Countdown #2

I bury my nose in my duvet. She bought me these sheets. I can’t shake that from my mind. She bought them. Even though my old ones were perfectly fine, she hated them. Too masculine. I’ve never understood how bedding can have a gender. She went to Tesco and bought a cheap set of sheets, pale pink in colour, adorned by sequinned butterflies.

“Do you like them?” she grinned.

I smiled, because I didn’t really care.

I try to remember how long I’ve been here, cocooned in a cocktail of my own sadness and questionable body odour. I hear the faint sound of the ticking clock from that TV show coming through the walls. The scrape of a bowl, the shuffle of a chair. I can almost see Dan eating cereal in his pants at 3 o’ clock in the afternoon. He’ll be in here in a bit. Knocking timidly on the door to bring food and to check that I’m not dead.

“You alright mate?”

I reply wordlessly, hoping he’ll interpret my gratitude through my guttural groans. He sighs and goes, leaving a bowl on my night stand.

When he’s gone, I sniff the sheets. They don’t smell of her anymore. Just me.

She never showed me how to use the washing machine.