The Three Fuckers: The Trivial Psychic Triad

* * *

Remember, my dearest brothers, and never forget this – the greatest of the fuckers presented below is Rhoedrick, even if any of your senses of perception mislead you and lead your mind down a twisted path toward the wrong line of reasoning. Don't let empiricism deceive you.

* * *

Thomas tried to stretch out his legs. Unfortunately, the tub was too short. He had a choice: leave his knees above the water, submerging his thighs, calves, and feet, or stretch them out and rest them on the tile, leaving his wet and completely hairless shins above the surface of the already slightly stained liquid. Disoriented beyond his wits, the blond plunged one leg into the water and straightened the other, letting out a deep, loud exhale of self-satisfaction. A grunt worthy of a teenager experiencing his first orgasm. He

turned on the hot water. It was too hot. Like the love of his mother, whom he had never known as an adopted child at the age of two. That infernal gas stove brooked no compromise, pouring boiling water from its innards, then another icy liquid. Thomas cursed violently as the water once again scalded his thigh, leaving a red stain on his smooth thigh, devoid of manhood despite his majority. After a moment, he tried to relax again, forgetting the news he'd heard a few minutes earlier on television. He also wanted to forget about his stepfather, who had beaten and abused him, and the unrequited love that had caused him to attempt suicide.

He was fed up with all kinds of mathematics and basic measurement. Matrices were confusing him to the point that after a whole day spent adding, subtracting, and multiplying them, he'd pretend to be a groundhog, folding his arms, whistling, and twitching his nose left and right. His studies of coils and capacitors, on the other hand, meant that every morning he cooked two hot dogs in an aluminum pot, oblivious to the monotony of his activities.

It was Sunday. He was lying in the bathtub. He was considering slitting his wrists with a used disposable razor. Just as he was about to do so, he heard a voice coming from behind the closed bathroom door:

"Thomas, at least splash around in that tub, I thought you'd drowned!"

He was interrupted again. Now he couldn't do it anymore. His sick mind was jolted from its frequent, profound stupor. He put the razor aside. He picked up the book on basic measurement and began reading chapter eight again, for what seemed like the sixth time. He watched with pleasure as his wet fingers left imprints on the pages. He was proud that the text was slowly smearing, losing its meaning, so little understood by him, and then dripping into the bathtub in black drops of washed-out ink. A small cleansing.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the refrigerator opening. It was his second friend and fellow student – ​​Lowelas – who was once again about to eat. As usual, it was just an excuse to take a break from studying. Thomas figured out his tactic very quickly. He put the textbook down next to the razor, which he looked at longingly for a moment. He picked up the soap. For a moment, he considered having fun and using it all up at once. He rejected his inner self's suggestion with great regret.

"It's Advent, after all," he explained to himself. He still tried to be a good boy and believed that storks brought babies. Like any freshman.

Resigned, he struggled to pull the rubber plug out of the bathtub, stood up, and began drying himself with a towel. His cell phone rang. He crossed the room in his underwear and read the message. As usual, the sender was Paplo. The only person Thomas texted or who replied to him. Pablo, like Thomas, had recently gotten a cell phone. Having nothing to do with the free text messages included in their subscriptions, they sent them to each other, pretending someone remembered them. They would ring each other, pretending someone was calling them. It was just another fake activity they engaged in throughout the day. Like pretending to like their university, like pretending to be tough, like pretending to be a young, angry, horny teenager.

Such situations always made Rhoedrick laugh, though deep down he envied them both. He wanted a cell phone too, but his parents wouldn't let him. So he pretended he didn't want one at all and made fun of Thomas and Pablo at every opportunity. Each played their own little role in this world.

While Thomas put on his flannel pajamas, Rhoedrick turned off the computer and went to make dinner. That's how the evening and morning passed, the first day.

* * *

Mom left the apples on Saturday. Today is Tuesday. It would soon be Wednesday. Over 72 hours. Rhoedrick took the last bites, threw away the core, and sank into melancholy. He was sad. He was alone. Again.

Once again, he had to break away from that house, his only one. Stop recognizing the texture of the oak stairs with the sole of his slipper, forget the smell of his room. Now he had a new bed, one he could enjoy somewhere, someday, with someone of the opposite sex. Rhoedrick didn't like gays. That's why the 21st century despised him, why he called him an intolerant relic of a bygone era. Only a stuffed hippo accompanied him every night. Only he still showed any understanding. He

hadn't had anyone to call, anyone to cuddle with for so long. It was empty.

Goodbye, Pinky, Winky! Goodbye, Lala! See ya, Po! Goodbye, Tipsi.

* * *

What kind of idiots live with me? Holy shit.

"Vitamins are essential," one of them shouts first thing in the morning.

"Eat healthily," the other one says in the evening.

They eat whole lemons, saying it's for their health, and talk nonsense. That's what it is. One whistles, the other sings and dances at midnight. You can get a little tipsy. Dumber than the slipper on my left leg, as Rhoedrick's grandfather used to say.

How Rhoedrick would gladly kill them. Mendy. One lies there scratching his leg constantly, all day in a bed. He yawns, smacks his lips, and stinks. The other just eats onions and leaves crumbs all over the kitchen floor. And that's the best part of each of their lives.

* * *

Thomas stood by the electric kettle, inhaling the steam rising from it. He made some rather unidentifiable sounds and shouted,

"May I introduce myself?"

The lover, sitting with his back to him, was learning German and sipping tea from a long-unwashed mug. The caffeine settling on the walls separated in sheets and floated on the surface of the liquid, waiting for Lowelas's loud snort. Lowelas called this act caffeine nihilism.

After all, everything has its purpose. Rhoedrick had been sitting at his computer for several hours, once again compressing a DVD movie to DIVX. The previous attempt had been unsuccessful. Instead of one file, he received two separate ones: audio and video. The prospect of running them simultaneously terrified him so much that he decided to spend the next two hours compressing the movie all over again. Sipping his cocoa, he watched the compression progress bar on the monitor. It always soothed him and fascinated him at the same time. This steady, time-limited progress, so different from the progress humanity and civilization had undergone for as long as history books could remember. It was as soothing as the fish from Lake Malawi. Like the fish from Lake Tanganyika sluggishly swimming around an aquarium. An aquarium he didn't have.

* * *

Thomas was late. Outside the window, huge flakes of sticky, old-town snow were falling. Rhoedrick was growing increasingly anxious.

"It should be here by now," he thought.

He'd been looking forward to it so much. He'd long ago packed all the trash into a massive black plastic bag and placed it in the hallway. He'd planned to hand it to him like a bouquet of spring flowers the moment he returned, along with the keys to the dumpster. It was a tried-and-true method. It always worked. The element of surprise, with a touch of finesse and a dash of whimsy.

The coffee on the desk spread a unique aroma. An aroma that nothing else in the world could even compare to. The icy wind blowing through the window flipped the pages of the comic book on the bed. The computer hummed softly. The radio crackled.

Suddenly, someone started pounding on the door. Rhoedrick got up and walked toward it. He opened it. It wasn't him. It was Lovelas. So he handed him the bag and keys, rejoicing in the accomplishment of his mission. Mission accomplished. He felt like Tom Cruise.

Lowelas was cutting bread. The whole table was shaking. The knife was blunt, or the bread was old—no one knew. Coughing, he spread margarine on his slices and drank carrot juice. He stood up, and the sound of a toilet flushing could be heard from the bathroom.

A student's life was made up of strange elements, usually incongruous. Someone opening a can of fish had splashed tomato sauce across half the wall. Homeless people were diving into trash cans looking for Al and Zu. Water was seeping from a neighbor's leaky toilet, and the neighbor on the left was living out her final days. The neighbor on the right was beating his wife, and their underage daughter was giving herself to a pedophile from the building next door. They were calling for Mass at the nearby parish, and the housing cooperative administrator was mowing the lawn. He and he, the pattern was being followed.

* * *

Running down the stairwell, Rhoedrick was often haunted by strange thoughts. He was beginning to wonder, for example, who was in a better position: him or his backpack? The backpack knew nothing about gravity, Rhoedrick did. Moreover, his fall was the result of Rhoedrick's movements, not the backpack itself. Rhoedrick laughed as the phrase flashed through his mind:

"And I won't let you go until I die..."

* * *

Rhoedrick reluctantly turned the third key in the third lock, pushed open the first of the two doors, and entered. Lowelas sat half-naked at the kitchen table. His underpants were black-striped, his gaze fixed on the undefined mass lazily spreading on his plate.

"What are you doing?" Rhoedrick asked

. "Pasta with cherries. Soup, something like that," Lowelas replied reluctantly.

He'd lost his mind too.

* * *

"I don't see much point in life if there's not a few days' supply of hot dogs in the fridge." These were Thomas' Lenten confessions. And he wasn't Thomas Aquinas at all, and since he wasn't St. Thomas, he couldn't have become St. Augustine either.

* * *

Margaret decided to visit Lovelas one day a little earlier than the appointed time. She wanted to embellish Lovelas's birthday with a touch of feminine, inexperienced artistry, and with that, a pinch of idiocy and a thimbleful of teenage naiveté.

She had come to execute her carefully prepared plan of action. A plan that was the result of several thousand years of evolution. First, a chicken breast cutlet, then a birthday cake with candles, and finally, a poultice, this time made from her own nineteen-year-old breasts. This was her favorite part of the program.

She rang the intercom. A moment later, she was at the apartment. Rhoedrick and Thomas pretended not to know what was happening. They pretended to be more stupid than they really were, and that was an extremely difficult task.

* * *

Everything was beginning to crumble. Even the plaster from the ceiling was falling away, not so slowly anymore. Nothing was the same. Deeper grooves appeared in the floorboards, grout leaked from between the ceramic tiles. What had previously made no sense regained it. One concept after another lost it. The process of Rhoedrick's self-desertion was proceeding with extraordinary speed. In this new situation, he was beginning to feel like a lunatic in a mental hospital. All around him were the sick, and he alone, also straying from the boundaries of decency, was at the center of this mess. Unfortunately, the hopelessness of others was never a consolation for him compared to his own hopelessness, a person who was not entirely straightforward, but rather somewhat rounded.

He constantly caught himself in increasingly foolish thoughts and actions. More and more often, his words became meaningless gibberish that anyone could ignore. It started innocently. He squeezed toothpaste onto a razor instead of a toothbrush. Later, he went to church, although it took him a few minutes to realize he was going in the opposite direction. From time to time, he'd jump around the house, pretending to be a frog, or whistle like a groundhog. In short, the disease of social decay had caught up with him. Worse still, he was aware of it. Aware that what was happening to him was happening to 90% of the human population. His

distant home was becoming more distant with each passing day. The longer he was away, the less he wanted to return. Yes, he missed it. The impossibility of returning was more a result of the overwhelming depression. Instead of soaring to the heights of his youthful life, he was experiencing a nervous breakdown for the third time.

He went to bed with fear in his eyes, fearful of the next morning. He woke up longing for another twilight. He looked as far as the eye could see and saw nothing. Let's go, no one was calling.

* * *

Looking more globally than locally, more objectively than subjectively, Rhoedrick had no plan for life. None. He looked back—empty. He looked ahead—nothing either.

His dreams had vanished and transformed into truly trivial, vague desires. He took pleasure in cleaning the soap dish of the bits of soap stuck to it, pouring a carton of milk into a bathtub full of water, and pretending to be an Egyptian pharaoh while bathing. He enjoyed tapping the pipes while bathing and trying to connect with his neighbors. However, they remained very uncommunicative and completely asocial. Except for the upstairs neighbor's two-year-old son, everyone remained indifferent to Rhoedrick's calls.

He had no desire to talk, especially with those he had once liked. He began to feel a complete emptiness and indifference in their interactions. As with everyone else. The loss of his own self was followed by the loss of his complementary ego.

He bought bread less and less often. Old bread took away the pleasure of eating. There was nothing I wanted anymore. Nothing he didn't want either.

* * * Things

weren't any better with his companion Thomas. He spent entire days calculating integrals, never even getting out of bed. The only thought that interrupted his monotonous brain activity was a rhetorical question: am I keeping my head where someone once kept their feet? Over time, Rhoedrick admitted that he'd been wrong to suggest that thought. First that, then a gay movie he'd seen with Rhoedrick at the cinema, and his moral principles began to crumble into a shapeless, uniform mess. The nut of his morality slowly began to crack.

* * *

In today's world, everyone gives a damn in their own way. We're tolerant, after all. One is born and immediately becomes a blackhead, another emerges from the mother's womb with lifelong jaundice, and yet another is born completely pale. The latter is usually the one they pick on the least. He might even become a member of the Ku Kluz Klan.

It's the fault of today's world. Some start raising fish, others wash their cars every other day. Some hang themselves, others start families. In their own way, they fight their individual, great glutton, which slowly consumes them...

And Rhoedrick? And Rhoedrick still didn't know...

He could have become anyone. Now he was so afraid of becoming nothing. Nothing in the multitude of possibilities of being something. He wanted only to be an optimist and a maximalist. Life, however, forced him to become a minimalist.

* * *

"You're hanging out with the devil in your computer room instead of listening to the Pope"—that's what those who were saying nothing else at the time told Rhoedrick.

* * *

Thomas's condition worsened day by day. The brain degeneration was progressing rapidly and was likely irreversible. Nothing could distract him from lying on his stomach on the couch, his head bowed to the floor, playing with Rhoedrick's tattered, stinking slippers. He missed Lowelas, was no longer afraid of pedals (probably after working two months in a bicycle factory), and had stopped eating sausages for breakfast. At night, he'd wake up drenched in sweat and screaming for milk, preferably mother's milk. When a sleepy Rhoedrick brought him an open carton, he'd reply that he preferred tea. Thus began Thomas's agony. The fumes of his illness wafted around, striking new victims. Lowelas resisted the illness the

longest

. However, the brain-fucking bacteria had finally caught up with him, mercilessly draining his still-intact synapses. After passing his exams at university, he went shopping. He was supposed to buy suit trousers. He returned wearing silver denim trousers with suspenders and a non-slip toilet seat. The surprise on the faces of Rhoedrick and Thomas was briefly summed up:

- I'm going snowboarding... with Małgosia...

After a moment, he began opening a can of pâté with a hammer and screwdriver. He concluded his roommates' further astonishment with the statement,

"What? The key's lost... and Kulczyk bought Orlen..."

* * *

Rhoedrick had never taken a bribe from anyone in his life. He had never paid for protection. He had spent his entire life giving himself to everyone for free. He was pursuing a tenuous career path. Just like Paplo, Thomas's brother. Let no one laugh at this moment, let alone be surprised. In today's world, you don't have to be a whore to do good to others.

* * *

That same day, Thomas took steps that clearly indicated a lack of any mental balance. After Rhoedrick had left for home, he noticed two gray socks lying next to his bed. He gently picked them up, brought them to his nervously twitching nostrils, and smelled them. Judging by the stench emanating from them, he knew they couldn't be his. He quickly packed them into his backpack and set off. He traveled all over Warsaw to reach their supposed owner – Omen, who had spent the night at Rhoedrick's the previous day. Only then did he realize he was driving around the city with Rhoedrick's socks in his backpack.

* * *

During the winter break, more people fell ill. Thomas Paplo's cousin began showing signs of advanced madness. He spent most of his time running around after his tiny dog ​​and sending text messages saying:

"Boss, is Waldeczek harmful? Oh, it's harmful. Is it very harmful? Oh, very much so."

Woj, in turn, sent messages to everyone saying:

"Coco jumbo and forward."

Everyone was so beautifully sad that Ben was softening.

* * *

Rhoedrick couldn't stand it. While he could still bear his own madness, the madness of the two other people, whose presence he was now irrevocably condemned to, was poisoning the atmosphere mercilessly. The state he fell into, and which was deepening, couldn't compare to any of the depressions he'd experienced in the past. He'd start reading one book after another and abandon them after a few dozen pages. He was bored by almost everything. To occupy himself, he'd started unscrewing and screwing back the headphones of his radio. Only pooping still gave him some sort of pleasure. Only washing his hands provided the necessary cleansing.

* * *

Unfortunately, after winter break, there was no improvement, neither for Thomas, Lowelas, nor Rhoedrick. Fortunately, during the first week of the new semester, the concentration of the constant fucked-upness in the apartment was lower than its normal random distribution – Lowelas was skateboarding in Zakopane (as he told his parents). Rhoedrick and Thomas knew that, being there with his girlfriend, he was probably riding something else. After all, his mother was a biology teacher and had taught her son the necessary basic anatomy so he could continue his family.

* * *

Rhoedrick himself was also going through very difficult times. One Friday morning, he knelt by the toilet and contemplated decisions of almost life-threatening importance. Weeping, he flushed three beef roulades down the toilet. It wasn't about the hunger and poverty of this world, it wasn't about the starving and bloated bellies of the Maghreb children. That wasn't the cause of his grief and concern.

It was about Friday, nothing else. If it weren't for him, they wouldn't have had to go to the toilet at all. And yes, they couldn't wait any longer. They couldn't... Because in everyone's life, there comes a time for the next stage...

* * *

It's strange how quickly Rhoedrick forgot his own birth. It's strange how quickly he began to think about his own death. If someone claims to remember their own birth, they're surely lying. If they think they remember their own death, they're deliberately lying. Rhoedrick reached these conclusions while poking his ear with a cotton bud.

* * *

Around the same time, Rhoedrick's brother, also sitting at the toilet, was answering questions just as important as Rhoedrick's. He watched a whole school of tiny cichlids, newly hatched and immediately removed from his aquarium, circle the toilet bowl. He, too, was reluctant to pull the flush. And he sang under his breath,

"Just let the apple trees bloom..."

* * *

Rhoedrick lay on his bed with a book on Circuit Theory. The drawings in it were more discouraging than the pictures of venereal disease symptoms in an anatomy textbook. He'd never seen the latter, anyway. That's probably why they could be so disgusting, more so than they probably were in reality. From the kitchen, he could hear snippets of Thomas's discussion with Lovelace. Lovelace was outlining a plan for slowly but efficiently taking out the trash—every morning, each of them was to leave a small bag in any bin they encountered on the way to college. Thomas, excited, responded with a shout:

"Fuck, finally a clean bin every day!

"

The Lowess was coming up with good ideas more and more often. Admittedly, most more or less normal people wouldn't agree with him. But it clearly excited him and didn't discourage him at all. One of them was setting up a mustard factory in toothpaste tubes, which anyone could carry with them everywhere. A Boy Scout-esque toolkit. Another equally brilliant idea was selling potatoes already peeled, because why else would anyone peel them?

The worst part wasn't the ideas themselves, but the fact that Lowess started putting some of them into practice. It was like drinking cold tea, for example. Right after brewing, he'd throw a few ice cubes into the glass. He'd explain himself briefly:

"Shaken, not stirred.

"

Thomas's life was sinking into monotony. Like an American soldier falling into a Vietnamese swamp, he was disappearing deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the sludge that was his life. In fact, he was almost entirely occupied with one of four activities: eating, sleeping, pretending to study, or talking nonsense.

* * * "

Remember, my dearest brothers: Not all sausages are created equal!" Thomas came to this conclusion at the end of Lent.

* * *

Rhoedrick became increasingly silent. Some began to say he had become serious. Others claimed he had stopped shaving.

* * *

Rhoedrick was cooking rice for dinner. A bland, unsalted smell filled the entire apartment. Meanwhile, Thomas's stomach was growling. Desperate, he went into the kitchen and announced to Rhoedrick,

"I'll cook rice too," then pulled out a bag of groats and threw it into a pot full of water.

* * *

Yes, yes, my dear brothers and sisters. A woman comes to the doctor, and Thomas is also an electronics engineer.

Thomas's fondness for sausages wasn't accidental, nor was it sporadic. Seeing Rhoedrick devouring three thin veal sausages, he said,

"I only like thick sausages. "

Colonel Sokół, meanwhile, spoke in the chat room on Rhoedrick's computer, which had been left online:

"So small, yet such a dick."

At the same time, Paplo, in a distant corner of the same city, was also updating Rhoedrick on his progress via chat. At that moment, he was sticking his buttocks out at his roommate.

And how can you not go crazy, my dearest brothers?

* * *

Everyone was going crazy. Every day, Rhoedrick sat at the table and scattered a handful of sunflower seeds on it. He believed that soon carrier pigeons would arrive and catch the good news Rhoedrick wanted to bring to the world. Meanwhile, even the internet wasn't working.

* * *

Rhoedrick often came up with wonderful ideas. What sublime thoughts came to him hundreds of times a day. The only problem was that when he later tried to recall them—nothing. Not a shred of an idea, not a speck of a concept. A complete disappearance.

Like today, for example. He understood the essence of civilization and all progress. They are the result of dissatisfaction, frustration—nothing more. A contented Australopithecus would never have lifted a toe to do anything. A contented one would have lain in the forerunner of what we now call a bed. In short: everything would have been generally okay, and the only thing he would have worried about was whether his wife was in another cave.

But something went wrong somewhere along the way. Someone screwed up. Maybe that guy got his soup too salty for dinner, maybe some chimpanzee stepped on his toes. In any case, he didn't like something. He started to wonder, maybe think. And he came up with something. Various strange and unnecessary things, one after another, and before he knew it, here we are – somewhere at the beginning of another strange millennium.

My dearest brothers, don't try to understand life. It completely contradicts everything around us. Even more so, it contradicts any logic, Boolean algebra. A void filled with thousands of matters, more or less unimportant, obligations, most of them pointless. Delete everything from your diaries. What will be left? How sad it is here. Damn sad. And empty...

* * *

Guest Alllenka:

Alllenka saw the sign CAVA. Trademark, she thought, registered under TMA 1988. At the same time, a flock of pleasant ants passed over her body, and her nose was irritated by a burning, dark scent. Trademark for smell. She entered, muttering, "What a tiny room..."

At that moment, a Windows window opened – critical review, defense, exclusion from infringement. The thought of copyright for artistic work for a slim glass dissolved in a few sips of red Bordeaux...

I'm tired. Warsaw resembles a swamp. The study load is constant, I don't feel like going for Christmas. I'd love to crawl under a blanket and sleep...

* * *

Rhoedirck liked what the English called "pun" – wordplay. He liked it when his statements took on an ambiguous context, when, supposedly true, they became nonsensical.

"What will we garnish the mazurkas with?

" "We'll garnish them with Bethlehem. "

* * *

It was Mondays that made Rhoedrick feel the end of the week approaching.

* * *

Rhoedrick felt the atmosphere become unbearable. Not because of the power weighing on almost every word he spoke. No.

It was all the fault of Lovelace and the Sweet Idiot, whom he brought to share dinners and a little fluffy treat. When they learned that Rhoedrick was describing them and the state they had all fallen into together in the Trivial Psychic Triad, they were offended.

Rhoedrick's words that they were nothing more than characters in the Trivial Psychic Triad, nothing more than figments of Rhoedrick's imagination, didn't help. They refused to believe that a hero couldn't be offended by his creator. They were too proud to understand that they existed only here and now, and whenever Rhoedrick felt like it. They refused to accept that they didn't exist outside the text, that outside it they were absolutely nobody. Only Rhoedrick could assure them that Thomas's cry,

"You will be nothing!"

would become theirs as well.

Nothing helped. The strike of one of the three heroes dragged on. Page after page remained blank, chapter after chapter unwritten. Days passed, page after page. Lowelas refused to speak, preventing him from spreading any more nonsense. Rhoedrick began searching for a new hero. It wasn't easy. The fate of the Triad was at stake.

Rhoedrick

only met Kciecier at university. After a few months of acquaintance, Kciecier earned a new nickname: Dog Dzyndzel, or Dzyndzler for short. He liked it, and others did too; it was okay. Dog Dzyndzel had long suffered from the same illness as Thomas, Rhoedrick, and Lowelas. He remained in the shadows, hiding in dark corners of Warsaw to disorient any potential enemy. Only when confronted by Rhoedrick, recognizing similar elements in him, did he begin to reveal himself. He basically revealed himself during one of his physics lectures, saying,

"I'd like to be a peasant, a country girl, and have a country woman for a wife. Big and strong, with breasts like two ripe melons."

Soon after, he left for the United States to search for such a woman.

* * *

Sometimes at night, sadness flooded Rhoedrick from his toes to the last hair on the top of his head. He felt the liquids of regret and bitterness flood his ego, which had been battered for twenty years. When two in the morning came, he remembered the women he had loved. He counted them. It helped more than counting sheep, and in the end, it came to almost the same thing. No matter how he did it, it always ended with one. He watched movies and longed to be like one of the characters in them.

Meanwhile, all he could do was be himself. When three o'clock came, he'd lie in bed and start crying. He'd look back and see nothing. He'd look forward, and from there, too, it was empty. Anybody's home?

* * *

Rhoedrick and his school friend Paplo Modelko left the store. Paplo equipped with three still-warm ciabatta, Rhoedrick with three bottles of sparkling mineral water under his arm. They were just reaching the staircase when Rhoedrick shouted to Paplo,

"Quick, help, my water's broken!" The bag was torn, and more bottles of mineral water were falling down the stairs.

* * *

Why don't you take me for a little while…

Sing the songs, you know they make me smile...

Rhoedrick's grandfather died tomorrow. He's just as gone as he was yesterday. Rhoedrick wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. He put on an Aenim Tool record, using all the available power on the speakers. It didn't help. He started watching a comedy. Nothing either. He brewed coffee with a pinch of chili. It burned his vocal cords like sulfur. He read the comic, washed out the mug, and visited the bathroom. He sat down on the couch. He had no time. No point. He didn't want to be anyone. He couldn't go to the funeral. He couldn't remember. The twenty-first century was the age of death. Let's go, no one's calling.

* * *

Thomas sat in the kitchen. He was cutting an old, almost completely dried-out onion into large round slices. He sipped a lemon Fanta and grumbled,

"Nothing tastes good to me. Nothing makes sense. "

As Rhoedrick entered the apartment, he asked,

"Do you want some onions?"

Rhoedrick, bored, replied:

"No, and you?"

* * *

Guest Allenka:

Inside me, it's white, white, quiet, monotonous,

because I carry within me a secret of all colors hidden.

How I torment myself in my whiteness,

I want to be a color—who will break me into a rainbow?"

The above text already hinted at the fragility of Allenka's character. She was Rhoedrick's best friend. A friend who was just leaving to get married. One by one, people disappeared. They seemed to be still alive, but they were already gone...