It's 6 AM again, and it's Wednesday. At this time I should have been sleeping for hours, but I can't. It has been this way for weeks. No matter how many times I try to close my eyes, the same picture keeps popping up. That horrible picture I received on a cold day in December just before Christmas. I only vaguely remember the time before I first saw the picture, but I would like to think of it as a happy time in my life. Before, I was able to appreciate the little things in life, like the color of the sky or the shape of the clouds. Or at least that's what I think I did. But I can't be sure. When I try to concentrate on past events, my mind slips back to that horrible picture and I find my body freezing.
I still remember when I first saw the picture. Naively, I thought the notification on my screen, indicating that I had received a personal message, was a good thing. ALC had written a nice message to me, I thought. Looking back, that might have been the last time I smiled. But when I opened the message and saw the picture, my brief moment of happiness felt like a distant past. Instead, there it was. The picture that I still can't forget. No matter how much I try. You could say the picture shows a girl and a bell pepper together, but that would be degrading to the bell pepper. In fact, it would be an insult to its existence. When I think of what happened to that poor bell pepper, I, for some reason, think of my old apartment in the northern part of Copenhagen, or, rather, the rubbish chute in my old apartment. What happened to that poor bell pepper was not unlike what could happen to a trash bag after a long, lazy weekend. But while I did feel bad for forcing my stuffed trash bags into the tiny rubbish chute, it was no comparison to what happened to the bell pepper. To see that fresh, tasty, red bell pepper being forced into that tiny girl is a sight I don't think I'll ever forget. How the bell pepper, and not the girl, managed to stay whole is a mystery that probably won't be solved in my lifetime. But that's the least of my worries. Oh, how I wish that I could sleep again.