Lithium

I switched shifts so I'd have more time to find them before they die in the cold moonlight.  Dozens of them blinking for help into the nighttime silently as the world went by, but I wasn't going to let them go into the dark, cold and afraid.  At first it was almost a civic duty, I noticed one of their LED eyes blinking on and off amongst some rubble whilst walking home one night.  It called to me and so I picked it up and took it home, it looked like it needed help and was reaching out to me.

It's autumn and the leaves smother the streets in a rusty film that builds up in the corners.  I see more of them blinking at me as I walk past, as if they know I'm there to save them from their fate, which I guess I kind of am.  I work for a private security firm during the day, monitoring the security cameras dotted around famous footballers' homes in case somebody tries to kill or rob them.  Nobody ever does... The only thing I see is some mild gossip and knowledge that a lot of footballers piss outside of their homes for some reason.  Maybe they're marking their territory. Besides, what could I do? I just look at screens all night and call the real cops if something happens. A ring doorbell could do my job.

Tony thought I was a fool for switching to the day shift.  There's more to pay attention to during the day and the boss is monitoring our station so you have to be 'on it' so to speak.  The night shift is a lot easier as not much happens and you can just goof off all evening and watch shite on youtube until dawn when the shift is over.  These footballers pay a stupid amount of money for us to sit in a room watching mostly nothing happen outside their homes.  Watching their affairs and their arguments, it's a weird job but it pays ok and I can play whatever music I want as I'm all alone.

Working the day shift was perfect because I wanted the night hours for myself.  I wanted that time so I could wander the streets looking for them so I could take them home and keep them safe.  They don't really belong on the streets and I genuinely felt bad for them.  I found one last night in a pile of oak leaves, its last dying green blinking light alerting me to the fact it was there, probably cold and scared.  The rain hitting the leaves where it was hiding almost made it look like it was moving, shivering or something, but I know that's just me daydreaming.  I know they're not really alive.

The medication I'm taking, Priadel, is made from the element lithium.  It helps calm my mood swings down and it's really helped me 'gel' into society again.  Even Tony's football stories are bearable now I'm medicated.  I'll reply with "yeah he's got a good leg on him" or "wow what a nutter he just slammed that into the back of the net" or some shit.  I have a trove of responses to his football talk.  I don't really understand or care for it, I just say the words to avoid being awkward. Luckily it's only during the brief periods where we are switching shifts, just a bit of small talk between two men who's only commonality is their occupation.

I found 12 of them last night, I think that might  be a new record for me.  They're all smug and cosey in my closet and I like to pretend they know I'm there when I open the door and that they blink their lights as a way of saying 'hello'.  I say hello to them back and introduce them to all the new ones I have just found one at a time as if they all have different personalities. "This is Tobias, she loves long walks and tennis, I think, as I found her by the tennis courts, she's also single..." I say with a wink, placing her carefully on top of another, all safe and warm in my house instead of being battered and forgotten in the streets.

Walking through the park tonight on my way home I saw a car pull away and throw dozens of tiny metal canisters out the door.  They rolled into the street like wet hotdogs on a cold Tuesday, it was disgusting.  A balloon farted its way out of a rear window and danced in the autumn air as the car drove off. A different kind of vice, no blinkers, still more waste but I continued looking around until I found what I was looking for, left behinds and other lost things I related to with some dying energy left.

I've thousands of them now in my home.  Most are still awake and blinking at me but some are not. They're safe with me at least.  It's wild to me that people would just smoke these things and throw them away like a bad potato.  They're not potatoes! I have spent many hours staring at my collection of them, telling them that they are not a potato. They blink wildly and I like to imagine now they're together they have some kind of hive mind and are trying to communicate with me, if only I was smart enough to understand and decrypt what the series of flashing LED lights mean.

They say man came from the ocean a long time ago, that we crawled out of it like it was a sewer and we wanted a breather. That we collectively owe our entire existence to the water from where we once came. It's funny how despite leaving the water all those millennia ago we still need to drink it to stay alive. The little creatures I keep finding at night don't care for water that much. I tried to give one of them a drink once and it just started smoking uncontrollably until I threw it out the window to collect the next day once it had calmed down.

I read online that the things I save from being frozen at night run on lithium and I like to think that they're just like me. Misunderstood creatures that require a rare earth metal to get by in life, to be useful. I think that's why I bonded with them so much and humanized them and in the back of my mind I believe that if I bring more and more of them together their collective energy and thoughts would be enough processing power to become somewhat sentient. Maybe not as smart as me (a security guard) but maybe as smart as a small rodent or slug. Something that can follow me around at work slowly, lighting things up for me with its one LED light, like if I can't see how to get my key into a door, it would be there by my side ready to assist by illuminating the way.

Lately it feels like winter is never going to end. I'm stuck listening to Tony talk to me about football like it's chess and forced to reply to him with snippets of buzzwords I'd overheard in the pub. I tried telling him about the things I collect and he looked at me for a long time. Have you ever been stared at for a long time? After an awkward optical pat assessment of my sanity he leaned over and squeezed my shoulder and told me it was my turn to clean the bathroom as he did it last time. I didn't know where to look, I just sorta, counted the corners of the room with my eyes and accepted it, he didn't understand.

That night at home none of the things were blinking, every single light had gone out in their souls and I figured, maybe it was their time? Maybe I had done the right thing bringing them home and looking after them and dressing one up in a suit I'd taken from a Ken doll and imagining it getting a day job, training it vigorously through interview techniques based on my own experiences trying to get a job as an outsider. Maybe investing my recent life into trying to save these things was a hopeless last grasp at trying to have some meaning in a world where I myself felt meaningless.

But I don't think it has to end this way, them all cooped up in my house next to me, at a certain point if you love something you have to let it go. The medication I'm prescribed has a dosage of 5mL, featuring 204 mg lithium carbonate and my dead little children here are carrying at least 150mg of pure lithium each inside their tired plastic bodies. What if I were to say, rent a truck and pile the thousands of disposable vapes I've been collecting over the last few months from the city's streets into the back, carefully, with respect. And then drive this truck into the reservoir that holds the city's drinking water supply? Lithium has a violent reaction when combined with water, creating huge amounts of hydrogen gas and heat, but when I take it, I can watch family guy and not want to kill myself. So what will happen? Either a huge fireball or the city gets a little more peaceful. Anything has to be better than another minute of listening to Tony talk about football.