Day 61: She should eat

Another show-don't-tell writing prompt, this time attempting to express the feeling of depression.

Claire's bedroom was thick with the smell of damp. The washed clothes had been sitting in the machine for a day and a night and half a day again, and now Claire had finally hung the creased shirts and skirts and jeans over her clothes horse they were giving off an acrid, wet-dog stench that was permeating the room.

Claire gave up and climbed into bed. The quilt was a tangled mess by her legs, stained with the crusty spillage of some microwaved meal or other, and she kicked at the wad until it rolled off the foot of the bed and landed in a heap on the floor, on top of a pile of folded print-outs from a lecture from months ago.

She'd only been to two lectures since then.

The laptop was going, playing a series on Netflix that Claire had enjoyed as a child. She'd meant to put on a documentary or a foreign film or something that would be good for her intellectual development, but had somehow ended up with this series instead.

She stared at the screen. The main character, an American high-school troublemaker, was plotting how to go on a date with two girls from his class at the same end-of-term summer luau.

Claire watched the show without seeing. She fidgeted with her hair, scratched at her skin. She had a small rash on her stomach. She tried not to scratch it. She gave up and scratched it. She watched the show. After a while, halfway through a scene, she closed the lid of the laptop and lay back into her pillow.

She dozed fitfully for an hour. When she awoke it was beginning to get dark. her blind was already half closed. She pulled it down all the way and turned on the light.

She should eat. She should eat. She should eat. She wrenched herself to the edge of her bed and looked down at the teetering collection of plates and coffee mugs and bowls on the carpet. The plates were covered in the crumbs of toast and pizza; the mugs had rings of congealing residue in the bottom. The bowls were a sugary, milky mess.

She turned herself back over, lay there looking up at the ceiling.

In the corner of the ceiling were the fine scraggly remains of a cobweb. The strands were dancing in the draft coming in through the window. So what? The spider that had woven the web was dead now. So what? Claire watched the silk tilt and sway, watched it, saw it, saw that it meant nothing, saw and saw, closed her eyes, kept her eyes closed.

The evening wore on.