I wake up dead; lost in a circling day of relived trauma; a vampiric life sucking memory whirlpool.

My thoughts struggle feebly through a viscous sludge; matted and tangled like a ball of starving gut worms. Ideas, feelings and cognitions wrestle in a futile fight for domination or death. Something moves as if for the kill; inspiration manoeuvring through grease and putrescence - a confused attack - ending in consumption of its own knotted tail. I pull at the head of a singled out notion to extract it from the slithery muck. The mass tightens and strangulates the thought like a constricted bowel.

I cover my self in an old dirty duvet that has seen many better days with evidence remaining. It smells stale with old sweat and desiccated skin cells. Blood and cum stains provide a unique biological pattern of spatter camouflage. I lie half asleep and half way dead, concealed and considering the immediate options:

1. wake up
2. starve, rot and end as a biological print on 'Turin Shroud' duvet.

Waking up suggests some kind of point or reason; placing significance on that extra body stumbling across the surface of the globe. I try to determine the logical reason why slowly dying on the edge of sleep, starvation or dehydration is the wrong thing to do. Real logical reasons are few and lost in a twist of matter and synapse. Invention and imagination will have to move into the vacuum again.

I lie in a bed of stink, pushing propaganda on myself until I am stupid enough to believe it. I lie... I feel consciousness. I feel reality and fear the nothing that it will bring. I try to remember what sugar tastes like, what masturbation feels like, what a car crash looks like. I feel nothing. Memories appear like pictures without meaning; like diagrams in Korean instruction manual. I hear my breathing; deep and regular as a sleeping man's. The sun drops unwanted rays on my eyelids like pecking vultures eager to eat at the insides. I smell my breath; like a farting anus.

A conversation shouted across the street invades my ears. Somewhere a phone rings in the distance. I reason my way into consciousness.

I open a glued down slit in my head and peer at amorphous blurs; checking for movement before committing the full fragile eye. I widen the gap and focus. I see dead spiders in old webs, spiders that have lived, built property and died without being disturbed by human intervention. Dust clings to the webs like dirty flour; creating an undulating snows-scape of dead skin cells and spider parts. I imagine young spiders playing in this snow, throwing dust balls, building dust men and running away screaming from the brittle corpses of auntie and uncle spider.

A telephone rings muffled like a bee in a crystal glass.

The room is a dirty mess; an untouched shrine to sloth and apathy. Clothing heaps carpet a probable floor, a godlike floor; unseen yet unquestionable. A strange blue grey mould peppers the mounds, consuming fibres and creating holes at time-lapse speed. Piles of books and files lie wondering what knowledge they had stored inside to deserve all this. A single large window stabs light through a skin of deceitful curtains. The fabric hangs lazily, disguised as a barrier against the outside world yet flooding in enough light to kick off the day with a migraine.

I feel my head beat with blood; throbbing thick and fast through a bottleneck of weak and overloaded vessels. A string of sounds cut painfully, slicing to the point of vision. The telephone buzzes like hangover sunlight. The grating noise moves my stomach with an acid churning pre-vomit reflex. I kick the phone and answer it just to stop the sensation.

"Good afternoon! I am calling on behalf of Beta Solutions, this is just a courtesy call. How are you?"

I regret kicking the phone, but regret answering it even more. A generic cold caller chirps sham contentment down the line; a shiny grin and empty eyes almost audible through the static fuzz. I consider slamming the phone down but something bad inside makes me play Juliet to his Romeo.

"How am I what?", I answer. Alas not as comical as I would wish.

Somewhere in time some marketing whiz with a 'fun' tie, sci-fi obsession and few friends became aware of general hatred towards hard selling telephone calls. While masturbating over doctored photos of porn stars with 'Wookiee' heads he had a 'eureka!' moment and decreed that all call centres would now pretend to be concerned about peoples wellbeing out of 'courtesy'. This was only empty sentiment and not however a new pro-active branch of The Samaritans.

"Yes ha ha! er... one of our agents will be in your area this week and we were just wondering if you would like a free quotation for..."

He laughs nervously and dutifully returns to the script; a secure warm place where you can leave your morals at the door. I tell him I don't want to buy anything, even though I know he has a scripted answer for that. My voice rattles the words like the last cigarette in the packet, like thunder in a vodka bottle.

"I'm not selling anything sir, just giving you the chance to take advantage of our offer for..."

I tell him he is a worthless corporate scythe that reaps people like corn, that I want to die and die in a public place, that his children will be born without faces. Somewhere along the way the line goes dead but I continue for a few moments anyway. I sympathise with the phone parasites and their thankless work, especially when the alternative is chopping pieces off your hands in a cold dirty factory. The environment is more comfortable and your colleagues are less likely to be banal stink monkeys and the criminally retarded. I did the job myself for a while until I felt it sucking at my soul. I did a lot of things for a while. My Curriculum Vitae is a diverse list of temporary encounters with meaningless activities. I sympathise with the call centre worker to a point but this doesn't stop me from telling them to fuck off. I swear repeatedly at the empty line.

Through the wall a dissonant child screams for attention. It's mother of volume throws shouted replies in a game of decibel tennis; an irritating exchange where only the loudest prevails. It's a resonant and eternal image like the Madonna and child, the chicken and the egg; individually insignificant organisms reaching meaning through dichotomy. I pull the 'Turin' quilt over my eyes and sniff at a stain; scratching the surface to reach live substance. The sounds from the wall are blunted to mumbling audio ooze. Imagined visions of the scene continue like a kicked-in television.

Memory. It is night. It is last night. Shouting, slamming doors and a bed thumping a wall to a rhythmic crescendo. The carnal gasps of fucking colour the air with a damp grey funk. Slugs of salty flesh press themselves into greasy fissures, grunting like rabid addicted zombies and humping in seizures. A telephone sound pierces through time.

It is day. It is today. A bell, an electronic buzzer vibrates in a scarred plastic telephone body lying semi-submerged in a crusting ocean of socks. The ringing grinds like a bone saw; buzzing at my skull like a wasp with a craving for brains. It is consumerism fighting its way in, sonar marketing; winding adverts round sound waves and vibrating them directly into the head. It is punishment for not buying enough, or not selling enough. It was a phone ringing. It stops.

Next door the conversation continues. Two generations of female voices screech at each other with venomous syllables. The screaming little bastard is the perfect advert for contraception... or strangulation; domestic violence and condoms are never around when you need them. The traffic outside sends shivers through the house, and I am comforted in the thought that one day that child will be old enough to take a walk. Sometimes the cure can be more satisfying than prevention.

I take a step on the floor and wade ankle deep through underwear, pocket change, nail clippings, and till receipts. Something alive, something alarmed skips past a toe and disappears into an empty aspirin bottle. I look at an image of a deformed and retarded ape on my wall. I pull a finger through the powdery film coating the mirror and the reflection turns away. I engage myself in sniffing clothes from piles to find the cleanest and more socially acceptable to wear. With time I find a sock or two, a t-shirt saying 'Cyprus!' and a pair of jeans with an ashtray kicked over them. Dirt is always more favourable than smell; you can't pass off dick cheese as a fashion statement.

The telephone rings again; whistling its irritating robo-sparrow mono-tune. Hot blood pushes at the insides of my skull trying to pressure its way into freedom. The telephone rings and the taste of acid fills my mouth. I resist an anger, an ancient instinct to violence and breath cool calm air. 'I am man not ape,' I repeat, letting the vowels resonate through voids and airways. The telephone rings and something breaks as I pick up the handset.

"Hello it...."

A voice screams rasps of word shaped hate, arcing with spit and blackened air. The voice is mine.

"...just er..."

I tell them I am not a resource that can be milked like a cow. I tell them I cannot be described as an alpha-numerical value.

"...yes ah..."

I say I hate everything they stand for, that they do not contribute to society, they suck out the juice and spit out the rest. I rant on.

"...but I..."

Earn and buy, eat and shit; this is not all I am. My possessions are not yours to manipulate away.

"...can you..."

You have no heart, no soul. I will not buy anything you ever produce. I do not want anything you own. I don't care if you don't reach your targets. I don't care if you never get a bonus. If you want something from me you will have to fucking steal it. You make me want to fucking kill somebody. Tell me where you work and I will wreck your fucking building. I will cut your throat and watch you cough out your blood. Fucking die you cunt, I hope you fucking die.

The line softly crackles for a moment.

A pause passes uncomfortably by.

The caller sighs and stutters:

"ah... er... your uncle... he... he died this morning. Hello?"