I send the Reginald gang out and they come back with babies. I send them for food. I request the obvious - pasta and sausage and cheeseburgers and ice cream and candy and bread and butter and diet soda and hot dogs and kielbasa and hot pockets and potato chips and peanut butter filled pretzel bites and cheese flavored popcorn. But they come back with nothing but babies. Smiling babies, smelly babies, babies in overalls, babies in cute little superhero costumes, boy babies, girl babies, teenage babies, babies in their thirties, babies in their forties and clearly not wanting to admit it, babies in their forties and perfectly happy to admit it because they never liked going out that much in the first pace, tyrant babies, indecisive babies, ugly babies, and, well they're all ugly. Ugly, stupid babies. They taste horrible.
Along with the failure of the otherwise dependable Reginald gang, I find disappointment in my dealings with bureaucracy. Six times now, I have petitioned that the wind of the mansion grounds no longer be under the jurisdiction of my dead mother, but I receive nothing but form letters and noncommittal assurances of speedy inaction. At first I suspected this was some kind of payback for my nontraditional departure from the department, but after imagining several in-depth conversations on the subject with friends I have grown far too afraid of to speak to, I have heard several anecdotes convincing me this is simply the result of an inept governing body moving at the speed of erosion.
I have tried several times to call the bureaucracy so that they cannot hide behind paper and digital landscapes, but all I get are nonsense evasions like "Who are you trying to reach" and "oh it's this nutball again" and "What is your problem this is a sub shop?"
I am the only one in the mansion except for everyone else in the mansion, and my solitude breeds introspection and contempt in equal measure.
I sleep. Impossibly I sleep sometimes all day and all night. And sometimes the day or the night will sleep also so instead of sleeping all day and all night, I sleep all day and all day and all day and then all night. Or sometimes I sleep, night sleeps, and day sleeps, so I simply sleep an amount of time that is clearly not recommended but I can't put a specific time to it.
Whenever I finally wake long enough to do so much as prepare a meal and shower, I expect dirty looks from the Reginald gang and my friends and family and lover and pets, but they are supportive of my sleep and the lack of shame is infuriating.
I would like to stay awake long enough to sit on the balcony and read my graphic novels about the Silver Surfer and Captain America and the Battle of Stalingrad, but whenever I spend so much as a few minutes reading there, I wind up taking more time to prepare for my reading than the actual reading. "What are you doing here?" I ask myself, as if I am an intruder in my own skin, my own home. "Who are you to sit and read and feel your dead mother's breeze like some kind of Victorian era gentleman of leisure? You are just an asshole in a mansion."
The worst part about sleeping so much is that every time I go back to sleep I must drag something in front of every door serving as entrance to the mansion - a table, a chair, a wastebasket, one of those standing metal ashtrays they used to have when they used to let people smoke. My idea is not that they will impede intruders, but that the intruders will necessarily make more noise upon their intrusion, giving me a better chance of waking up and escaping whatever unfathomable end they intend to deliver. This may be wisdom or this may be bugfuck insanity, but regardless the mansion has a lot of doors so this takes a long time.
The days make me want to sleep more than the nights. Especially now. I open all the windows and the wind blows in. The wind feels good and my body imagines sleeping in the wind - even though I will sleep in my bedroom without a window open - and with my body now hungry for sleeping in the wind, my body's dreams spread to all of me and I want sleep in every part of me that is me.
The cats love all the sleep. Except when they want food.
