, my radio, and my computer. What other connection do I need? I leave my room and I feel greater and greater stress as it eats at my stomach and twists it up into small, tight pieces that are bursting inwards.

The room isn't too big. It is just six paces square. It sounds like a lot, but it truly isn't. I mean, if you spend all your time in its compass, it seems to be the whole of the world and a world that is six paces by six paces is awfully small. The room is cold, my fingers feel dead with the cold. I like it that way. It makes the bed warmer. And I can put on more blankets onto the bed and not be too hot. I like the weight of the blankets on me. I like the way they enfold me and compress every contour of my body. I like the way they drape on me when I stand up with them wrapped all around me. I feel like a grand wizard or an emperor, wearing deep and voluminous purple robes. I stride magnificently over to the bathroom, wear I shed them, take a piss and then a shower.

Why do I take a shower if I spend my days in my bedroom? Well, I don't spend all my time in the bedroom. I have a job, I have laundry, and I have to go shopping. I use prodigious amounts of toilet paper for some reason. But even on those days when I don't have to leave, I still feel scummy if I don't take a shower before I sit down in front of the computer. I don't like the feeling of unwashed clothes against my skin and I don't like the feel of dead skin on me. Some days I take three showers, simply because I feel I have to. Otherwise, I get grimy, and that can't be good.

The bathroom is colder than the room. For some reason, the window, much smaller in there than the one in the bedroom, lets more of the outside cold seep in. But even in the summer it is cooler, and so then I sit in there when I read, usually on the tile floor which is so cold against my skin. I sometimes lie there until I can feel the patterns of the tile pressing into my back. I stare up at the ceiling and watch the shadows sweep across as the sun rises and sets. The sink and toilet are in states of perpetual half-cleanliness. If one is clean, than the other isn't. I don't think I have touched the shower stall once, but I figure that why should I, its too dark in there for me to notice, and it is bathed in soapy water so frequently, so often that it seems redundant to bother to clean it. Brown water stains form around the sink ten minutes after I clean it. I'm told it has to do with the amount of rusting iron in the pipes, but I'm not sure I buy that. Still, I drink the water from that tap, because, hey, it can't be that bad. The toilet, for some reason, develops the same stains on the underside of the seat. I don't know how the water gets there. I've calculated the angle it would have to splash at to reach those spots, and it has to come from the underside of the rim directly across from it.

Anyways, those stains aren't as bizarre as the ones on my bed. On the bed sheets, where my torso lies during the night, I find bloodstains. Small ones, new every couple of nights. I've checked my front and back, but I don't see any open spots in the skin. definitely no place for the blood to seep out of. So I have my sheets laundered every so often, before they normally need it, just to have a good understanding of the patterns these stains have. I have a graph I made one day. I update it regularly, every time I go to the cleaners. They pattern of the stains look like wings, but I don't understand how they could. I don't have wings. Not even in my dreams.

The chair I sit in all day doesn't have any stains on it either, which I don't understand. I mean, if I am bleeding, which is most likely the case, than the blankets I wrap about me after I am done with my shower, or the chair I sit in with them should have some blood somewhere, but I don't see any. It is a shitty chair. It is like a half cube, with no real posture support. It leans back, but too far. If you don't tighten it enough, you fall back too far if you lean back and almost spill out of it. On the other hand, if you tighten so it leans back at the right rate, not only does it loosen itself slowly, it creaks loudly. Very loudly. People on the other end of the phone can hear it, and my phone is so bad that they can't hear me, half the time. But still, it is the only chair I have and I couldn't very well pull the bed over to the computer (not that I haven't tried).

I sit there, and I am very, well, content, because I have my computer in front of me. It is a nice computer. I like it. I've modified it so much that no one can tell what it originally was, but that is for the best. It's now perfectly matched to me. I can do whatever I want with it as easy as breathing, and when I get those chest pains, easier than breathing. I still fiddle with it. That is how I spend my free hours, mostly. Don't believe if anyone ever tells you that computers behave just the way you want them to. It takes years of work to get them like that and by the time you get it working right, you've changed and can no longer recognize why you wanted to do it in the first place. It is through my computer that I connect to the world. My meat is not me, but just the receptacle for my soul, and the pure, simple strings of text that I type into the rest of the world is a closer approximation of the soul that my body harbors than anything else.

My room has a warm feeling, despite the chill air. I feel home here, alone in my room. I sit in my chair, with the radio going to whatever station I am too lazy to change it from and the computer broadcasting my thoughts to the world.

Return from whence you came.