My name is Bleek. This is not my real name, but I can no longer remember my real name, nor do I care to try.
Bleek is the name that all the people I know call me. I imagine they call me that because of the world that I live in.
I try to be happy but I cannot. People tell me what a wonderful time they are having, and ain't life grand? But I can't see it, I can't agree with them.
They speak of sunshine, but even now as I look through the broken glass windows of my rotting apartment, up toward the sky- I see no sunshine, but only buildings, smoke, and pigeons, and slow approaching storm clouds.
Where is this other world where everybody else lives? That is what I don't understand. If I can sit long enough to talk with anyone for a minute or two, it always feels like receiving a postcard from some mysterious paradise.
I creep my yellow skin into a t-shirt and shuffle out of the apartment.
At the staircase, the stairs begin to crumble. I hurry to catch steps before they break, slipping on splinters, cutting my feet wide open, a deep suck of breath and I fall over dizzy, hitting my head against the floor.
I cry out, my face throbbing against linoleum.
"Oh, Bleek, you poor thing", it is Mrs. Porter, my downstairs neighbor. "What happened to you now?"
She has already dropped her purse and is struggling to get me to my feet. "How are you such a clumsy, clumsy man?" she asks, looking at my face with a worried smile once I am upright again.
"The stairs broke", I try to explain, "I cut my feet."
She looks down at my legs which are bloodied, I see now, too, that I have lost a shoe somehow, and my foot is scratched and gorged, red and disgusting.
"We best get you to the hospital", Mrs. Porter says to me, and ushers me toward the front door.
I slink outside with Mrs. Porter right behind, one arm around me to make sure I don't go down.
As soon as we get outside, it begins raining. Loud claps of thunder rumble toward us. I stand still for a moment, watching traces of lightening on the horizon. Feeling the heavy beads of water as they begin there assault on my body.
"Mr. Bleek", starts Mrs. Porter with that familiar amazement in her voice, "You seem to be completely wet!"
She looks around, and then up toward the sky, toward the windows of all the apartments around us. I look up too, and can just see the cloud, and I can tell that it is out of her range of vision. By now I can safely assume this anyway.
Mrs. Porter shakes her head in astonishment, regarding my soaking body. "Must have been some fool upstairs throwing a bucket of water on you, I suppose."
"No", I shake my head slowly, "It's just the world I live in."