Waking up was nasty: my gut demanded relief, and my throat was scraped raw by a rotten belch. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!
Hm.
My eyes landed on a blue partition in the corner of the room.
Hm-hmm, twice over! It hadn’t been there yesterday.
I walked up to the partition, touched it. Felt the rough texture of plastic. Wondered: «Where from, out of what, out of what void do tangible things keep appearing? What is happening to me?»
No answer came. I peeked behind the partition.
Nothing surprised me anymore when I found a toilet there. «Better late than never,» I thought, sat down, focused, and… what was this? Noticed a lilac scrap of paper sticking out of the wall.
What kind of nonsense was this?
I tugged at the scrap and pulled out half a meter of toilet paper. That struck me as pretty interesting, even funny. In just over a minute I’d pulled out about a hundred meters of the softest paper there was, and then it ran out. «There you go!» I thought, and started figuring out how to stuff it back in. Nothing figured itself out. Unbelievable, but true — the wall had no slots, no openings, nothing. It stayed smooth and flat, flawless, like the skin on a three-year-old’s backside. After mulling it over this way and that, I gave up. Used part of the paper for its intended purpose, kicked the rest behind the toilet, and, pleased with myself, walked out from behind the partition marking off the bathroom.
The sound of water running in the tub put me in an optimistic mood. My body itched and crawled, and I knew exactly what to do — take a bath!
I grabbed the little pitcher off the table, took a swig of juice, threw off my clothes, and dropped into the tub.
Felt better instantly.
Washed for a long time, thoroughly.
When my skin started to crackle under my palm, I climbed out of the tub. Looked around for a towel, found nothing like one, dried off with my t-shirt, wiped the water droplets off the front of my body. Left the rest for later, remembering thermodynamics and everything else from my early college years: «It’ll evaporate on its own!»
Good stuff!
I stretched out on the little sofa. Felt around the table for a piece of fruit — turned out to be an apricot — and, chewing, stared up at the ceiling. Wanted to think through the miracles around me, sum things up, draw conclusions, all that…
No such luck. My body was overtaken by laziness, a languor wrapped around my mind… had to take a nap instead.
