The mad rash was stretching from Thom’s elbow to the top of his shoulder, then sliding down his chest and onto his belly.
“I couldn’t rub your smell off of me,” he said, somewhat apologetically, pushing his forehead against his bent knees. There was nothing else to do other than grab a tube of soothing cream and start spreading it across the damaged skin.
The apartment was quiet, but both of them heard creaks of breaking walls and crumpling ceilings. In the dimmed corner on the right the whitewash started to crack – first those were barely-noticeable lines, but with every hour they grew thicker and bolder.
Jonny washed his hands, noticing that the water from the faucet started to turn ruddy. He smelled blood and thought that perhaps the pipes were corroding.
The air stood still in the bedroom as Jonny accompanied Thom inside and laid him down on the bed – in fact, it was so somber that one was ought to think that perhaps it was the same air that stood untouched for centuries in the sealed pyramids.
The air was stale and Thom’s eyes hurt when he woke up, his body aching and limbs weak. The curtains were shut, breaking any effort of light reaching in, and the whole room was immersed into the blue twilight. Thom’s mellow mind worked around the previous night slowly and with much fear until he reached the first rocky memories and decided to postpone remembering.
Jon was sprawled on the floor next to the bed, the second pillow under his cheek, his body wrapped in a blanket.
“What are we?” Thom asked, clearing his throat and staring at the cracked ceiling.
“I don’t know,” Jon asked, sitting up and rubbing his face, “The place is falling to pieces.”
“Soon we’ll be in a desert. With dry cracked earth and mountains on the horizon.”
“Great,” Jonny ran his hand over the floor, exasperated, “What’s next?”
Jonny was kissing Thom furiously.
He was pinning Thom’s hands on either side of his head and pressing their faces together.
In his rage he registered the breeze cooling the sweat on his forehead, too weak to bother his moist hair.
Something silky brushed his arm slightly and he thought that the bed was falling apart into white feathers that were carried around and scattered all over the floor. Mad at that, he pressed Thom harder into the mattress and felt him sink lower.
There was nothing left except for mold and sour milk.
Thom was peeling pieces of cracked whitewash off the walls, sitting on the floor by the bed. It was stuck under his nails and dust was clouding his eyes. The curtains were long gone into the piles of dust on the floor and now the window looked desolate. Jonny sat on the bed looking around before taking Thom’s arm and pulling him up to lay together in bed, while small crumbs of cement were falling on them and painting them white, salting their hair and burying them together.
“Remember how we got this bed?” Jonny asked, brushing Thom’s cheek slightly. They were on their sides, facing each other, legs tangled.
“We were sick of the couch,” Thom answered, “And you wanted something bigger.”
“And the closet? I wish there was a small closet here somewhere, so we could hide, you said.”
“Yes,” Thom said, brushing Jonny’s chin with his thumb, “D’you want to go back?”
“Yeah,” Jonny smiled, his eyes closed, “I do. We’ll have a balcony next time.”
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