25.

I share a room with an overweight middle aged man named Jason. The room is about the size of a bathroom. Other than the bunk beds there isn't really anything else in the room. Just a sad old end table with a shitty old lamp on top of it. The kind you'd buy at Goodwill for a dollar. Jason is too fat to take the top bunk so I offer to take it. He tries to make some cordial small chat but I'm really not up to it. He starts with the normal, "Hey how are ya" bullshit but it quickly turns into excuses as to why he's staying at the Y. I don't know if he expects some sympathy, but he's not getting it. I've used up all my sympathy on myself. I look him square in his beady black pearl eyeballs and tell him I'm going to sleep. I throw my bags up top and then climb up. I really don't trust this fuck to not rummage through my stuff while I'm asleep. I mean he's staying at the Y, so that's got to be indicative of something. It sure does say something about me. I place my crap at the foot of the bed and put my feet right on top of it all. I lay down and try to relax but this isn't necessarily the most relaxing of settings. It feels a little like a cell almost. Small, cramped, and forced to room with a stranger. A stranger maybe just as insane and fucked up as yourself. Someone, just like you, who has been beaten down to the point that the bad choices, really seem like a good option. Where depravity is a virtue. Maybe that's what my cellmate Jason is. Or maybe he's just a fat old mouth breathing weirdo. I try to clear my mind and count down from ten, but I can't. I hit 7 and my little robot friend starts to climb up the bed post. His tiny metal claws pinch the wood and pull himself up. His robot feet clank harshly as he stands up. His blinking eyes look at me and I try to start over with my count down. I close my eyes and count but it still lingers in the back of my mind. Clinging onto the back of my brain, it's metal claws sunk deep into the squishy cold substance that is my brain. I can hear the scraping of it's metal on the inside of my skull. It itches and I scratch the back of my head, trying to knock it free from my mind but it remains. I open my eyes half expecting him to still be standing there atop the bed post, but he's gone. I can't deal with this. Sleep won't fix a thing, so I pursue another remedy. Something more pharmaceutical. I dig into my duffel bag and pull some 'medicine' out of one of those purple cloth bags Crown Royal comes in. My father used to keep everything in those bags and I've inherited that legacy. I chew down hard on the pills as if they were sweet candy. It's more like the consistency of chalk, however. The powder solidifies and clings to bottom of my molars. I tongue at the mess and I swallow the ground up chalk. I scrape my tongue against the top of my teeth trying to get rid of the taste while I wait for take off. The metal scrapping in my brain slows down and grows quiet. I think of the robot's batteries slowly dying, no longer providing him with the power to chip away at my sanity. The feeling is all but gone now but the sadness remains. Time to power down, no more updates to install. I hear nothing but I just can't seem to feel nothing, no matter how hard I try. It hurts so bad its hard to breath I haven't felt this kind of depression in months. God, what's wrong with me? But however fucked up and strange this day has been, I find solace in the fact that for the first time in a while I'm in an honest to god bed. Regardless of how many other crazy shit stained motherfuckers might have slept in it before me. I start to fall asleep and I'm pretty sure I hear the sounds of Jason masturbating. Goddamn it.