"Agreeable Grey" by Tyler Downs

Agreeable Grey 

by Tyler Downs

The alarm blares like it’s mad at me.

I wake up, groping at the nightstand until I’m able to grab the noisy fucker and silence it. Then it’s just me, alone with my thoughts, staring up at my grey ceiling. ‘Agreeable Grey’, according to the paint’s name. At the time, I remember wanting an inoffensive color. Something not too bright. Not too dark. A nice, comfortable comatose.

I didn’t know then that it was a harbinger of things to come.

As for me? I’m red. Red all over. I’m covered in blood from head to toe, just like my bed sheets. The blood’s still wet and warm on my skin. I don’t bother trying to clean it up anymore.

It takes effort just to sit up and roll out of bed. Everything's sticky and I feel old and rusted—my muscles, my joints, my heart. I stick a cigarette in my mouth, and it takes an embarrassingly long time to light it with my shaky fingers. Then I toss the lighter back in my drawer and head to the bathroom. It’s only when I reach the door and look back that I notice the mess I left behind; a trail of bloody footprints that won’t stop following me.

I take a piss while I smoke and spill ash on the floor. All I wanna do is spit on the mirror when it looks at me. Then I toss my half-smoked cigarette in the toilet and crank on the shower. The steam spreads while I stand naked under the water and wash the red off me, revealing my grey skin beneath.

Agreeable Grey. Agreeable Me.

I’m wearing the same clothes again today. I sift through prescription bottles until I find one that still rattles when I shake it, then I dump a few painkillers on the counter, crush ‘em to dust, and snort them up with the remaining half of a McDonald’s straw. Agreeable blue pills. Comatose pills. Comatose me.

I sell patio furniture for a living. That’s the scariest part of this story.

The boss yells when I show up late to work again, and sometime around lunch, I get high in a bathroom stall and stare into the window of my phone at the lives of people I don’t know. An old guy eventually comes into the store and talks to me about his grandson’s college football team. He doesn’t buy any furniture, though. I think he’s just lonely. His hair reminds me of my bedroom ceiling.

On the way home, I pick up some fast food and ignore my phone whenever it vibrates. And later that night, I watch a movie I’ve seen before and pause halfway through to masturbate. I’m disgusted with myself afterwards. But at least the post-nut clarity makes the ending of The Wizard of Oz a bit more interesting.

I’m the Tin Man. If I only had a heart.

I get high again and nod off, and before I realize it, the day’s over. So I make my sluggish ascent upstairs and crawl into my blood-soaked bed to stare at the ceiling again. There you are. My agreeable, inoffensive grey. I smile a sad smile, grab the pill bottle, then press it to my head and pull the trigger.

I don’t dream that night. Drug addicts never dream.

When I wake up the next morning to my blaring alarm, there I am again—lying in bed, drenched in my own blood, staring up at the ceiling. And it’ll happen again tomorrow, and again, and again, and again every day after that, over and over, like a spinning Rolodex of blank grey pages.

I’ll just keep killing myself until I die.