It rained outside the dim apartment. Dodavehu stood in the center of the room feeling the coolness of the floorboards on his bare feet. He reached down to adjust his testicles. The air pushed in on his body. He felt himself in the center of an invisible vice growing tighter. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. A dull pain began behind his crotch and spread gently to his legs and stomach. The room's bare walls bulged inward, increasing the pressure. Dodavehu took a step toward the window. A bird landed outside and twisted its head to look in. It hopped from foot to foot and took off. Dodavehu opened the window and felt as if nothing had happened.

It rained outside the dim apartment. Dodavehu took a white porcelain plate from the cupboard and set it on the table. The plate was the color of a woman's skin. He fingered the edge lightly and imagined he was touching a cheek bone, stroking a beautiful chin. The plate was veined with delicate cracks. Dodavehu took it from the table and rinsed it in the sink. The plate looked perfect then, the water providing a clear, shifting mask that left behind cleanliness.

It rained outside the dim apartment. Dodavehu sat in a wooden chair by the window. He felt his heart against his chest. His pulse was fast. He had been thinking of Wilma, the first time he had tasted menstrual blood. Everything in the room seemed to want to press a red fingerprint into his mouth. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared out the window. A woman with red hair walked beneath a black umbrella. She turned a corner and was gone.

It rained outside the dim apartment. Dodavehu repaired to his bed and unzipped his pants. His thing leapt out, already hard. He choked it, twisted, pulled. His stomach muscles tightened and the thing spat up on Dodavehu's shirt. He lay back, feeling the familiar calmness wash over him. In a moment, the blue lights of half sleep began to dance for Dodavehu, lulling him toward dreams. A red and white stew whirled in the pot. It fell, spilled on the floor. A white curtain opened revealing a red sky. The water in the sink turned red and a woman's white face rose from the surface. She opened her mouth and a red and white stew whirled there. Dodavehu jarred awake, looked down at his shirt to find his sperm mingled with drops of blood.

It rained outside the dim apartment. Some workmen with a huge machine were pulling a tree up outside the window. Dodavehu watched from his wooden chair. The men loaded the tree into a truck and drove away. The dark gash they had opened in the sidewalk seemed to draw light into it. Dodavehu could see nothing outside with any trace of organic life. The buildings sat simply, accepting rain and sun, but unable to make use of either. They existed to be worn down eternally, without the possibility of growth. Dodavehu drew a sigh. The small sound seemed to fill the entire room.

Red light filled the apartment. Dodavehu's skin looked red. His white walls were bathed in redness. He stood from his chair and pressed his hand against the cold window pane. The beads of water on the window were filled with the light. Thin red streams trickled down toward the sill.

Cold air filled the apartment. Dodavehu wrapped his arms around his body. He squeezed and felt the breath pump out from his lungs and billow into the room. His body was an archaic machine designed to process different elements. It worked chemically, alchemically. Dodavehu transformed air into short-lived clouds which hovered briefly at his lips before dissolving.

The sound of running water filled the apartment. Dodavehu had left the faucet running in the kitchen sink. The water continually rinsed a stack of crusted plates, but they never came clean. The blemishes were too engrained. Stains and dried food had become as much a part of the plates as the porcelain itself.

A fart filled the apartment. Dodavehu held his breath, flabbergasted. He opened the window to let some air in. Outside, the rain had made the street smell fresh. Cool air rushed into the apartment to replace the foul cloud. Dodavehu exhaled out the window. His heart beat quickly for a moment, then slowed to its usual pace.

The television's glow filled the apartment. Two men were penetrating a chunky brunette on the screen. She calmly accepted their cocks into her orifices, moaning and writhing on cue. The two men withdrew to spatter their semen on her cheeks, into her open mouth. A gob of Dodavehu's come hit the blonde man in the eye and dripped toward the floor. It left a trail of mucus on the screen.

Traffic sounds filled the apartment. Dodavehu's thoughts had stopped. In his wooden chair he was content to have let his thoughts die. Their revolutions had ceased and their invisible corpses mingled with the sound of tires on wet concrete drifting into the room. Horn blasts punctuated cryptic sentences which Dodavehu had no drive to decipher. He felt a strong urge to urinate, but the distance from his chair to the toilet seemed infinite. His first step would never reach the floor. The anxious notion that he was the only consciousness existing flashed briefly in Dodavehu's mind. He was separated from everything by a bottomless crevice.

It was night. Two irregular moons rotated about the red planet as it noiselessly circled the sun. Dodavehu's eyes spun in his head. The thick clouds outside in the sky.

It was night. Dodavehu felt his body to be a rock. The rock grew smaller and smaller until only a single molecule remained. Dodavehu was that molecule. He felt paralyzed, unable to breathe.

It was night. Cockroaches and mice congregated around the sink, a motley herd around a watering hole. They rushed over the filthy plates scavenging morsels. Dodavehu could hear their tiny feet from his chair in the other room.

It was night. The darkness pressed in. Dodavehu's pulse seemed to grow immeasurably slow. In the time it took for his ventricle to shiver, a civilization could rise and fall to ruin.

It was night. The chunky brunette walked off screen and was immediately replaced by a blonde woman who would not look anyone in the eye.

The sun began to rise. The sky turned gray and light penetrated the apartment. Dodavehu was asleep in his chair.

A red mite circled a lightbulb.

The lightbulb illuminated a rock in the darkness.

The rock eroded slowly on the edge of a lake.

A town arose around the lake.

In a house on the shore, a woman undressed behind a screen.

Dodavehu threw open the screen and saw himself kissing the woman's cunt. He woke up
immediately in the bright light of midday.

Dodavehu paced the floor. He could think of nothing but the redness of Wilma's hair. It was a deep, natural red. It looked like a forgotten stratum of rock in the desert. When it got wet, her hair hung in swollen clumps down past her shoulders. When the sun shone on her hair, Dodavehu would catch his breath.

Dodavehu paced the floor. Where was Wilma now? It had been years since he'd seen her. His memory cast a searchlight on her image and refused to budge. Dodavehu took her body apart in his mind. He cast aside her fingers, her useless hands, her wrists, her arms. He tore off her toes and her feet, her ankles, her calves and her thighs. He shaved her head and pulled her green eyes out of her skull. He cut her torso down the center and laid the open halves down. Her organs were beautiful. Some came in perfectly symmetrical pairs and these represented the love she shared with Dodavehu. Some spilled lonely onto the floor and represented her isolation from him. Dodavehu picked up her liver and stared into its fleshy expanse. It was incomprehensible. Even this small part of her would not permit his understanding to enter.

Dodavehu paced the floor. Wilma obsessed him. He turned her over and over in his mind until she became smooth. She was a shard of broken glass worn round by the ocean of his thoughts.

Dodavehu paced the floor. He remembered the house of his childhood. Wilma had lived only blocks away, then. He tried to imagine himself searching for her. He imagined seeing her would put an end to his terrible musing. But he could never search for her. Would she remember? He traced and re-traced his steps in the apartment.

Dodavehu paced the floor. His mind crushed memory and fantasy together carelessly. Wilma calmly accepted two cocks. She vomited blood and semen onto a white carpet. Her face appeared in the stain. She stood and gave Dodavehu a violent hand-job, licking her hand when she finished. Wilma gripped Dodavehu's testicles and squeezed them until he passed out.

Dodavehu woke up on the floor. The television was flickering static into the dark room. It was night. His testicles ached. He was alone. The window was open and cold air poured in. It was raining lightly. The traffic light changed at intervals from yellow to red to green.

The rain had stopped for a moment. Dodavehu looked out the window. People emerged from underneath awnings to continue on their way. The unceasing flow of traffic on the street soothed Dodavehu. His mind settled into an easy rhythm. A thin red stain ran down the wall.

It was spitting rain outside the dim apartment. Dodavehu stuck his hand out the window. Each infrequent drop seemed to pierce his skin like a needle. He drew his hand inside and wiped it on his pants. Dodavehu stood, pushed the wooden chair aside, and went into the kitchen.

The faucet in the sink flowed freely. Dodavehu gently scrubbed the dirty plates and stacked them on the table. He dried them with a red and white cloth and put them away in the cupboard.

Outside, the rain had started up again. Dodavehu sat in his wooden chair and looked. He thought he saw Wilma walking with a black umbrella. No, she was another woman with red hair. Dodavehu stared at the pleasant rise and fall of her buttocks and imagined making love to her.

It was hard. Dodavehu took it out of his pants and stroked. He saw an attractive blonde woman down on the street, then a brunette. Stripping them both naked in his mind, he imagined their breasts tickling his face. He was kissing the blonde woman's crotch while the brunette sucked on his. Dodavehu took a fistful of the brunette's hair and squeezed. The blonde woman pressed herself into his mouth and made a sound. Dodavehu came, drops of his sperm mingling with the water on the window pane.

It stopped raining. The sun set. Dodavehu could see stars outside his window. He stood up and went into the bedroom. His bed welcomed him. Dodavehu fell asleep without difficulty. He dreamed of the ocean, construction sites, and women he did not know.