When I opened my eyes, I found myself in yet another inhospitable alien world; an endless field of jagged red, dotted by a solitary tree void of both bloom and fruit, which bore the weight of a narrow, steel-grey horizon--
Oh, wait. I\'m under my bed.
It\'s cold as hell in my room (the thermostat reads \"Polar Cap\"), I\'ve got a vicious headache, a wicked case of gooseflesh, and my jackass neighbors are auditioning to be roadies for Iron Maiden. Again. They scream, they yell, they throw things, and they pound holes in the walls. Tryouts begin around 1:00 AM. I\'d call the cops, but since the surrounding apartments are empty, it\'d be pretty fucking obvious who called whom. There\'s three of them, and one of me. But I doubt they can count that high.
I\'m hungry, so I open the refrigerator. Seems I missed that all-important step again: actually buying groceries. At present, my icebox is a long-term cold storage facility for heaps of the white space minimalists find so appealing, and echoes. Lots of echoes. Resigned, I put on my shoes and open the door, forgetting yet again to account for the atmospheric differences between my world and the one outside.
The heat is nauseating. It shoves its way in and pulls me outside with a grip so moist and brutal that I\'m suddenly reminded of the last dance of the night at my junior prom.
Lucky for me, the store is in the next parking lot over. I can just ease my way through the narrow hole in the bushes. Unfortunately, I\'m not the only one who knows about the shortcut; the once-narrow shortcut now resembles a two-lane highway with a combination liquor store and ammo dump smack in the middle. I\'m ashamed to look at it, but unsure why.
Red-nosed and green-eyed, a head of wild, coppery hair, his face a constant mask of contorted expressions; I\'ve lived here nearly two years and never seen him sober. Twice I\'ve passed him on the sidewalk, unconscious and urinating. I\'ll call him Charlie because that\'s his name, and I happen to know Charlie can\'t read. He can\'t be more than 25 years old.
Charlie now sat on the curb in front of the laundromat, his eyes focused on the nothingness before him, his hair its usual forest fire, complete with tiny smoke jumpers which circled and swarmed around his head even as he swatted them away. His face was screwed into a mask of unfocused rage, and today he screamed at the people who passed by him.
A woman walked by with her dry-cleaning. She was of average height, blonde, and well-dressed. \"FUCK YOU, YOU CUNT! YOU BITCH,\" screamed Charlie. She turned to eye him coolly as she passed without stopping, the force of the words still visible on her face. Charlie seemed to take no notice. I doubt he noticed anything anymore. I went into the store and did my thing.
As I walked out ten minutes later, my arms full of groceries and my sunglasses full of steam, I noticed three things. One, Charlie was gone. The other two things were squad cars perched in front of the laundromat, engines purring contentedly. Radios squawked sharp cop-speak into the humid air, and as I passed I heard one of the cops say something about \"repeat offender\". I looked in the back of the other car and there sits Charlie, his shoulders hunched and arms pulled behind his back. Charlie was in handcuffs. He was wearing the same contorted mask as before, but this time he seemed to be looking at something. Or someone.
Following his eyes, I saw the woman he\'d been screaming at earlier. She approached the squad car, eyeing the cops with careful sidelong glances. They weren\'t paying attention.
She leaned in toward Charlie, and I could see her say something to him. She spoke for maybe thirty seconds. And then she launched a gargantuan saliva sample that struck him square in his face. That got his attention!
He began barking and screaming and bellowing like a wild fucking animal, but he couldn\'t seem to conjure up a single word, not one vicious epithet to defend himself with. How do you come back from that? I caught her eye and gave her a brief nod and a smile, which she returned as she got into her car and drove away.
I laughed out loud and walked home through the hole in the bushes.