STORCH

Storch hadn’t taken a bath in over a fortnight.  His matted hair was no longer greasy.  It was a stringy, thick mass that sat flat on his skin-flaked scalp.  His fingers were blackened and dirt from a hard day’s work seven years ago was still collected beneath his fingernails.  The smell around him was repugnant.  It caused even homeless people around him to vomit whenever he passed.  He’d worn the same shirt, a black, short-sleeved Van Halen “1984” shirt, every day since the he saw the band back in their David Lee Roth heyday.  He only owned three pairs of underwear, which he would switch out every several months.  He’d used the same bath towel and wash cloth since he was 14 and had never washed them once.  Yellowed, sunburned newspapers stacked about his dingy apartment like makeshift walls, the earliest paper being from the day of his birth 37 years ago.  Bags of discarded fast food were littered beneath his couch and any inch of floor that wasn’t filled with newspapers.  Dishes in the moldy sink had piled up for months, never touched, never even rinsed.  A browned, unmade mattress that served as his bed had a Storch-shaped pattern on it, like shadows burned onto the side of a wall.  The mattress was surrounded by toys from his childhood, books opened to various pages, filthy blankets and charcoal drawings.  The toilet had never been flushed. 

Despite all this, he was the cleanest man in town.

-S