His cup, his plate, his bowl

They were coming, he could feel it. He didn't know how long.
He didn't know how it would be.
The kettle had boiled. He was therefore obliged to get up and tend to it. Anyway, he mixed the coffee with vodka instead of milk. His choice as an adult. Once, he had waited until the evening each day before drinking. Six o'clock on the dot. Those days were laughable now. He no longer cared to pertain to any pretence of ' self-control? dignity? Social acceptance? '
Maybe there would be a knock at the door at five o'clock in the morning. Or maybe they wouldn't even knock.
There was no clock on his wall. You assume that his living area is a mess, the carpet festooned with patches of congealed vomit and strewn with countless beer cans, vodka bottles. You consider it a certainty that there are pornographic magazines stashed in his wardrobe, or beneath his mattress, some pages crumpled, some stuck together '
A good cup of coffee is all it takes, sometimes. The first mouthful is all it takes for you to know that it is exactly what you needed. The odd cigarette. He finished the drink, rinsing the cup out promptly, putting it on the rack. The rack was designed to hold a multitude of cups, plates and bowls. He had one cup, one plate, one bowl. He cleaned them as soon as he used them. His flat was spotless.
The absence of clocks unnerved some people. People came to visit, sometimes. He didn't know whether he enjoyed their company or not. Part of this uncertainty stemmed from the fact that he couldn't actually remember how he had come to know most of them. He could not remember meeting them. He didn't want to offend them by asking. They came and went ' it was as simple as that. He laughed and said that having no clock meant that he didn't have to know how much time he was wasting. They always laughed back.
He could hear it ticking now. He could go out, maybe even make a run for it. The thought had crossed his mind. Just because there was no clock '
He sat there. The tap was still dripping. He wondered when he had last spoken out loud. Days. A week? A week of kettle-boiling, tap dripping, cup/plate/bowl rinsing. A week spent trying to guess the time. A week of nothing. Death. He had nothing to say about death. People talked about it. People talked about suicide. Everyone was getting tired. When they came to his flat, he could feel their lethargy. Everything was getting old. People talked, that's all they ever did. There was nothing to it anymore.
Damn, he'd never done anything. Just floated. Found currents and followed them. Never stopped and asked himself whether '
No, no. He wasn't a victim. There were no excuses. There was no diminishment of responsibility. It was getting faster now. Or slowing down. Supernova-fadeout! He would stand. They would ask. Answer. He had floated, drifted with the current, but ' but there comes a time when one must accept '
It was harmless at first. Just the free sites, not clicking on the links. Lesbians that probably weren't lesbians; eighteen-year-olds that were probably closer to twenty-eight.
But they just hadn't done it for him anymore, after a while ' he had dug deeper '
The buck had to stop, sooner or later. Maybe '
There were no magazines stashed in his wardrobe, or beneath his bed.
"The first time I saw a naked woman was when I was five years old. My father's magazines. They were poorly hidden¦ maybe not really hidden at all. I was ashamed of myself for looking at them. I didn't enjoy looking at the women, though of course I believed that I did. I realise now that it was the shame that I desired. Ever since I can remember, I have craved shame. Sought it out. I have always felt this dirty, this stained, this loathsome ' self-fulfilling prophesy! ' I guess that I have now become the monster that I always believed I was¦
There were truths. There were too many truths. Death was a fact. Maybe thoughts were radio waves ' viruses ' maybe it was true what they had told him about breaking mirrors ' maybe he should have gotten on the train -
But he was tired. The world's ever-increasing lethargy was contagious. There was nothing to it. There was no going anywhere. As he sat at the table, not needing to see the time to know that it was running out¦ Funny thing! He didn't regret any of it. That's what he presently found. His school friends had become accountants, lawyers, or maybe they were currently keying in the barcodes of products that wouldn't scan in a Tesco someplace -
He was something. Not just a paragraph in the obituaries section of the local paper, not for him. He had just drifted and yet. He had never hurt anybody. He would open the door and they would come in and he would offer each of them coffee '
But only one at a time, of course.