London from the 3rd Floor

Note to the reader: I wrote the first draft of this on my phone a while back and I was hacking away at the story for ages. I hope you like the extended metaphor.

Annie.

***

I:

He was woken up at 4pm with a looming shadow standing over him. The shadow made a lengthy sigh as he woke himself up. "Were you...asleep?" The shadow asked. He looked around, still halfway between worlds and the coworkers just stared at him, one mouthing the words 'are you okay?' but not really trying. The shadow was his boss of course and promptly led him from the third floor, back to his office.

The halls were a muted, prison blue and covered in crappy motivational quotes that nobody read but everyone had leaned against, so there were letters missing, scrubbed out and some that had entire words lost. The shadow of the boss made the muted blue more oppressive and the man eventually sat down opposite him in a room that could be mistaken for one where a prisoner may take his last meal. "What's going on with you? You haven't been yourself lately." The shadow had morphed into a tall man in a navy-blue suit. The man's eyes were throbbing though, the sleep had sedated him.

"You took some painkillers earlier on, said you had a headache. Any chance you could tell us what was in those?" But the man couldn't hear his boss properly, his head was still aching but how? He produced a box of codeine from his pocket and handed it to his boss without saying a word. "You can't take these here, you know that, right? Not without a prescription. Do you have one?" The man shook his head, he didn't have one. "That's a shame." The navy-blue suit sighed again. "I know you've been going through a lot since the death of your father but this simply isn't allowed."

It was true. His father had died leaving him nothing. It was the last family member he had left. It was sudden, not slow. He had nightmares, mental breakdowns, visions of the men who broke into his father's house and stabbed him to death with an ice pick. The images of his father's corpse that simply wouldn't go away. But his boss didn't care - the work, and everyone else, was far more important. The fact that his boss knew everything that had happened, only made it worse.

"We're going to have to let you go." His boss then asked for the keys and showed him the door. The evening was cold and unforgiving, but some speckles of the sun were still out creating breaks of orange in the clouds like the sky was about to catch fire.

He didn't feel like walking home that day, so he called a taxi to drop him off on a different street so he could buy some groceries. All the while, thinking about where he was going to get the money from to fund this terrible lifestyle he had built for himself over the past few years. The cashier looked at his dishevelled appearance, the reddening of his eyes and the insomnia which definitely showed in the lines of his nid-30s face. "That'll be £45 please, cash or card." He presented his smart phone without a word. It beeped and he turned to the exit without waiting for "would you like a receipt?"

Fifteen minutes later, he was standing outside his apartment in the hallway. He knew he had to bide his time and save his money. You see, many apartment complexes over the past five years had been getting this extreme new technological update from 'The Company' - a real estate business in central London. Instead of paying for utilities and rent and all of the rest of it separately - you just paid everything straight to 'The Company' and they would sort you out. All you needed was a functioning smart phone with a payment option within.

He remembered seeing all the adverts, it was like running an apartment subscription service and he wanted to be on the hype-train straight away. It was the new thing that everyone wanted and now, he was standing outside of his apartment, on a Friday evening, scared to pay. His hands trembled slightly as he reached for his phone. He knew he only had about £1'000 left in his bank account, so he was probably good for a couple of weeks. He breathed in, as if he were about to break into a run, simply held his phone out to the receiver and shut his eyes. He wouldn't look at his bank account - not there and then anyway.

He heard the confirmation tone: a week's worth of electricity paid in full, a week's worth of rent paid in full, a week's worth of water paid in full - that came to around £500 altogether with £250 of that being just rent alone.

It's enough. He thought.

For now.

He then unlocked his apartment and stepped inside.

Closing the door behind him, he fell to his knees and burst into tears.

II:

He spent the next day or so looking for other, cheaper apartments to live in but everywhere had now taken up 'The Company' and their new scheme. It was easy, both for the customer and for everyone else involved. Places that were perhaps £300-£400 cheaper than where he was living at the moment were now the same price. It kept him up at night in the same way his father's grizzly death had - but this time it was a slower, more lonely death and it was happening to him.

He decided to apply for government welfare and was basically told that he would receive the payment at the end of the month if he could prove he was actively looking for work. It wasn't a problem as he was doing that anyway. The money probably wasn't enough to cover the rent but it was something. It didn't perk up his spirits but it made him realise that there was definitely help out there. He would cut back on food and water to survive what he thought was going to be a minor blip in his professional career.

He poured over job applications which each came back with nothing over the next week, he counted how much he was spending to the penny and thought it wise to live primarily on homemade sandwiches. There was no electricity involved in making a sandwich and it was filling and it was cheap. He was charging his phone to make sure he always had access to his card. His debit card was definitely around somewhere, but wherever it was, he couldn't think about it right now.

It was the middle the night when he was sitting up on his bed, typing away at his laptop, trying to quickly apply for a position that was closing in a few hours. The lights went off and his phone was no longer charging on his bedside table. He looked around for a power cut until he remembered it was the next Friday and a disembodied female voice waited a few minutes more before saying over an intercom: "You have currently run out of electrical funds, you will need to update these as soon as possible to access your electricity. Thank you for choosing 'The Company"."

After food and the previous payment of £500, he could no longer afford to waste his money on the electricity in his apartment. He breathed to himself that he would rely now, on natural light from the sun to cut back a little bit more. But, without being able to charge his devices, he knew that the amount he could apply for new jobs was about to be rationed down. He gulped at the notion of trying to prove he was applying for work and whether the government of all people, would understand, but shuddered at the notion.

Finally though, he turned off his phone, shut down his laptop, lay down in his bed and stared at the ceiling until dawn.

III:

He lived in darkness for the days afterwards and as promised, used only the sunlight to feel his way around his rooms. 'The Company', he had found, had taken a late-payment fine from his account early in the morning. His £1'000 came down to £500, after food payments it came down to £450 and now, after the late-payment fine it had come down to £250. He wiped his hand across his forehead and wondered about how he was going to afford anything over the coming weeks. He quickly paid for his water by selecting it from his apartment items list by his door, if there was anything he needed it would be that. Another £50 was gone, but water was therefore on for some time.

He gulped at the aspect but continued living on sandwiches and water for as long as he could. He turned his devices back on and decided he would only use his laptop to apply for jobs. It was an old and rickety thing but, he needed some proof for his government meeting at the end of the month. His phone remained off. He thought about whether he should switch it on just in case anyone called him about his application and told himself he would only keep it on between 9am and 5pm. He knew it would be difficult, but this difficult was not even in his perimeter. He couldn't afford to waste any more money. He was down to his last £200 and his government payment was not going to come in for another two and a half weeks. He just had to make it to the last day of the month.

With little to eat, he made his way to the same supermarket, convinced he was on track with his spending. The shops were quiet during the day and of course, he took his time just walking around. He took a block of cheese from the shelf at £1.50 - this was expected but it would last him a while. When he went to bread aisle however, he found that the bread he was buying for 70p previously had increased to same price as the cheese. It had almost happened overnight and yet, he was the only person, customer or staff, that had noticed or even cared. He paid £3 at the counter and walked back to his apartment wondering if anyone else saw the increase.

He opened his door to find a letter jammed beneath it from 'The Company'. It read:

***

Hello subscriber!

It seems to us that your apartment complex has had a problem with water leakages. This has been coming from the third floor on which you live and thus, we have had to deduct £50 from the payments of everyone on the floor to ensure this is fixed as soon as possible without obviously, disturbing you and your fellow subcribers. We will be working on the leakage on your floor in the coming week.

Thank you for understanding,

The Company

***

His hands shook. He took a quick look at his water payment. It had fallen back to zero. He felt the tears well up in his eyes as they glassed over. He dropped the paper bag he was carrying. He paid another £50 for water, trying to select the £50 payment, but it wasn't working as it was now overdue. He pounded his fist into the wall and broke down. Another late-payment fine. Another £100. He watched as the bank pulled the money from his account. £197 turned into £47 in an instant.

But.

At least he had water.

How long for?

He didn't know.

IV:

A month or so ago, he couldn't afford the train ticket to his father's funeral in Bath and so, they buried him without much of an audience. There weren't many people attending anyways and definitely nobody he would want to speak to. The train ticket prices had risen steadily over the year and since he hadn't been back home much, he didn't think he'd need one. But then it happened. One night a group of thieves broke down the door to his father's home and ransacked the whole place - including anything that used to belong to him. His old bedroom was now missing things he had collected since his childhood which his father had kept in memory of his son moving halfway across the country.

The police stated that his father was actually barely still alive when they found him, but died in the ambulance in the early morning hours. The thieves were in the house for about two hours, going through the entire place. Then they found his father working on an old car in the garage. One of the men grabbed an ice pick and sent it through his father's chest and maximum capacity. This happened so many times he couldn't believe his father died in the ambulance. What were dad's last words? His mind would drift off. He would try to remember his mother's too, but the difference was that he didn't actually remember his mother at all. There was no trace of her in his mind apart from those he saw in photographs and video tapes.

He would eventually gasp himself back to reality in the dead of night. It was never a pleasant experience, but at least he came back this time.

He looked at the phone bill he needed to pay from the month previous; another £27. He just watched as his fingers seemed to move over the screen on their own, paying the bill. He let his head hit the pillow on his bed and tried to sleep. It was 3am and the sun hadn't come up yet. He lay in the pitch black of his room, aware of the final £20. His breath had been catching in his throat lately - the images of his father's gruesome death replaced with the slow, untimely and isolated possibility of his own.

He walked into the kitchen to see that in the new-found heat of the daylight, the food he had spent a whole of £3 on had finally succumbed to mould. It was already three days expired but he'd been able to consume it without a problem. He thought primarily about cutting it off and eating it anyway. Seeing the final £20 in his account didn't make him feel like going out and spending another three on a new loaf of bread and block of cheese.

He grabbed a knife and carefully sliced the bread and cheese of their mouldiness, dropping the waste into a paper bag he would discard of later. He turned to face the fridge but remembered he had no money for electricity. He put both of the ingredients back into the cupboard where hopefully, they would not expire any further. All he could do was pray to a God that was awful enough to throw him to the dogs like this.

Over the next day or so, his laptop died. The charge ran dry. He just accepted it. The sound of the final beeps before it completely shut down echoed across his apartment. He definitely felt the wave of depression but found that he couldn't even cry anymore - his tear ducts seemed to have shut off entirely. He just lurched his shoulders forward on the desk over a six-day-old cheese sandwich and accepted his fate.

V:

To whom this may concern,

Unfortunately, in the last few weeks we have seen little evidence on your account that you have made progress with updating our systems on your activity concerning job applications. We are therefore forced to withhold any funds until you can send us proof. This may be in the form of: printed emails from companies confirming that you have applied for a job, a job application number or even a representative at a company that we may speak to concerning the progress of your application (please leave both the manager's name and phone number if this is the option you choose).

***

The government, he thought to himself, they cut me off. But it didn't rattle him like he felt it should. Instead, he got a sinking feeling in his stomach that something wasn't right. He couldn't send proof as his devices were out of battery. He couldn't charge his devices as he had no electricity. His infrequent mental breakdowns and possible symptoms of PTSD were making it even more difficult to go anywhere or do anything even remotely human. He just sat on the floor in his living room wondering about whether his stomach hurt because of anxiety or because of those sandwiches. He had spent the whole of the previous night vomiting and it wasn't about to stop now.

The moldy bread and cheese though, they were finished and he'd need more food soon. When he arrived at the supermarket however, the bread he would usually buy had vanished to be replaced by a 'seeded' and 'organic' bread that was twice the price. £3 just for the bread? His head was spinning. The cheese had increased in price as well. It had gone from simply £1.50 - which he felt was reasonable, to being £4 per block. There were no longer anymore cheaper options. The cost of food therefore went up to £7. But it did not stop there. The price of a paper bag featuring the logo of the supermarket was no longer an option. They were bloody free. He raged in his brain, trying to make sense of it, but nothing came out. He swallowed loudly and walked over the to shiny, new plastic bags costing £1 each. The only option.

He felt like asking the cashier whether they were simply out of paper bags, but he didn't think there was any point. £8 to eat for a few days. He was running out of time and definitely, out of money.

It would happen slowly at first, then all at once. He ate carefully for another week until he could no longer afford food. He definitely saw that London was not the place it used to be. The government no longer cared about its poor and his stomach, still churning, meant nothing. He had no money for the bus to get to the doctor's office halfway across town and didn't have any electricity so couldn't use the phone to call anyone. The silence ate at him almost daily. He started walking the streets every few days to get rid of hunger pains and actually hear some noise. Each time he did, he would see a damning headline about public libraries closing or museums shutting early. There was even an article about cutting the food budget in state schools. At least he knew that even in his private hell, he wasn't actually alone. The entire country was going down with him.

It would be another month before the entire floor would wake up to a smell that was described to the police as being like a rotting animal carcass.

They would go in and see a man hunched over in the corner of his apartment on the floor. None of his equipment was charged and maggots had already made the body their home. His lights didn't work and his water had been out for a while. The rickety, old laptop had been smashed and it looked as though something had gone wrong. The pathologist had said he'd starved to death but after a few quick payments back and forth, 'The Company' made sure there was no such thing spoken of ever again.

You read that correctly: according to 'The Company', none of this happened and so, it's going to stay that way.

Between you and I - it was suicide.