Free A Million Versions of Right by Matthew Revert Page A

already drifted off. I stare into the back of her head through the darkness, resenting her completely.
    I admit I’m prone to melodrama but music is important to me and without it I just can’t sleep. Or, if I do manage to shut down, my sleep is infiltrated by damaging thoughts. There’s something magical about the sonorous ebbs and flows of a trusted CD. It lulls me into comfort; it massages my brain. I’m lost without it.
    Fucking Nadia! She’s snoring already. I have no doubt that she could sleep through my most ferocious death metal album at full blast. She could find warm slumber during the chilliest black metal. I try not to think the worst of people but she’s doing this solely to punish me, I’m sure of it. I clutch my music to me like a security blanket and it clutches me right back. Tonight my blanket has been shredded.
    I lie awake in bed with my wide eyes staring at the ceiling. Fearing the dancing shadows, I masturbate while thinking of limes.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Nadia counteracts my miserable, insomnia-ridden mood with sickening cheerfulness. She’s eating toast and passing comment about something on the television. I have no time for it.
    “You really pissed me off last night!” My words drip with involuntary venom. She stares at me with surprised eyes.
    “What are you on about?” she finally says.
    I enter damage control. “Shit, sorry babe. I didn’t mean to sound like such a fucking prick. I just had trouble sleeping ‘cause you made me turn off my music.” Fuck I sound pathetic! A smile crosses Nadia’s face as she comes to grips with the petty childishness I’m displaying.
    “You’re kidding me right? You haven’t been brooding all night have you?” Her lack of respect sends a spike of anger to my brain. I repress it admirably.
    “I’m having a shower,” I respond as a means of escape, knowing full well she will have left for work by the time I get out.
    I hear music in the stabbing shower water. It cleanses me metaphorically and physically.
     
    * * * * *
     
    I hate my job thoroughly. It’s so redundant that my not doing it would affect the world in no perceivable way. I work for a company called Astenburger Ltd. My job is to yell at walls in order to test their emotional fortitude. The company founder, Leonard Astenburger, claims that walls absorb the emotional state of anyone who comes into contact with them via a process similar to osmosis. Over time, the weight of a wall’s emotional burden can lead to degradation and instability. Unsubstantiated documentation presented by Astenburger himself, claims that many lives have been lost due to the collapse of emotion charged walls. This claim has been scientifically refuted ad nauseum but due to a core group of supporters and stakeholders the shady operation continues. This rakes in considerable money for the company and Astenburger personally. Of course this doesn’t translate into much money in my pocket.
    “You shit! You smell like old tits! Why don’t you give a fuck to your father?”
    The wall gives no indication that it has absorbed what I’m yelling. Company policy dictates that no less than 90% of what I yell must consist of inexplicable insults. I yell more in one week than most people probably yell in their whole lives. My throat is covered in a leathery callous. I have developed formidable vocal stamina.
    The various instruments used to measure the emotional fortitude of a wall before and after yelling, spit out esoteric data. I send this data to a department which specialises in the analysis. The results of the analysis are little known among those outside a key circle of managerial types. Annual reports are circulated under the guise of transparency but these reports are virtually impenetrable and go largely unread.
    I shout myself hoarse for eight hours. The day ambles along at a painfully slow pace. The thought of arriving home and soothing myself with music normally calms me enough to deal with my miserable