Dirt

         Allan was stiff. He pulled his right arm over his head, pulling on it with his left, and stretched the muscles all along his ribcage. He stood up from his desk and allowed blood to flow back into his legs.
         He felt gross. His scalp itched. His teeth felt like they were encased in a layer of plaque. No matter how much he probed them with his tongue, the filth was unyielding.
He sat down again, and tried to concentrate on his work.
         Pad of paper in front of him, pencil in hand. He leaned forward in his chair, his left leg bounced. He continued scratching his scalp. He felt pinpricks in his armpits. Frustration and helplessness at his gross-ness prompted him to stab his pad of paper. He punctured a few sheets. He followed through with a flurry of bold, grainy slashes of lead. The paper crumpled and tore under the pressure and Allan threw the pencil against the window, followed by his coffee mug. Niether the mug nor the window broke.
         Allan’s wife entered his office at the sounds of the ruckus. Allan was kneeling on the floor, soaking up coffee from the carpet with paper towel. He mumbled to himself, every second or third word was an expletive.
         “What are you doing?” she asked.
         Allan advanced on her, hobbling on his knee-caps rather than his perfectly functional feet. He gripped her muscly thighs in his hands and begged to freed from his dirty, escapsulting, sweaty, prickly, tickly, filth. Nika scratched his head affectionately, but was repulsed to discover oily, pasty dandruff lodged beneath her fingernails.
         Allan stood upright in the shower, naked. Nika raised a lather on a loofa and began scrubbing him down. With a little pressure of her fingers, she prompted her husband to make his body available for cleansing. A little pressure on his arm, he raised the limb into the air, and Nika gouged the dirt from his pit. A tap on the back of his knee, and Allan raised his foot. He giggled as she scraped the dead skin from his sole, and wriggled her fingers beneath his bony toes.
         After the shower, Allan sat on the toilet. He had been buffed dry by his wife, and he slouched with a towel draped around his neck. He continued tonguing his teeth, expending huge amounts of mouth-energy to dislodge bits of plaque.
         Nika prepared a cocktail to purge it. Two ounces of mouth wash, crushed mint-leaves and an ounce of vodka. Allan poured it into his mouth, swished it sloppily from cheek to cheek, squirted it between his teeth, before allowing it to drop from his mouth, down between his legs and into the open toilet bowl.
         Allan stood up and took his wife by her shoulders. He shook his wife firmly, but affectionately. His genitals swayed with his enthusiasm.