It was a cold, black morning. The weatherman had predicted warm and sunny days all week, but in typical weatherman fashion, he was highly mistaken. Don’t they get paid to make educated guesses? Why can’t I get paid to assume? My eyes opened to a not-so-welcoming blast of crunchy, static laden 80’s rock on the dusty alarm clock; loud music to begin with, but even louder since I’d decided to crank the damn volume up to the max the night before in an attempt to jolt my tired ass up. It was a piercing, deafening roar that uncomfortably jarred me from an uncharacteristically pleasing deep sleep, a sleep chock full of unrealistic oddities and meaningless mystical journeys, coupled with beautiful damsels and angry zombies. I was running from them all for some strange reason.

It was hard to pry my eyes open that morning; it felt as though they’d been buffed to a high sheen with extra grain sand paper. Someone must have felt that my tongue needed a good sanding too, because it was as dry as the bottom of a homeless man’s feet, and tasted the part full on. Maybe it was the spirit of last night’s frozen .99 cent meatloaf special come back to haunt me. I roared a massive sigh, and shifted a bit to get comfortable; I lay sprawled out wide on my back, the dim blue light of the alarm clock illuminating my tiny, disheveled room. My eyes lazily floated about in the shadowy light, and I felt disgusted; not at the wretched taste that was eating my mouth, but the fact that my microscopic room, and world for that matter, amounted to the value of a dilapidated shit house.