The door closed 3 days ago and it hasn’t opened again. I have had 16 diet cokes and I chew gum like crazy. I have a thermometer and I take my temperature, write it on a bit of paper and push it under the door for them.

I have seen other people doing this and they get hundreds of followers. They post pictures of their food but I don’t have a camera with me. I ate spaghetti bolognese with that pre-powdered parmesan that is sandy and coats your tongue.

There is a man I can see from my window and he tidies outside. He doesn’t look at me ever so I watch him and watch him. He has beautiful shiny black hair and the label sticks out the back of his shirt.

The wifi here means you can’t watch porn. There is a block on it. But I am bored so I masturbate all the time. It takes me ages to think of things. Porn has made me spoilt. Cucumber salad, wet and cold. A bread roll.

I can hear the room next to me. I hear them move about and I can hear it loudly when they use the plug socket in the wall that we share. Ker-chunk when it goes in. Chunk-ah when it goes out. I wear headphones to watch TV so this is the loudest thing in my room. Mint tea before bed.

I have reimagined all the sexual encounters I have had by now. Even the ones that weren’t that good. I am not a very imaginative person so this feels like a valuable exercise. I remember the texture of hairs on arms and how different they are on different people.

One person I slept with years ago had arm hair that formed whorls like in polished wood and I traced them when they went down on me. I had not thought about that in a long time but I came today thinking about it. They brought yakult and I drank it so fast.

My temperature is steady. Sometimes people leave and I see it through the window. I wonder how I will pay rent and what my job are going to do. I am wet whilst I think about it because I am wet all the time. I have two thousand followers. Pasta shells all full of sauce.

I read on the news that they have shut down the roads around here but still it ekes out and more people get it. I think of the roads empty like a moat. Only the people who work here can use them. I think about them crossing it when I touch myself.

I imagine taking the little label that sticks out his shirt and putting in my mouth. I can feel the strands and it’s hard and silky. I try to masturbate by the window but I can’t come standing, it’s one of those things.

I have moved my chair to be by the window and it is an innovation on the whole thing. I wonder if I have been fired by now. I touch my breasts and it’s fine so I sit on my hands to make them numb like at school. Lasagne, folded. Orange juice.

More yakult and I try to drink it slowly. It is impossible. The person next door is plugging and unplugging more and more. I plug things in too in reply. I think of the wires that link us and I wank and wank and wank.

I have been fired not because of absenteeism but because of my twitter presence. The actual word wank was the final straw, they say in the email. I imagine my boss reading the word wank and I wank some more.

I imagine the person plugging and unplugging is the man outside. The man outside is plugging and unplugging ker-chunk chunk-ah. He is plugging and unplugging the world’s largest vibrator. He does it with abandon.

I hear the man outside cough next door. I read that they have closed the ports. A huge green salad, all the white bits of the lettuce and I can hear him crunch it and I crunch it too. I wonder what his temperature is. I lie on the floor to come and I get carpet burn on my back.

They have closed the ports but more people are getting it still. I think what is spreading it is the sheer force of my wanking. I am not getting tired and it doesn’t hurt which seems incredible.

I put my face in my pillow so I can’t breathe and that’s a new thing. The man outside, his giant, ridiculous vibrator, his label in my mouth, the whorls in his arm hair. The mercury going up and down in my thermometer.

I imagine the concrete that makes the sides of ports rupturing. I imagine the water surging up into the town. I don’t even know if that’s how ports work but I come thinking about it.

I get more yakult and I masturbate looking at it before I drink it and I still can’t drink it slowly.

The roads they drive in on are covered in water from the ports that are destroyed. The man next door floats away on them. I wonder if he is married and what colour his passport is and I touch myself thinking of every possible variation of an answer.

I look at the whorls in my arm hair. My hair is black and shiny and I am the world’s biggest vibrator. It is taking less and less time to come so I come more.

I have no family and no job and I am related to everyone in the world.

A full english breakfast, hot and greasy. A jacket potato. Precut apple slices. Pineapple in tin juice.

I have no family and no job. I am the solar system’s biggest vibrator and I am related to everyone in the world.

 

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Cleo Henry is a writer and researcher in London. She is particularly interested in queerness, radical kinship and the apocalypse.

Image: Collage by Joan Pope