Russel was utterly alone aside from the few stray cats that kept slinking in through the open windows he was too depressed to get up and close. He drifted in and out of sleep, lying uncomfortably on the ragged couch that was much too small for him. When he was asleep, he was haunted by nightmares. When he was awake, his morbid thoughts would take over. There was no escape.
Things had been going downhill since the end of Plastic Beach. The demons and sorrows he thought he had long since left behind were still relentlessly biting at his ankles. He had had very little involvement in the creation of DoYaThing or the filming and production of its video. Feeling detached from the three people he had once considered his family, depression set in once more. His size was out of hand as well. He would wake up one morning as, what one would consider, a normal-sized human. The next, he would be towering over his own home with no place to sleep but the rooftop. His weight and height fluctuated constantly.
He never had enough food and yet he remained incredibly large and somewhat frightening.
Murdoc left first, climbing on a stolen motorbike and peeling out away from the apartment and out into the world to... do whatever it is he does.
2D had disappeared after claiming he was leaving to pick up groceries, and had been gone for weeks when finally, Noodle left.
Russel had been at normal size that day (thank goodness for small blessings) and was able to embrace Noodle, his sister of sorts and best friend, upon her departure to make a normal life for herself. She tried to hold back the tears as she issued a sorrowful goodbye to her best friend, but failed.
Russel would have cried too, had he not expected this. He knew it couldn't last forever. Still, his big heart was heavy with sadness, and the lump in his throat that always seemed to be present grew larger as Noodle walked away with the few belongings she had.
And so, the soft-hearted mountain of madness was left to deal with the dark cloud hanging over him. The harbinger of madness.
The voices that had made his already hellish life unbearable so many years ago were beginning to return. Left with no companions (or any other human being) and being too unstable to venture away from the abandoned apartment, he was at their mercy. So began his downward spiral into insanity.
Always taunting, always hurting him, the voices in Russel's mind would not stop. The pills he had become addicted to no longer affected them as they once had. The spirits that shared his body cried out in pain, unable to be set free.
At the end of his first week alone, he experienced a blackout, only to wake up and find the apartment completely trashed. His neck was cramped from being pushed up against the ceiling. After decreasing his size, he only felt tired. He didn't want to eat, or bathe, or even drum.
He just slept. Or tried to, rather.
Overcome by sadness and loneliness, he lay on the tattered couch, constantly changing size.
At least he had the cats. Not including the ones he had accidentally crushed in his sleep.