This room wasn't a place for living—it was a slow-motion grave, a tomb for a man still breathing, a rancid womb that birthed fresh despair every morning.
The air here wasn't air in the true sense; it was a thick soup of accumulated stench—layers upon layers of petrified rot. The smell of old sweat fermented for months in unwashed sheets, blended with the piss-smell seeping from plastic bottles tossed in corners—he was too lazy to even walk to the bathroom some nights. The stench of rotting food rose from plastic plates scattered everywhere: the remains of instant noodles grown over with a green skin of mold, petrified pizza slices turned to something like seasoned cardboard, half-full coffee cups floating with little islands of white fungus.
Dampness was in everything—a heavy, sticky dampness that clung to the skin like the hands of the dead. The walls sweated, water droplets tracing paths down the flaking paint, leaving dark streaks like tear tracks. In the corners, black mold stains spread like cancer—strange organic shapes growing, expanding, living things feeding on neglect and moisture. You could almost hear them breathing, pulsing, crawling slowly over the walls at night.
The floor was an ocean of trash—not one clean patch where you could see the original carpet underneath. Dirty clothes piled in random heaps, some damp with the sour smell of sweat, others stiff with stains whose origins no one wanted to know. Empty cigarette packs, stubbed-out butts everywhere—some crushed directly into the floor, leaving circular burns in the carpet, others in ashtrays filled to the brim, overflowing with gray ash mountains.
Empty liquor bottles—cheap whiskey, cheaper vodka—littered every corner. Some still dripped with sticky liquid residue, others had turned into graveyards for dead flies floating on the surface before they finally sank. Flies were everywhere—alive and dead. Buzzing around the rotting plates, circling lazily in the heavy air, breeding in dark corners where wet, sticky things gathered.
The bed—if it deserved that name—was an island of misery in an ocean of chaos. The sheets were brown from buildup, stained with yellow rings of dried sweat, blotched with dark patches of unidentifiable nature. The pillow was completely flat, having lost all resilience from years of pressure, and its smell was the worst—a concentrated blend of scalp sweat, saliva, and tears accumulated over countless nights of nightmares and insomnia.
The blanket was bunched in the corner, stiff in places from dried fluids. You could sometimes see small movement beneath it—insects, maybe bedbugs, or smaller, more disgusting things.
His desk—an absurd word for that slanted table—was covered with a layer of greasy dust. Scattered papers, mostly unpaid bills, warning letters, eviction notices. Empty pill bottles—antidepressants, sleep aids, painkillers—some spilled their contents across the table, tiny colored pills rolling and falling into the cracks.
An old laptop sat open, its screen smeared with a layer of grime and greasy fingerprints, the keyboard sticky from spilled food and drink residue. It emitted a sickly blue glow in the darkened room—the only light in this cave.
Everywhere, life thrived—but not a life you'd want to see. Roaches scurried boldly in broad daylight, large, fat from abundance, shiny with the grease of neglect. They climbed the walls, hid under papers, came out at night to feast on the treasure trove of organic waste this place offered.
Spiders had woven their webs in every upper corner, dusty gray threads laden with the corpses of dead insects—flies, mosquitoes, moths—dangling like macabre ornaments in a cathedral of decay.
In the attached bathroom—visible through the slightly open door—the toilet bowl was a ring of accumulated brown, and the sink was clogged with hair and other things. The mirror above it was speckled with dried toothpaste spray and unidentifiable stains. The smell of sewage seeped from old pipes—a sulfuric, rotten stench, like breath from the very bowels of the earth.
The window was covered by a thick, filthy curtain that hadn't been opened in years. Even in daytime, only a thin sliver of light leaked through—a narrow beam cutting the darkness, illuminating millions of dust particles floating in the stagnant air. These particles were in constant, slow motion, drifting in random patterns, going nowhere, trapped in this sealed space just like the room's occupant.
The walls were almost bare—except for a few old, torn posters of forgotten movies, and faded photos of a life that had once existed, before this place became a self-chosen prison.
The sounds in this room were a symphony of squalor: the constant buzz of flies, the skittering of roaches moving under papers, water dripping from a leak in the ceiling—drip… drip… drip—in a hypnotic rhythm, the occasional clatter of a bottle rolling when he shifted his foot in half-sleep, and sometimes, in the deep night, a faint scratching sound from inside the walls—rats, most likely, or something worse.
Worse than all of it was the silence between them—a heavy, thick silence that pressed on the chest, filling the lungs with suffocation. A silence that screamed of everything left unsaid, every shattered dream, every promise unfulfilled.
At the center of it all, on the soiled bed, lay he—the sole resident of this rotting kingdom. He wasn't asleep or awake, but in a liminal state of semi-conscious existence. His eyes were open, staring at the cracked ceiling, at the mold stains resembling maps of countries that never were.
His hair was greasy, plastered to his scalp, his beard patchy, filled with crumbs. The smell of his body had merged completely with the smell of the room—the two were now indistinguishable. He was a part of this place, an organic extension of it, a single cell in a larger rotting body.
And in his mind, in that dark space behind his staring eyes, a war raged—a war greater than any nuclear battle, bloodier than any fight among demons.
He was wrestling with God himself.
Or rather, he was wrestling with the idea of God, in a room where God—if He existed—had long since abandoned, leaving behind only mold, roaches, and a killing silence as witnesses to the slow decay of a human soul.
He lifted his head slightly from the fetid pillow, his bloodshot eyes fixed on a patch of mold on the ceiling that looked like a mocking face.
"Adonai..." he whispered, his voice shattered, rough from disuse, from the silent screaming that filled his head every night.
"Yahweh... Jesus... Brahman... God..."
Each name left his mouth as if he were spitting poison, as if his very tongue refused to shape the words.
"These... they're all just names. Different masks for the same absolute entity." He stopped, a bitter laugh trembling in his chest but never escaping. "The old man with the white beard... standing atop the clouds, waiting for us to die, sharpening his little knife to punish us for... for what? For being born?"
A bitter silence. His eyes burned with tears that wouldn't fall—they'd dried up long ago.
"Or maybe he's not even a man... maybe just a blind, purposeless energy. No heart, no conscience. A cosmic machine that grinds up souls without feeling a thing. Maybe that's more merciful... maybe."
He dragged himself up to sit, his back against the damp wall, feeling the mold seep through his shirt. He didn't care anymore.
"Our ideas of God differ so much..." he said with bitter sarcasm. "Every culture painted him in its own colors, dressed him in its own masks. And yet... most agree on certain attributes. Omnipotent—can do anything. Omniscient—knows everything, even your darkest thoughts."
He stopped, his fingers digging into his thighs, his dirty nails leaving red marks on his skin.
"But the most important one... the one they all claim... the one they chant like a spell to ward off doubt..." His voice began to tremble. "That God is all-good. All-just. All-loving."
He laughed—a laugh devoid of any joy, the laugh of a broken man.
"Of course... there have been evil gods in every civilization. Set... Ares... maybe Zeus himself, that cosmic rapist. But especially in the Abrahamic ideas..." His voice rose a little, anger seeping through. "Those attributes are sacred. Their God is all-good. All-loving. All-just."
He looked at his trembling, dirty, empty hands.
"But I... I don't believe it. I've never tasted his love. Nor his justice. Not for one day in my miserable life."
"Our very existence..." he whispered, his voice almost vanishing. "Our existence is proof he isn't just. That he's... a monster."
He lifted his head, addressing the ceiling, addressing the God who never answered.
"Imagine... imagine an all-powerful being. Creates you from nothing. You didn't ask to exist. You didn't choose your parents, your face, your mind, your circumstances. Nothing. And then... then he tells you..."
His voice filled with bitter sarcasm, mimicking a preacher:
"'Worship me! Worship me in vague, confusing, contradictory ways! I will send you men from among you—mere humans, just like you—to tell you my message. And if you don't believe them? If you doubt? If you ask for one single, clear proof?'"
He stopped, his breath quickening.
"I will punish you. I will torment you. For eternity. In a fire greater than any fire in this universe. A fire that burns not just the body, but the very soul."
He bent forward, his face in his hands.
"But why? Why does this sadistic being punish me this way? For a sin committed in a limited time? Seventy years? Eighty? Even if I lived a thousand years and sinned every day—how does that equal eternal torment?"
He lifted his head, his eyes searching the emptiness for an answer that wouldn't come.
"Doesn't the very concept of punishment come from the idea that harm was done? If I hit you, you punish me because you were hurt. If I steal from you, you punish me because you lost something. But..."
His voice rose, almost a shout:
"Do I *harm* this Lord by not worshiping him? Does he suffer? Does he weep? Is something diminished from his infinite grandeur because one tiny ant on a trivial planet didn't prostrate to him? Then why... why punish me forever?"
He bent down and picked something up from the floor—two small, filthy stuffed dolls he'd found in the trash weeks ago. He'd kept them for a reason he didn't understand.
He held them up in front of his face.
"Look at these two..." His voice became quieter, colder, more deranged. "This is John... and this is Steven. Both unbelievers. Both didn't believe."
He shook the first doll.
"John died at twenty. In his disbelief. Headed for a great fire... forever."
With a sudden, violent motion, he tore the doll's head off. Yellow stuffing exploded from it, scattering in the stagnant air.
"But Steven..." He lifted the second doll with a strange gentleness. "Steven lived an extra decade. And in it... he believed. He repented. He prayed. He was forgiven. He went to Heaven."
He stared at the two dolls—the torn one and the whole one.
"Why? Why did Steven get a better chance? Why did he live longer? Why did he meet an honest preacher while John met a hypocrite? Why was he born in a believing country while John was born in an atheist one?"
He threw the dolls away. They landed in the sea of trash.
"Why isn't he John? Who decided? God? So God created the conditions that led to John's disbelief, and then... punished him for it?"
He laughed a crazy, choking laugh.
"Is this... justice?"
His voice lowered again, becoming more intimate, more personal, more pained.
"Everyone says... 'everything is in God's hands.' 'Trust in God.' 'God is testing you.'"
He looked at his trembling hands.
"But what was in *my* hands? What have I ever had in my hands my whole life?"
The tears finally began to gather in his eyes—burning, bitter tears.
"God is the one who creates strengths and talents. He decides who is born smart and who is born stupid. Who is born beautiful and who is born ugly. Who is born to a loving family and who is born into hell."
His voice began to crack.
"I never had... I never had any talent. Anything I was good at. Anything that made me... something..."
"IS THIS JUSTICE?"