Apple

There wasn't any more doing to be done. She was feeling entirely uncreative. She hadn't showered in a week, and her bedroom was starting to smell like the sweaty shoes of someone who doesn't wear socks. The photographs she had been taking were taking on a kind of despondency, completely void of "otherness."

There was a reason she hadn't taken a shower in a week, it wasn't that she was just lazy. This had in part to do with why her photographs weren't working anymore. She just wanted to hear something else from her mind. Those voices that everyone has, not the voices people with schizophrenia sometimes have. She wasn't "crazy". It's just that she had been watching too many movies.

She popped a peppermint candy in her mouth, the kind grandmas usually have in their purse.

Her thought patterns were definitely non-linear, but not crazy. Discipline was all she needed.

Discipline. Perfect time to practice this by finishing the thought on how photographs and showers were related. The last time she took a shower she had noticed in the mirror before she got in about 3 dozen scratches on her back. A lot of them were in a pattern, short diagonal slashes going in a horizontal pattern across her back. Strange. Especially since she had been reading about all those Female Hysterics in the 1900's who's common symptom was Dermographism. Dermographism? She had read about the doctors who treated the hysterics. They loved to play a game with this disease. They would write all over the hypnotized women's bodies with tongue depressors, as if their skin was a blank canvas; covering every inch of it with words and pictures.

Wait, had she dreamed this? Maybe it was really two weeks ago that she took her last shower. Or maybe it was yesterday? Were the scratches really there? yes, they were definitely there. She saw them with her own eyes. Why were they there? She hadn't scratched her self on accident. It was the morning, she had just gotten out of bed. There was no explanation for the scratches.

When she saw the red inflamed marks in he mirror, she got a camera. The camera would be a record. An artistic record. Where were the pictures, hadn't she developed them yet? That would be proof that it wasn't a dream. She hadnt taken any good pictures of anything else since. Thats why she her pictures had been despondant lately.

Out of toothpaste again. No shower, no socks to wear with her sweaty shoes, and no toothpaste. Gross. Well, it was supposed to be gross. It didn't bother her though.

She left her dirty apartment for the cold winter outside. She had an apple and a Pb&j in her bag. She passed by a man sitting on the sidewalk, all slumped over like a rag doll. His legs were stretched out straight in front of him, but his head, arms and shoulders drooped so severely that his forehead almost reached the ground. 'He must have been very flexible. Every few seconds he shivered (like when your spine shivers). She passed him by. But then she turned around and walked passed him again. After all, she was sure he wasn't crazy either. The people who are labeled as crazy are never the real crazies. She made sure no one else was looking, because that's just the way she operated. She didn't like other people watching her. She didn't like attention. She put the apple on the ground just barely touching his hand. He didn't notice, he just shivered again.