whiff of stagnancy
I wake up on a mattress on the floor of an upstairs bedroom, student house, afternoon sun streaming in, noise of electric guitars and drums coming from below.
I know I shouldn’t interrupt the band so I sit and wait at the window, watching the street below. I see the landlord jangling keys, guiding a young couple through the door below this house so I run downstairs past the band practice, to stop them. I get out onto the street. They’ve left the door to the bottom flat ajar; a waft of cold, dank musty air stops my breath as I descend into the place and go through another door. This door is organic, eaten away by rot, running damp and wear. It leads to a long, dingy, half-lit, dirty room, which disappears into blackness like a tunnel. There’s a whiff of stagnancy from a moist armchair and a settee. A harsh chemical smell of something curdled hits me across the eyes. There’s a yellow and black dresser. The top cupboard has slim sliding door panels, covered in spider-design yellow plastic with little opaque windows. There are circular melamine recesses where you put your fingers to slide the doors along, which I do. I find a coffee-stained crusty sugar bag in there. Snail trails glisten across a breadboard. A mouse sniffs at a knife. There’s a smell of human faeces. I take out wizened vegetables from a lower cupboard. It’s too dark to tell their colour. I chop something, maybe swede. I shiver, see a cockroach skitter over bare feet on spongy moist carpet. There is a pair of men’s shoes. Cigarette smoke comes from a steamy black lump in the shape of man.
‘Hurry up and come to bed,’ it says, and there is a smell which is methane, alcohol and piss emanating from it. My heart hurts. I can’t breathe and I can’t move. Can not get out of the hole.
Female, singer/massage therapist, born 1959