This is a ferocious and uncompromising piece of writing: dense, but in the most rewarding sense. It reads less like a conventional narrative and more like an immersive myth, one you don’t simply follow with your eyes but seem to step into and experience. The imagery builds with a kind of ritualistic insistence, layering symbols of masonry, blindness, labor, sterility, and sacrifice until the effect becomes almost liturgical.
There is a sense that the story exists outside of time: both ancient and industrial, Biblical and post-apocalyptic, suggesting that creation and annihilation might occur simultaneously, in the same breath.
What struck me most deeply was the way the prose resists any form of relief. There are no clear exits, no gentle metaphors or comforting resolutions. Instead, the piece leans into repetition and pressure, forcing a kind of transformation through sheer endurance. The confined space of the bathroom-cube evolves into an entire cosmology, and the repetitive act of cleaning becomes something almost metaphysical, a ritual act layered with meaning. By the time bleach is introduced, it no longer feels like a mere object within the story. Still, it has become an idea in itself: purification without clarity, order imposed without comprehension.
This is not a story that offers easy answers or explains itself in tidy terms, and that refusal is precisely what gives it such power. It places trust in the reader’s willingness to stay with it, to be worn down and reshaped by its force. The result is something brutal, unflinching, and visionary: a piece that leaves you altered by the time you reach the end.
Love the long comment Stefan. It is a significant step in the right direction for my prose definitely. But it is going to get more refined, much more crazier, much more vivid. I will leave the comment as it is, I think it is beautiful as you wrote it, I'll give you an insight into what I think, there was a time which willed against a circle, but that time is not here nor now. Look to your clock, you'll find time is a flat-
🤣🤣🤣 yes, bring forth the cleaning tutorial. I meant how to write like a madman about the banale while tripping 🎱 🎱 due to too many cleaning supply fumes.
This was produced after I was contemplating how I get rid of damp in my bathroom that my landlord put there. The tripping balls feel is therefore primarily the fault of my landlord
The snowflakes of bleach invaded the once blackened face of the room of cleansing and purging. The owner of the land and of the overland spat so britishly hallucinating round organs of the past and the future. The tenant of the blackening snowed more chlorotic fumes over, layer by layer, inhaling the improbable death of the spores of a dry hope. The midlands winter always requires a leathery, plasticky sacrifice of the purple faced queen. A trip to the the nearest place of abandoned things or perhaps the museum of the new. On the limelight shelves find… the catcher of water droplets from the air.
This story to me is about suicide and how a lame man decides to end it all. The bricks crumble as his body crumbles. Which is interesting because of the line, "The soul is the prison of the body. " I usually hear it the other way around. Now I'm thinking he kills himself to get rid of the soul to only have the material left? Cool things to think about.
This also reminds me of Beckette. This seems like one of his characters. A dying man.
Let's go Martin, I love that this made you think of Beckett cos I am a massive fan of his. It's an interesting reading you have there, you may want to look to the source of who said that quote with the soul being the prison of the body. It may help
This is a ferocious and uncompromising piece of writing: dense, but in the most rewarding sense. It reads less like a conventional narrative and more like an immersive myth, one you don’t simply follow with your eyes but seem to step into and experience. The imagery builds with a kind of ritualistic insistence, layering symbols of masonry, blindness, labor, sterility, and sacrifice until the effect becomes almost liturgical.
There is a sense that the story exists outside of time: both ancient and industrial, Biblical and post-apocalyptic, suggesting that creation and annihilation might occur simultaneously, in the same breath.
What struck me most deeply was the way the prose resists any form of relief. There are no clear exits, no gentle metaphors or comforting resolutions. Instead, the piece leans into repetition and pressure, forcing a kind of transformation through sheer endurance. The confined space of the bathroom-cube evolves into an entire cosmology, and the repetitive act of cleaning becomes something almost metaphysical, a ritual act layered with meaning. By the time bleach is introduced, it no longer feels like a mere object within the story. Still, it has become an idea in itself: purification without clarity, order imposed without comprehension.
This is not a story that offers easy answers or explains itself in tidy terms, and that refusal is precisely what gives it such power. It places trust in the reader’s willingness to stay with it, to be worn down and reshaped by its force. The result is something brutal, unflinching, and visionary: a piece that leaves you altered by the time you reach the end.
Love the long comment Stefan. It is a significant step in the right direction for my prose definitely. But it is going to get more refined, much more crazier, much more vivid. I will leave the comment as it is, I think it is beautiful as you wrote it, I'll give you an insight into what I think, there was a time which willed against a circle, but that time is not here nor now. Look to your clock, you'll find time is a flat-
You know the rest
Prose poem? I had to slow way down
Thank you dude, experimenting with my prose style, hopefully show some imporvement as I keep going
Super visceral descriptions and emotional storytelling.
Thank you Phoenix
You’re welcome!
You have to teach me how to do this one day. Now I’ll go take my birds of magnesium. Brb
Teach you how to clean the shower with bleach? I think there's some canny videos online
🤣🤣🤣 yes, bring forth the cleaning tutorial. I meant how to write like a madman about the banale while tripping 🎱 🎱 due to too many cleaning supply fumes.
This was produced after I was contemplating how I get rid of damp in my bathroom that my landlord put there. The tripping balls feel is therefore primarily the fault of my landlord
The snowflakes of bleach invaded the once blackened face of the room of cleansing and purging. The owner of the land and of the overland spat so britishly hallucinating round organs of the past and the future. The tenant of the blackening snowed more chlorotic fumes over, layer by layer, inhaling the improbable death of the spores of a dry hope. The midlands winter always requires a leathery, plasticky sacrifice of the purple faced queen. A trip to the the nearest place of abandoned things or perhaps the museum of the new. On the limelight shelves find… the catcher of water droplets from the air.
How’d I do? 😆
I think you can get crazier, but this is a very solid start
Bence! What a story! It's very dense and I like it.
Some sentences that I really enjoyed:
Stoked they those grey bricks through the fire, ash spitting up with lickety limbs from the darkness itching the prisms they poked through light.
The mop drips white ectoplasm to the floor conjuring nothing through the atrocity of sterile worlds.
Hair follicles dyed by chemotherapy gush down the sink streaking a smell of burning gas
Somewhere, Golgotha’s rains passed over the dark country and from those ill-starred droplets, there grew green between the black tar.
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This story to me is about suicide and how a lame man decides to end it all. The bricks crumble as his body crumbles. Which is interesting because of the line, "The soul is the prison of the body. " I usually hear it the other way around. Now I'm thinking he kills himself to get rid of the soul to only have the material left? Cool things to think about.
This also reminds me of Beckette. This seems like one of his characters. A dying man.
Hope all is well!
Let's go Martin, I love that this made you think of Beckett cos I am a massive fan of his. It's an interesting reading you have there, you may want to look to the source of who said that quote with the soul being the prison of the body. It may help