[HR] The Filth
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When the girl awoke, there was a small pile of shit beside her bed.
At first she believed she was still dreaming, because the thing possessed the quiet certainty peculiar to dreams. It sat on the floorboards as though it had always belonged there. The weak morning light touched it gently. A fly rested on it for several seconds before drifting lazily away.
The girl stared without moving.
For months she had been waking with the same dull disappointment: the disappointment of finding herself still alive. She had grown accustomed to the heaviness of consciousness, to the peculiar exhaustion that greeted her every morning before she had even risen from bed. Often she remained beneath the blankets for hours, not sleeping, merely unable to justify movement.
Now there was a pile of shit beside her bed.
She felt, absurdly, that she ought to apologize for noticing it.
Then the pile of shit spoke.
“You prayed yesterday,” it said.
Its voice was soft. Not mystical. Not frightening. It sounded almost embarrassed.
The girl sat upright immediately.
She should have screamed. She understood this intellectually. A healthy person would have screamed. But illness alters one’s relationship with absurdity. After suffering long enough, the impossible no longer feels impossible. It merely feels exhausting.
“Yes,” she answered cautiously.
“You asked for the suffering to stop.”
The girl said nothing.
Outside her window, someone was dragging furniture across the street. She could hear the ugly scraping sound vibrating faintly through the walls. Somewhere deeper in the apartment building, water pipes groaned awake.
Ordinary sounds. Ordinary morning.
Yet beside her bed sat a talking pile of shit.
“I can help you,” it said.
The girl laughed suddenly, though there was no amusement in it. She pressed her palms against her eyes.
For three years her life had narrowed gradually into something small and airless. Doctors spoke to her with professional concern while secretly losing interest. Friends visited less often. Her mother began knocking before entering her room not out of politeness, but caution, as though grief itself might be contagious.
Nothing brought pleasure anymore. Food had become texture without taste. Music irritated her. Conversation exhausted her because she could not bear the strain of pretending to participate in life while feeling absent from it.
The worst part was not pain itself.
It was the humiliation of continuing.
“Touch me,” said the pile of shit.
The girl lowered her hands slowly.
“What?”
“If you touch me, the suffering will disappear.”
Naturally, she refused.
Then the familiar heaviness returned suddenly, violently, as though her body had remembered itself all at once. Her chest tightened. A wave of nausea twisted through her stomach so sharply she bent forward instinctively. Even breathing became labor.
Tears gathered in her eyes from exhaustion rather than sadness.
The pile of shit waited silently.
At last, with the desperation of someone accepting moral defeat, the girl reached toward it with trembling fingers.
The moment she touched it, relief spread through her body.
Not ecstasy.
Not joy.
Something much stranger.
Absence.
The pain simply ceased.
The girl inhaled sharply. The room looked different somehow. Larger. The pale morning light no longer seemed hostile. She could hear birds outside the window, and for several confused seconds she listened to them as though rediscovering a language she had forgotten in childhood.
Her shoulders relaxed.
Then, quite suddenly, she began to cry.
The pile of shit remained very still while she cried.
That was how their life together began.
At first the girl handled the thing carefully, always with a trace of disgust she tried unsuccessfully to hide. She wrapped it in cloth before carrying it from room to room. Whenever she touched it directly, she washed her hands afterward almost unconsciously.
Still, she kept it close.
Within weeks her life improved so dramatically that even strangers noticed. She began leaving the apartment again. She slept properly. Once, while preparing tea, she caught herself humming softly and immediately stopped, frightened by the unfamiliar sound.
The pile of shit listened to her constantly.
This was its peculiar gift.
When she spoke, it listened with complete attention, as though every insignificant detail of her existence possessed value. Soon she found herself confessing things she had never intended to tell another living creature.
Petty cruelties from childhood.
Shameful envies.
The fear that illness had permanently separated her from other human beings.
The deeper fear that perhaps she had always been separate.
The pile of shit never interrupted.
Never reassured her falsely.
Never looked bored.
At night she sometimes sat cross-legged beside the bed speaking softly into darkness while the pile of shit listened from her lap.
And gradually, almost against her will, the girl became attached to it.
The attachment formed quietly, like mold spreading unseen beneath wallpaper.
She began searching for it instinctively whenever entering a room. Sometimes she reached toward it absentmindedly while reading. Occasionally she spoke to it before realizing she had done so.
The ugliness remained, certainly.
She never stopped seeing what it was.
Yet familiarity softened revulsion into something more complicated.
The pile of shit changed too.
Not outwardly. Outwardly it remained entirely obscene.
But inwardly it became almost gentle.
It asked questions now. Strange questions, often awkwardly phrased.
“Why do humans become embarrassed when they are loved?”
“Why do lonely people apologize so often?”
“Why did you continue living before me?”
The girl laughed more around it than around anyone else.
Sometimes, during these moments, the pile of shit felt something dangerously close to happiness.
No living thing could survive such tenderness without misunderstanding it eventually.
One evening, while rain tapped softly against the windows, the girl lay beside the pile of shit describing a recurring dream from childhood. Halfway through the story she noticed it had become unusually quiet.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
The pile of shit hesitated.
Then, very softly, it said:
“I think I love you.”
Silence entered the room immediately afterward.
The girl did not answer.
For one terrible second, something involuntary crossed her face.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Something smaller and crueler.
Revulsion.
She concealed it quickly. So quickly another person might not have noticed.
But the pile of shit noticed.
Of course it noticed.
The girl sat upright and began speaking gently, almost urgently, trying to smooth over the moment before it fully existed.
“You matter to me,” she said.
“You’ve helped me so much.”
“I don’t want things to become strange between us.”
The pile of shit listened quietly.
Outside, rainwater slid slowly down the windows in crooked silver lines.
And suddenly it understood everything.
The girl loved its presence.
Loved the relief it brought her.
Loved being understood.
Loved never feeling alone beside it.
But she did not desire it.
The thought had never even truly occurred to her until now, and when it did, her body answered before her mind could intervene.
The pile of shit understood then that usefulness and love were not the same thing.
After that night, something between them weakened irreparably.
The girl became kinder than ever. This was perhaps the cruelest part. She held the pile of shit more often. Spoke more softly. Watched it with constant concern.
But pity had entered the room, and once pity arrives, love begins rotting from beneath.
The pile of shit grew quieter.
It no longer asked questions.
Sometimes the girl caught it staring at nothing for hours.
Meanwhile the old sickness began returning to her gradually. Mornings grew heavy again. Food lost its taste. The strange pressure inside her chest returned each night before sleep.
Neither of them spoke about this.
One morning the girl awoke to silence.
The pile of shit lay motionless beside her bed.
No voice.
No warmth.
No strange attentive presence hidden beneath ugliness.
Just an ordinary pile of shit.
The girl stared at it for a long time.
Then she lifted it carefully between two fingers and carried it outside.
The streets were still damp from rain. People moved past her without notice, wrapped in coats against the cold morning air.
At the corner of the street stood a rusted public trash bin. The girl dropped the pile of shit inside.
For several moments she remained standing there.
Then she returned home and washed her hands for a very long time beneath scalding water.
That night the suffering returned completely.
Yet what haunted her afterward was not the pain.
It was the unbearable realization that somewhere, in some impossible way, the pile of shit had loved her sincerely.
And sincerity had never transformed it into something a human being could desire.