fragment by default
Inside the house felt as gray as the windows outside. The air was thick; the days of rain had finally let up, but the clouds had not dispersed. Birds sang, air breathed in the window, and neighbors could be heard banging around elsewhere in the building, in the complex. He listened to it all with a faint, passing jealousy. The birds sang because they were happy, the neighbors presumably were doing cheerful, neighbor things. Fuck knows why the wind was blowing, that's just what it did.
He felt empty inside, devoid of any useful thoughts or feelings or ambitions, not content to just sit and stare at the computer game he'd been playing, but not driven to do a single other thing. The dishes piled up, unwashed, the laundry sat, wrinkling and collecting dust.
The new job still didn't seem real, like they'd call up any minute and say "Oh, well, we don't actually have any hours for you right now. Or ever. Thanks for trying, though." And he'd be stuck again, broke and useless, accomplishing things in a computer game because it was the only place where it was obvious that he was making a difference. Clean dishes disappeared into a pile of dirty, clean socks migrated from the dwindling contents of the top drawer. But levels did not go away, and they were the only thing that marked the slow passage of days into weeks.
He felt empty inside, devoid of any useful thoughts or feelings or ambitions, not content to just sit and stare at the computer game he'd been playing, but not driven to do a single other thing. The dishes piled up, unwashed, the laundry sat, wrinkling and collecting dust.
The new job still didn't seem real, like they'd call up any minute and say "Oh, well, we don't actually have any hours for you right now. Or ever. Thanks for trying, though." And he'd be stuck again, broke and useless, accomplishing things in a computer game because it was the only place where it was obvious that he was making a difference. Clean dishes disappeared into a pile of dirty, clean socks migrated from the dwindling contents of the top drawer. But levels did not go away, and they were the only thing that marked the slow passage of days into weeks.