He feels the sting of winter’s cold on his skinny legs as he finally gets out of bed. Pasty and unclothed. His frame is creaking again; sternum clicking, cartilage sliding. Upper thigh skin pulled taut over the mountaintops of hundreds of raised hair follicles. Maybe one day the frame will get its much-needed update.
9:45 am.
The man wishes he had had time to shower. What will the hordes of people waiting in the kitchen cupboard think? Gross, you didn’t shower. The stench is terrible. How embarrassing. Sinking further into the woollen interiors, he shuffles his feet up the orange brick slope, walking a route he has walked many times before. The day’s first cup of tea beckons. Scalding tea hopefully. It has been a long while since last the man’s hands were scalded through the excess skin. Calluses grown more thickly than a supremely thick custard tart.
Sodden and soiled towels drape down around the glass cubicle much like the characteristic overflowing vegetation found in unkempt forests. With hands poised as machetes, the man enters the thicket. Bright polished chrome announces itself with a painful gleam. The shower handles dig into his flesh, resisting the proposed turning. It’s only fair to oppose such an early morning request really. What was the man thinking?
10:31 am.
The sunshine is warming. The man begins to slow-roast; pre-heat oven to 27 degrees, cook for 80 odd years, remove when wrinkled-up and frail. Sitting outside on the grass, he notices that the shrubbery is doing rather well. This is a pleasing realisation for the man as just a week prior (May 25th, 2021), sitting in the same spot, he noticed an increase in the number of browning lacerations exhibited by the vegetation. Probably the fingers of winter, he had thought unassuredly at the time.