The kitchen first. Strategy. Start with the easiest win and build momentum.
Jordan took the stairs two at a time. His body protested. When was the last time he'd moved this fast? When was the last time he'd moved at all? His legs burned by the time he hit the bottom step. Out of shape didn't even cover it. He was actively decaying.
The cabinet under the sink opened with a creak. Inside, untouched, sat everything his mom had bought him when he first moved in. A whole roll of black trash bags. Yellow rubber gloves still in the package. Clorox wipes in the big container. Paper towels, the good kind with the quilted texture. Spray cleaner that promised to kill ninety-nine point nine percent of germs.
She'd written a note on the Clorox container. Jordan's stomach did something complicated when he saw it. His mom's handwriting, blue pen on the white plastic lid.
For emergencies and Saturdays! Love you! - Mom
Emergencies and Saturdays. She'd been so optimistic. So convinced her son would use these things, that he'd have a routine, that he'd be the kind of person who cleaned his apartment on Saturdays like a functional human.
Jordan had never opened any of it. Not once in four months.
He tore the plastic off the trash bag roll. The first bag came free with a satisfying rip of perforations. He shook it open. The black plastic billowed out, huge, contractor-grade size. His mom hadn't messed around. These bags could hold a body.
They were going to need to.
Jordan started with the coffee table. The pizza box went in first. It stuck to the table surface. He had to pry it up. The grease had created an actual seal between cardboard and IKEA finish. Something brown and organic came with it. He didn't look too close. Just dropped the whole thing in the bag.
The Red Bull cans followed. One. Two. Three. Four. He was up to seven before he realized he'd been counting out loud.
The music pounded from his phone on the counter. Lyrics about winning and grinding and never stopping. Exactly the kind of stuff that used to make him roll his eyes. Now it sounded like instructions.
More trash revealed itself as he cleared the coffee table. Old napkins wadded into balls. A plastic fork. Two spoons. The takeout containers he'd been avoiding looking at directly. One had soup in it still. The soup had developed a skin. The skin had developed texture.
"Nope."
That container went in the bag without further investigation. Some things you didn't need to understand. You just needed to remove them from your life.
The trash can by the kitchen was next. Jordan pulled the bag out. It was stuffed so full the drawstring had disappeared into the mass of garbage. He had to dig for it with his fingers. Something wet touched his hand. He jerked back, grabbed the yellow gloves, put them on, tried again.
The bag came free. It weighed at least twenty pounds. How had he let it get this bad? The answer was obvious. One container at a time. One day at a time. One choice to deal with it tomorrow instead of today, repeated for two weeks until the trash can became a structural support for garbage architecture.
Jordan tied off the bag. Set it by the door. Grabbed a new one. The roll was getting lighter. He'd already used three bags and he hadn't even touched the upstairs yet.
His reflection moved in the dark windows. Six-two of skinny-fat teenager in yellow rubber gloves throwing away evidence of his own decline. His hair stuck up at weird angles from the CVS dye job. His face looked pale in the glass.
But he was moving. That counted for something.
The Clorox wipes came next. Jordan peeled back the safety seal, pulled out the first wipe. It smelled like chemicals and promise. He attacked the coffee table. The grease circles fought back. He scrubbed harder. The first wipe turned brown. He threw it away, grabbed another.
Six wipes later the table looked almost normal. Light wood grain visible again. Clean enough to eat off, which was ironic because he'd never eaten at it properly. Just leaned over it with takeout containers while watching streams on his phone.
The kitchen counters were easier. Nothing had really touched them except dust. Jordan wiped them down anyway. White quartz gleamed under the paper towels. The stove top sparkled. The stainless steel appliances reflected the overhead lights.
His apartment was starting to look like a place where humans lived on purpose.
The vacuum cleaner stood in the coat closet by the door. Jordan had forgotten he owned it. His dad had bought it the same day as the Roomba, both of them purchased with the confidence of someone who believed his son would use them. The vacuum still had the tag attached. The Roomba sat in its charging dock, blinking a sad red light that meant its battery had died months ago.
Jordan plugged the Roomba in. The light turned orange. Charging. It would take a few hours to be useful but at least it was trying.
The vacuum roared to life when he hit the power button. Loud. Louder than he remembered vacuums being. But it sucked up the dirt from the concrete floor like it was hungry for validation. Back and forth across the living room. Under the couch. Around the coffee table. The canister filled with dust and hair and particles of whatever he'd tracked in over four months.
His ears rang from the noise. The music couldn't compete. But the floor looked better. Gray concrete showing through where before there'd been just a film of grime.
Jordan's arms hurt. His back hurt. His legs hurt from standing. He'd been cleaning for an hour and he was sweating through his shirt.
The timer on his phone read twenty-two hours, fifty-four minutes.
He looked up at the loft. At the bed. At the stairs that led to the real mess.
The biological anomaly under the bed was waiting.
"One step at a time," Jordan muttered.
He grabbed the trash bag roll. Checked his gloves. Started climbing.