Echo (Short Story‪)‬

WHEN YOU ARE AWAKE, you know how to proceed through the day--you can read, you understand the difference between hot and cold, you laugh when they play the laugh track on television, you know when to eat, to sleep, to go to the bathroom. You need to go to the bathroom. You get up from bed, fully dressed, stumble instinctively into the hallway and without much trouble you find the toilet. Above the toilet is a note taped to the wall, which reads, Time to take your pills? You don't know the handwriting. You don't remember. What are you supposed to do today? There is something important, you're sure, on the edge of your memory. You go back to bed. Sunlight from the window finds your age-speckled hand and lingers. You wear an unadorned gold ring and it looks strong on your finger. You rise from bed again and see a note taped to the night stand reading, Make the bed. You tug and straighten, but the sheets won't cooperate and you tuck at all the wrong places. You leave things crumpled as they are. The dining room has an organ against the back wall next to a window. Outside, you see an alley and a chipped brick building. There is a cartoonish hamper man painted in orange and blue on the side of the building. He is waving and winking. Steam blows silently into the narrow slice of morning sky. Next to the organ is a dark wood hutch containing glass jars half-filled with colorful hard candies. There is a small card table and two chairs with yellow-flowered vinyl seats. The table is set for two, one paper plate heaped with cold food and the other nearly empty. Atomato with a half-peeled skin sags in a dish next to a porcelain saltshaker.