The Waltz

1198 words

Plip.

Plip.

Plip.

The sink was dripping again. He awoke with a pounding headache. Sticky hands wiped the sleep from his bloodshot eyes, as he forced himself out of bed. He threw one of the dirty pairs of pants that littered the floor on the puddle beneath the sink, in a half-hearted attempt to deal with the mess, and sat on the edge of the bed.

He glanced around the dirty one room apartment, to make sure everything was still there, not that he had anything worth stealing. The door was still bolted, locked, and chained, the duct tape which held the cracked window shut was still in place, and the computer was still on the desk. Shouts echoed from the apartment below, the landlord was fighting with his mistress again. He tried to ignore them and get back to sleep, but the fight grew more and more intense, culminating in a crash which shook the entire room.

A small calendar dislodged itself from the cracked plaster wall. Mumbling, he heaved himself up and stepped around the piles of assorted junk on the floor to pick it up. “Today you’re going to change the world!” It announced in a shade of yellow so bright that it hurt his eyes. It was three years out of date; he must have bought it right after moving in. He wasn’t supposed to still be here, by now he was supposed to have accomplished something. Six months at the most, that’s how long he was supposed to be in this dingy shithole of an apartment, things were go--

“Well are you?” A voice asked.

He turned and quickly looked around the room, “who the hell said that?”

“I did,” the voice said from nowhere in particular.

“Thanks, that’s real helpful,” he said sarcastically, still glancing around the room.

“Don’t be an ass, I’m up here in the corner,” the voice replied.

He looked up and saw a small brown spider sitting comfortably in the center of a web.

“Well that explains what I did last night.”

“You’re not tripping, well . . . maybe a little, but I’m not a hallucination. Now would you answer my question?”

“Uh. . . no? I don’t talk to my hallucinations, especially not the ones which can talk back to me.”

The voice sighed, “if I come down there, then will you please answer my question?”

Before he had time to respond, the spider crawled out of its web and skittered over to the place where the calendar had previously been. “Are you going to change the world?” It asked, waving its front legs at him.

“I don’t. . . how is this even possible?”

“Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours. ”

“I guess, I don’t know,” he replied.

“You don’t know?” The spider said sarcastically. “Are you at least going to try? How long has it been since you tried?”

“A few months, maybe” he mumbled.

“It’s been a year. The last time you actually accomplished something was nearly a year ago, and since then you just haven’t been trying. That’s why I’m here, the music’s already started, man, and you’re running out of time.”

“I don’t understand. . .”

“We all only get so much time, and you’re wasting it.”

“So much time until what? Death?”

“Yes. You need to make a choice, are you going to try and do something with your life, or are you going to waste it on nothing?”

He carefully brushed the dust off the old computer and desk chair, then sat down to begin his work. There was nothing. He sat for an hour, desperate for somethi--

Plip.

Plip.

Plip.

The sink continued to drip.

“Just ignore it,” the spider urged him.

“No, I have to deal with it, I can’t work like this,” he replied.

He got up and turned the faucet off. Then pulled the soaked pair of pants off the sizable puddle and reached for a dry pair to take their place. Satisfied that the spill had at least been partially dealt with, he returned to the computer.

The yelling from downstairs began again, with a sigh he sat down and tried to work. Every time he put something down, the spider’s small voice chimed up behind him, “are you sure that’s right?” it whispered. “It could be better, it needs to be better.”

After two hours of re-doing the same tiny fragment at the behest of the spider, he finally snapped.

“What the hell do you want from me?” He asked.

“I’m trying to help you, I’m trying to make it better,” the spider responded calmly.

“Help me? Your constant nitpicking is what’s keeping me from getting anything done.”

“If I don’t nitpick then what ever you do mange to finish will be shit.”

“You know what, I quit, I’m done for today. I tried and failed.”

“You can’t give up that easily, just try to focu--”

A faint melody began to play in the distance.

“I can and I am,” he interrupted, flopping down on the bed.

“Please, don’t do this,” the spider said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get to it later,” he said letting out a huge yawn.

“You don’t understand, the music’s already started, you don’t have a “later,”” it begged, but he was already asleep.

By the time the man awoke it was dark out, moths and June bugs had already begun to swarm outside the window. His headache had subsided, and he was ready to write of the morning’s experiences as the product of a drug addled and sleep deprived mind, then he heard the music. The tune was familiar; he could have sworn he had heard it before.

“I see you’re awake,” the spider said, dejectedly, “not that it matters, there’s no more time.”

“I-“ he was interrupted by the beep of the answering machine.

“Is that the message from her?”

He didn’t respond.

“How long have you been saving that? Nine months? A year?”

“Eleven months, three weeks, one day,” he muttered.

“Nearly a year, and you still don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“Listen to the message again.”

He pressed the blinking red button, and a woman’s voice began to speak. “I’m sorry things happened this way, but I just- I just can’t.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t deal with it any more. When we met you were driven, committed, passionate, but now. . . I don’t know. You don’t seem to care about anything, you aren’t doing anything, you’re just pissing away your time, our time. I love you, but I don’t know what else to do, maybe this will finally get through. Good bye, and good luck.” The music echoed in the background.

“Now do you get it?” The spider asked

“Yes.” He could hear it clearly now, the Waltz of the Blue Danube, and then it hit him. “No, we have to stay, I finally figured it out, I can change the world.”

“Don’t you get it? It’s too late, you’re out of time. There’s nothing left you can do, but go.”

“No, no, no, no. I can do this, I can try, I-I can work harder, I can actually get it done,” he pleaded.

“You had your chance, and you wasted it.”

The music was deafening, it shook the walls of the tiny room.

“I wasted it?! I couldn’t help it, there was so much shit going on the noise, the distractions, and your general uselessness didn’t help at all. This is your fault, if you had actually helped instead of letting me waste time then I could have—“

“My fault? It’s my job to give you a push, I can’t carry you, you needed to figure out how to do it on your own. You think you’re the only one with noise? Everyone has to deal with noise, yet somehow you can’t and that’s your problem, not mine, and certainly not the world’s. Hell, there wasn’t even that much to distract you, you practically leapt on the chance to quit. Look, time’s up, I can’t stay here any longer. I’m gone,” the spider said, dissolving into the air.

It wasn’t music any more, just noise. Then he heard it, absolutely nothing, a moment of perfect silence. The walls collapsed around him, as he struggled over to the computer and sat down, “I’m gonna change the world, and die trying” he whispered, a smile on his lips.