My English Homework

So, I wrote this short story for English homework last week. My teacher loved it, gave me 98%, docking the two percent for spelling. Just thought I'd post it here to see what people think. It doesn't really have a title...

The stale smell of cigarette smoke was beginning to emerge, but the two pairs of nostrils that inhabited the apartment were completely oblivious to it. It was an odour that had become so natural that it ceased to even be recognised. In a similar fashion, the two pairs of eyes were left unbothered by the wafting cloud of smoke that conquered every inch of the place. If any outsiders were to enter though, it was likely that the first conclusion they would have come to was that the apartment was ablaze. They wouldn’t have hung around long enough to realize that the impending smog was actually the work of two lethargic chain smokers.
The proprietor of the apartment was slouched lazily on his old worn-down couch, his significant other beside him positioned in a near identical manner, only she was running her finger absentmindedly through there curly brown hair. Both had cigarettes hanging from their mouths and both were staring fixedly at the television set in front of them. Neither spoke, they just sat in silence and puffed away. This manner of living had become routine to them, only sometimes there was alcohol involved.
A commercial was playing on the television. Neither of them were in any way interested in it, but both watched almost religiously. Overly happy children were jumping around a bright white set and laughing joyously while holding up weird looking dolls, which were apparently the product in question. According to the children, who spoke their allotted lines of dialogue with the greatest of concentration, the doll was a ‘Turbo Action Ranger Mk. 3’. Allegedly he was a super hero from the future who fought space dinosaurs with his laser beam and rocket launcher. The whole thing was strangely creepy and there was an overabundance of primary colours emitting from the screen. The proprietor of the apartment was not in the least bit impressed with what he was seeing. He recalled the toys of his own youth not being so flashy and complicated. Still, in his state of unyielding laziness, he would have been unimpressed with anything the TV threw at him.
“Nazi propaganda,” his equally indolent partner said.
He sighed. She always had to comment on everything and more often then not her comments were pretty outlandish. There was no need for him to respond, she’d elaborate whether or not he wanted her to.
“Look at those kids,” she continued, in a painfully dull tone, “Blonde hair and blue eyes. If they’re not blatant examples of what the Arian race were supposed to be, I don’t know what is. And that Action Ranger thing? Adolph Hitler. Look at the little black mark on its space helmet. It’s like a little moustache.”
He didn’t know how to respond to that so he simply heaved another sigh. So that was the kind of afternoon he had ahead of him- one filled with forced conversation and crackpot theories.
But it wasn’t always like that. Her idiotic theorising caused him to happily recall the early days, the days that had somehow slipped away.
It was ridiculous to think that the life he was living was the prize at the end of the road. In any way he looked at it, every thing had been leading up to his chance meeting with the woman beside him. She was, to him, the remedy to all of his woes. At least, there was a time when he could have thought that and felt it to be true, but he had slowly lost his conviction. Now she was simply there with him, in the same sense that his couch and his lamp were there with him. She had integrated herself so well into his life that her very purpose had become custom and therefore boring. When he first met her, on the middle of a dance floor, there had been a sudden spark, like a powerful beam of energy suddenly surged between them, connecting them. But over the years that beam had fizzled out and now all that connected them was rent on their apartment. With her, everything used to feel so new and even the most humdrum of things was in some way exciting. Now she had become the very definition of humdrum. She used to fill him with positive energy and lust for life, now it was the exact opposite. Even as he sat beside her watching the Turbo Action Ranger ad, he felt as if she was sucking the life out of him.
In a strange way she brought upon a laziness and unwillingness to do anything. Their apartment was a perfect example of this. It was like a war zone around them. It was unfair to say that the squalor they lived in was her fault, but he definitely felt that she brought out the sloth in him. Week old dinners, which would have been buzzing with flies if the little things could have broken through the haze of cigarette smoke, were left rotting on tables. The floor was littered with discarded clothes that never quite made it to the washing machine, and some furniture was beginning to become noticeably dilapidated, particularly a wooden chair which now looked more like a gathering of firewood. To add to all this, there was a purple stain on the wall just above the TV. For the life of them, neither of the occupants could figure out what it was. It had been there for quite a while and had no doubt become permanent. It was decided to be a mystery best left unsolved.
Days were usually spent in that disgusting environment, soullessly glued to the television. But there was always only so much one could take. There always came a time when drastic action was taken. Unfortunatly, in an atmosphere built on doing nothing, the most drastic things ever got was changing the channel on the TV.
“See what else is on,” he said, growing tired of the tedium of Turbo Action Ranger.
She held up the remote. “The batteries are gone AWOL.”
He groaned, for he knew full well what that meant. One of them was going to have to take the treacherous and bothersome journey to the TV to do it manually. That trip was bordering on two meters, a great distance for two self acclaimed couch potatoes. They both fisted their hands and raised them ritualistically. They shook.
“One, two, three, rock.”
“Paper.”
“Damn it!”
“Change the channel.”
Defeated, he rose from the couch, his legs aching with the unprecedented movement. Grumbling, he ambled to the TV, bent down and extended his finger towards the necessary button. He began flicking. He went hurriedly past an upbeat game show host, a pair of arguing cockneys, a Japanese children’s cartoon and an auctioning show until he came across a def metal band playing crazily on a stage.
“Oh, leave it!” she shrieked, “I love this band!”
“No, they suck.”
“No they don’t. Come on, leave them on.”
He could have argued further, but he didn’t have the energy, so he just fell back and retook his old position on the couch.
He took a glance over at his ‘beloved’, who was now gazing at the TV with muted contentment. What happened to the butterflies he usually felt in his stomach when he looked at her? There was a time when it felt like there an army of them fluttering around in there. Now all he felt was mild unrelated hunger.
There was something inherently wrong with his state of affairs. If all was right in the world he’d be living a happy life with the person he loved. He went through all the necessary highs and lows, all the heartaches that everyone goes through and then he had finally found the one. It was sickening to think that he could go through his whole life searching to be rewarded in this way. Maybe he was just too big a romantic who was expecting something a little more fairytale-ish and instead was given a hard dose of horrible reality.
“I love this song,” she said with a giggle, as the def metal band broke into their next mess of music.
He didn’t reply, he just stared at her and realized how much he hated that song and that band. Taking a long drag of his cigarette, he realized how much he hated a lot of things that had come to encapsulate his life. What had happened? The person beside him made him happy once and now she made him…nothing. She made him feel absolutely nothing. His life had been building up through all the years and had now reached its eventual climax. Like a house of cards- it had stacked up and up until it reached an all time high and then it all suddenly collapsed. And he was much too jaded to pick up the pieces.
It was mad, he thought, that things turned out this way. Ridiculous that love could fade so easily. He slumped down into the old couch, all the while adding to the cloud of smoke around him.