Just As He Always Did, by Nick Medina

Three glass jars sat on a shelf in his room. Three glass jars that he looked at for three seconds each when he woke up in the morning and again at night before going to sleep. Things floated in those jars, and solution—dark blue, murky green and a color like lime—filled the glass.

A baby shark that couldn’t swim. A snake that couldn’t slither. A fetal pig that would never run.

He studied the jars for three seconds and noticed something different everyday: a new wrinkle, another speck of flesh, a loss of pigmentation.

He ate toast with jelly, always grape, holding his food over the sink to collect the crumbs, which he washed down the drain with two squirts of water from the handheld hose affixed to the faucet.

The sun came up an hour after he pulled back the bed sheets. An eerie white glow snuck past the curtains to highlight a single strip of the hand-woven rug that covered the hardwood floor. Warm shades of red, green, and brown leapt out of the rug while the rest of the room remained cold and gray.

He watered the plant which sat slowly dying on the bedside table. After six years of flourishing, its brilliant green leaves were becoming brown. Some were so crisp that they cracked at the slightest touch. He picked away the dead leaves, cringing with each one that fell from the vine. He couldn’t stand to see the plant dying. Its death would be a very bad thing.

A bottle of pills sat on the bedside table next to the plant. He never took the pills, but they remained there nonetheless. He looked past them as always on his way to the closet to put on his jacket and lace up his shoes. He chose a hat from among the dozens that filled the closet. He hated wearing hats, but he hated his bald spot more. He locked the door when he left: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times.

The sun struggled to infiltrate the clouds. The clouds fought to keep the sun out. His heart leapt when he saw that the traffic light on the corner was green; it almost broke when the light changed to yellow and then red.

A woman wearing a sundress faded, not by the sun, but by years of use, stood on the corner. He waved at her just as he always did. She stared out over the dark bags that hung under her eyes. The wrinkles around her mouth deepened when she frowned. She wrung her hands together nervously, round and around again. She didn’t stop until he passed her by.

He walked fast, his head hanging low against his chest. His lips moved rapidly when he walked; his voice came out in a garbled whisper. What he whispered, no one could tell. But he could smell the rain coming. The scent hung on the air, heavy and thick, somewhat sweet like the aged pages of an old book. His pace quickened as the raindrops started to fall, moistening his dry routine. Needless to say, rain was bad. Very bad.

He batted away the raindrops, as many of them as he could catch, anyway, and scurried along the sidewalk like a squirrel racing to bury an acorn before winter sets in. The passersby on the street glared at him. Some pointed. Some laughed. Some swore at him for bumbling along with the grace of a two-year-old instead of a forty-six-year-old man. He didn’t stop, though. He didn’t raise his head from his chest or wave at them like he did with the old woman on the corner. They were just shadows to him. They weaved around him, sometimes getting in his way, sometimes tripping over their own feet to get out of his path.

Stumbling off the curb, he fell and tore the left knee of his pant leg. The flesh beneath the fabric split; blood dyed the frayed edges of the tear. He spit on his hand and rubbed his knee to stop the blood, but it just kept coming and so did the cars that honked at him to get out of the way. He struggled with his bulk to get to his feet. The asphalt beneath his shoes pushed up against him. He could smell the tar and the oil, strong in an offensive way, in the blacktop. It gave him an instant headache that nearly made him gag. The rain fell faster. Dark wet splotches marked his jacket.

His lips moved in a silent prayer that could have been a curse. He wiped his bloody hand on the back of his pants where he wouldn’t have to see the mess, unlike all the other problems he struggled to hide, especially the desires he tried to deny. Although the cars created a symphony of abrasive sounds, he hardly heard the composition. He staggered through the street to the opposite curb where he used a nearby lamppost to hold himself up.

He could see his destination ahead—the big red sign and the arrow pointing downward toward the stairs. He would be safe from the rain there. He’d be able to wash the blood from his knee and his hand there too. He limped with each step he took. The damage to his knee wasn’t so bad that it required the limp, but the limp was stuck in his mind. His head hurt more than his scraped flesh.

When he reached the sign with the arrow and the concrete stairs that went below the street, he grabbed the railing to brace himself and started the descent. A whoosh of fetid air breezed up the stairs as he went down. A loud rumble, characterized by metal scraping against metal accompanied by sharp clangs, traveled on the breeze in the company of vibrations that transferred through the concrete into the soles of his shoes. He counted each step on his way down just as he always did. There were twenty-four. If ever he found one more ahead of him he just might be stuck on the twenty-fourth step forever.

He stepped over the grate at the base of the stairs in pursuit of the metal door all the way to the left. The light bulb that hung overhead was out, and for a minute he didn’t think he’d be able to go inside, but he persevered by using his foot—the one below the good knee—to kick the door open. He jumped through the darkness into the room that waited on the other side of the door.

It smelled awful inside. The stale stench, made sharp by rot, invaded his nostrils. There was a sweetness there too, but it was significantly harder to detect than the pungent waste. He adjusted his hat so that it sat low on his brow, low enough so that no one would see his eyes should they look him directly in the face. Despite the hazy yellow light that lit the room, he could see just fine. He no longer saw people as shadows. Clear in his sight were two men with their backs to him. Their presence triggered within him a rush of excitement and overwhelming anxiety, the latter of which prompted him to limp to one of the sinks. He turned the water on and waited for steam to billow around his face before sticking his hands beneath the water to calm himself.

He scrubbed his hands with soap, no longer aware of the gash in his knee, until the men were done tending to their personal business. They washed their hands at the sinks on either side of him, not one of them saying a word. He kept his head low, too afraid to look in the mirror, although he desperately wanted to examine the faces of the men who flanked him. He stood there with the water running until they left him alone and he could breathe at a regular rhythm again.

He knew he shouldn’t be there. He knew one day he’d get into trouble, but he had nowhere else to go and nothing or no one to quell urges and desires that filled him—the urges and desires that manifested themselves as other odd and compulsive behaviors. He turned the water off, dried his hands and, reluctantly yet giddy inside, took position at one of the urinals in the center of the bathroom.

Nothing came out of him. He didn’t have that kind of urge. He stood there in wait among the swirling stench, although when he inhaled deeply he could smell the chemical-sweet scent of the disinfectant in the toilet. The muscles in his back tensed when the squeak of the bathroom door sounded. He clenched his eyes shut, waiting, hoping. A wave of utter disappointment washed over him when the draft created by the patron, who made a beeline for a stall, tickled his skin. He had to wait another two minutes for the bathroom door to squeak again. This time the fellow who entered the grime-streaked tiled room sidled next to him.

His breath rushed over his lips. His body tingled. He could feel heat radiating off the man standing to his left. He found something so validating, so personal and satisfying, about standing next to another man, their most private parts out and in their hands. His eyes stretched to see. He leaned to the side, being careful not to lean too much for fear of getting caught.

He watched the fellow shake off, zip up, pull the metal handle and leave just as quickly as he’d arrived, never realizing how much the encounter meant to his aching neighbor. They had just bonded in such an odd and perverse way.

His chest heaved. Sweat covered his brow. His head throbbed, yet he felt good inside. It was a wonderful moment. It happened just the way he wanted it to. No longer fixated on his limp, he felt like spinning. But he wouldn’t. He had to keep his calm. He couldn’t let on that something inside compelled him in such a strange way. No one would understand his need. No one ever had. No one ever would.

After rinsing his face at the sink, he scrubbed his hands a second time, partly trying to wash away the guilty pleasure he got from such a seedy place and such a devious activity. In spite of his shame, being around men made him feel like a man. They gave him something he needed, although he wanted so much more. He would remain innocent and inexperienced, though, because what he needed was something his compulsions told him was wrong. If he acted on his urges something bad would happen; something worthy of fire and brimstone.

Another guy entered while he was at the sink. He watched the man through the mirror, feeling so disconnected, so different from the others who went about their business with such nonchalant confidence because to them it was just an act with no meaningful significance. He wanted to be like the others. He wanted to move like them. He wanted his clothes to hang like theirs. He wanted his shoulders to be as broad and his stubble to be as pronounced on his cheeks. When he looked at himself in the mirror, though, all he saw was something ugly and deflated, something insignificant, flawed and separate from the rest.

He resumed his place in front of the porcelain receptacle, once again stretching his eyes to see. He nearly caught a glimpse when a hand like a vise wrapped around the pressure point in his neck. Not a second later he was pressed flat against the graffiti-covered wall of a bathroom stall.

“I know what you’re up to,” a voice growled. “This is the third time this week.”

Scared and feeling faint, the piss that was content to stay put before now ran down his leg. He struggled to turn around. When he did, his eyes landed on the inconspicuous badge of a plainclothes security guard.

“Sorry,” was all he could say. The quaver in his voice matched the wobble in his legs. All of a sudden his scraped knee hurt terribly. He’d seen the guard in the bathroom before; he just never knew he was being watched.

“That shit doesn’t fly in here,” the security guard said, pushing him against the partition a second time.

“Please,” he begged, “I wasn’t—”

The guard cut him off with a single word, an incriminating and insulting word, one so painful that it brought tears to his eyes.

“No,” he cried, feeling confused, pained, and pitiful all at once.

The security guard’s word stung the entire way home. The thrills he experienced in the tiled room faded quicker than the awful stench still stuck in his nose. His limp returned with a fury.

He turned the key in the lock one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times and let himself in. The darkness inside greeted him. The highlighted strip on the rug was gone since the sun had shifted in the sky.

He pulled the hat from his head and tossed it in the corner where it landed on another hat from the day before. He took off his shirt and struggled out of his pants, his knee hurting so badly that he could hardly bend his leg.

The apartment smelled musty. The curtains felt damp. He sat on the bed in his underclothes, ruining the perfectly made bed. He tried to remember the bit of excitement he’d experienced earlier, but it was lost forever. He just felt uncomfortable, encumbered, and guilty. Unable to even force pleasure with his hand, he sat there, empty headed and empty handed, feeling incredibly alone, with nothing left to do but face the truth.

“I am,” he admitted to himself—for the first time ever. And with those two words all that he was unraveled like a tape that’s been wound too tight. Suddenly nothing seemed to matter—the dying plant, the threat of crumbs on the counter, the lock on the door, or the guilt that kept him from ending his misery. The pain went away.

As he always did, he studied the solution-filled jars for three seconds that night before going to bed.

A baby shark that couldn’t swim. A snake that couldn’t slither. A fetal pig that would never run. Those were the things that floated in the solution—dyed blue and green to give the suspended corpses the illusion of life.

It was all an illusion, wasn’t it? He saw the reality behind the hopeful colors. He saw the gray flesh. He saw the tiny specks of necrotic tissue that floated free from the decaying creatures, so miniscule that anyone else would have overlooked them in exchange for beholding the bigger picture. He saw the glass that held back potential. He saw himself.

He stared at the jars—the shark, the snake and the fetal pig. If he could accept what the security guard said he was, he could do anything. He could be that—or not be anything at all.

So he took the pills that he kept on the nightstand next to the plant. Instead of going to bed hoping that he’d never have to face another miserable day, yet knowing he’d wake up just as he always did, he went to sleep this time with potential.

Perhaps he was strong enough to make his escape.