By Tim Murray
Illustration By Joss Murray (click to enlarge)
You know how it is? Waiting for a delivery can be the most mind-numbing and frustrating of ordeals. Having to sit in all day and wait because the delivery company can only give you an estimated delivery time of between early and late. It's like watch very boring paint dry. Well you should see what its like ten years from now. You wouldn't believe it.
Due to significant population increases, the number of deliveries has gone up threefold and add to that the increase in traffic on the road, deliverymen can only give a timespan of a week in which they'll come. People have to take holiday off work when buying a fridge and I've heard of people quitting their jobs just to get a carpet laid.
This is where I'll introduce our protagonist, our man. He's been waiting for a sofa for seven days now. He's been a patient boy. In fact, the room he is sitting on the floor in is completely empty. His old place was involved in a freak fire incident and it, and all its contents, went up in flames. This is his new one bedroom apartment but he has nothing to fill it with. With little else to do, our man has been picking out the dirt and dust that fill the gaps in the floorboards with his brown fingernails and piles of the mucky crap are collecting around him. His red, rimmed eyes stare intently at the blank, white asylum walls as if they could see through to the room beyond. But they can't.
He stands up, like he does every hour or so, knocking over the piles of muck in the process and leaves the room, the apartment. After locking the door, he marches to the phone box at the corner of his street to call the delivery company and inquiry where his sofa is and they answer like they do every hour or so, “We'll be with you as soon as we can Sir.” The receiver is slammed down recklessly. A pan of water begins to boil.
We return to the room a few hours later. Things look the same but the atmosphere has changed. Instead of the air buzzing and walls closing in, a calm has settled over the space, even filling the gaps in the floorboards. There is blood on the floor. A trail that leads us to a body, sprawl across the floorboards. A man in overalls who is hold a pen and a clipboard, waiting for a signature but our man has signed the back of the deliveryman's head with a hammer. There is also a sofa. Our man is sitting on it, cross-legged. Content and waiting.
