A short story called "Writhing Alone in a Room with a Toothache"

Writhing Alone in a Room with a Toothache

He lay down on the mattress staring at the white ceiling. His new room for the whole next week. It would be a whole week in this place with the light streaming in through the pale curtains in this silent room with a funny smell. He reached out his hands above him and turned over his body and thought about the fact that he was reaching out his hands above him and turning over his body and how contrived all his behaviour was and thought about how he was goddamn doing that stupid thing he did all the fucking time which was fucking stare at ceilings and think and that it was fucking dumb because nobody else did that shit and Jesus Christ what the fuck why did he have to fucking stare at walls and think and thought about what David Foster Wallace would think of him and whether he would think they were kindred spirits because he was lying on a mattress thinking and moving around randomly and also because he had just downed a Codeine pill with a hand-cup of water from the sink which might like super fucking depressed or whatever and thought about how all his thoughts were just so fucking vacuous and thought about what David Foster Wallace would think about him and thought about how maybe that was what all people thought about pretty much most of the time and thought about how he’d thought about that like a million times before and thought about how he always had the same thoughts and what the fuck did anything mean and where did it lead and why the fuck did he think, honestly, he should go actually fucking do something, like write. Which is what he did, subsequently, and felt a bit better, and the throbbing pain in his tooth was subsiding then he sensed, though it could’ve been a placebo.   

A short story called "Digging in the Yard"

Digging in the Yard

He shoved the shovel into the rock-strewn soil until it was firmly embedded into the ground. He stomped on the top of the blade thrice, pushing the shovel as far as down in the earth as it would go. He levered the shovel upwards and lifted it out of the ground. Balancing the pile of dirt on the blade, he swung the shovel slowly towards the wheelbarrow. When he reached it, he flipped the shovel, and the dirt and rocks fell in with a hiss and a clunk.

He shoved the shovel in the soil again. As he tried to press it down, he discovered that the patch of soil was far more recalcitrant than the previous one. He felt a twinge in his back. He stomped on the blade and it did not budge, instead making the ugly scraping noise of metal on rock. A bead of sweat dripped from his brow. He chose a new patch and jammed his shovel into the soil. He tipped the shovelload into the wheelbarrow, and glanced down at his shirt: a wet patch had accumulated on the blue cotton. He swallowed a glob of dry saliva. 

As he stood, shovel in hand, next to the wheelbarrow, staring at the big dusty hole he had dug and then at the whole big dirt expanse that made up the property on one side of their house and realised how strange it was that just a few weeks ago the area had been as it had always been as long as he had lived there – a wide strip of weed-infested grass with little bamboo shoots sprouting up everywhere which threatened always to engulf the house and thus required regular maintenance – and realised how significant and poignant it felt that he had done so many things in the area and formed so many memories set in it, such as the memory of Harrison and him spending that one Sunday when Tom invited him over lopping down some big bamboo trees with a spade and maybe a mattock (they didn’t use the axes in the garage because Tom’s dad, characteristically, instructed them not to on account of his fear that they would injure ourselves), which was Harrison’s idea and Tom didn’t think would be fun because he just wanted to play PS2 or watch a movie or something, but did end up being fun as far as he could remember, because it sort of gave them a sense of masculine power or something, Tom noticed his legs felt heavy and tired. He walked over to the big rock on the edge of the big hole he was digging and sat down on it. His water bottle was standing in the shadow of the tree just to his right. He picked it up, unscrewed it and took a swig. The water was cool and refreshing.

Hard physical labour can be rewarding in a way that one does not ever experience in quotidian, urban life.

A short story called "My Friend the Solipsist"

My Friend the Solipsist

For moments at a time, he was convinced that his was the only consciousness in the universe, or whatever realm it was that they – or rather he – existed in because if his was the only consciousness who knew if there even was such a thing as a universe? Who knew what was real? Wasn’t what he was thinking right now unreal because nothing was real? What was logic? Logic wasn’t necessarily logical if nothing was real. What was real? What was language? How could anything he thought be trusted if nothing was real? How could you refute that nothing was real if nothing was real? You couldn’t, of course. But you also couldn’t refute nothing was real because, logically, he could be the only consciousness and everything could be a construct of a brain in a vat or a brain in a jar or actually any sort of thing could be producing the simulation, literally anything – there might be a whole other world somewhere else, above his consciousness, in which some thing, maybe some sort of monster, or some intangible essence, or just something that no human language or thought could possibly express was creating the vision, in fact anything might be creating this vision he saw, or maybe his own mind created the world unconsciously or maybe everything was just unreal and there was no way any logic or thought could even get close to understanding what was unreal about it because all he knew was the simulated world in which he lived – and what was a world anyway? That meant that really he had no idea about anything. Which again brought him back to how he couldn’t have no idea about anything anyway because how the hell could he trust logic or language or anything and how the hell could he trust not trusting logic of language or anything?

He would spend hours in a room staring face down at a lounge or sitting staring into the garden and just feel sick in the stomach and let his mind run wild with these terrible thoughts. And then he would finally come into contact with people that night when his parents came home from their jobs and there was no way he could ever express to them the terrible pain of sort of semi-believing or at least being unable to dismiss that, like, everything was just unreal, including them. That made him continue to feel sick in the stomach.

He tried to train himself not to ever think these thoughts but it was hard, particularly because he spent so much time alone.