You wake up sweating in bed. It's hot. Blinding light comes in through the cracked, bare window with all the subtlety of cannon fire. Stretching and tasting morning breath, you kick free of the blanket's last grip on your legs. The spot beside yours is wrinkled and cool to the touch. Danielle has been awake for hours, having her day while you were grasping at what little sleep you could take for yourself. You sigh.

Glancing around the cluttered room, you catch a glimpse of the alarm clock resting on top of the clear blue Tupperware drawer set you call a dresser. It's almost 3:30 PM. You hate the clock, the time, the goddamn drawer set. You even hate the -- oh man, what day is it?

It's Monday. You stretch again, closing your eyes. You want to go back to sleep, very much so, but you can't. You lie there with your eyes shut, a billion separate thoughts rushing through the highway of your mind, horns honking, exhaust rising to dance with smog. You grunt, rub at your dry, bloodshot eyes and sit up, trying to forget about all the things you put off during the weekend, the things that will most likely be put off again and again--changing the oil, doing laundry. Though you don't want to, you stand, shuffle barefoot to the door and open it. A wave of cigarette smoke and cat litter almost knocks you back.

"Hey, buddy," Wolf says from across the living room. He's lying in the bright sun, stretched out like a cat, smoke drifting up and hanging loosely in the air from the stub he holds between fingers. His brother's laptop rests on his chest, its speakers squawking out a cacophony of Japanese voices. Anime is strange, but you've watched a few series all the way through. Not like him, though. Wolf goes through entire seasons in a matter of weeks. If he paid for the videos he watched, he'd probably be bankrupt.

"Hey," you say. You start to take a step into the living room but look down just in time to avoid a hefty mound of cat shit. The cat box, three feet away, is clean and undisturbed; the floor around it is a World War II mine field.

"Your cat crapped outside my door again," you say.

"Oh, really?" he says. "Sorry dude. I'll clean it up after I finish this episode." Upstairs, the cat BAMF, short for Bad-Ass-Mother-Fucker, meows and comes towards you nuzzling the banister after each step, innocent and chubby as an infant. Sometimes you want to pour cat litter down her throat so she would at least leave something besides crap on the floor.

With a headache working tag-team at the back and front of your head, you go back into your room and pull on some socks and your mangy, beat-to-hell slippers. Danielle's probably working late again tonight, meaning that you won't get to see her before she gets home. At that moment, you'd give up anything to just have five minutes lying on her warm, comforting chest. But what can you do?

You join Wolf on the couch and he scoots over. "Have you seen this one, man?" he asks, naming some outrageous Japanese anime title. You shake your head and start to prop your foot up on the coffee table but notice that it's littered with trash, half-eaten food, mounds of cigarette ashes and a couple dozen cheap beer cans. You can almost see the yeast rise in the air like dust in the sunlight, mingling together with cigarette smoke and copious amounts of BAMF's methane. Essence d'Poverty, by Calvin Klein.

"I'm going to grab a bite to eat," you say and get up.

"Cool, man," Wolf says, once again stretching in feline fashion.

If there were ever a Hell, this kitchen would be its second cousin. Mildewed light spills in through yellowed windows; dishes wait in haphazard lines for the gas chamber; the kitchen table is covered with beer and liquored bottles, dead soldiers left on the field to rot over the weekend.

And for some reason, walking inside, your stomach growls.

Danielle's brother, Brandon, shuffles out from his room, a small annex connected to the kitchen, as you stare at the mess. In better days, his room might have been a cute sun room. He passes silently in front of you, hair tossed, and goes into the bathroom to shower.

The front door slams, meaning that either Wolf got up to clean the cat crap up like he said (unlikely) or his brother, Gus, just came in from work. You grab your wallet and go towards your room. Gus and Wolf are talking in the living room, something about the garbage not being taken to the curb. You decide to high-tail it out of there before the two get into another argument, that'd be all you needed for your lumberjack headache, and head off to get some food.

It's Tuesday.

You wipe the crusts from your eyes and stand up. You are already contemplating calling out of work but you know you shouldn't. You can only hope that some new, strange flesh-eating disease develops on your fingers, perhaps a strain created in the chemical weapons lab that is the kitchen, making it so that you can actually think about finding a new job.

That's something you should do today. You should look online for another job, perhaps something in psychology. Why else take all those classes, pay all that money on college tuition? You have a good feeling; motivation boils up your gullet like heartburn. You've been putting it off, like a lot of other things, but today's the day.

Lappy, the ancient, semi-reliable computer you've used for the last couple of years powers on and you wait for it to leech a neighbor's wi-fi. You open Firefox, check the news, log into your e-mail and sign into Facebook--your routine. By the time you've refreshed your inbox a half a dozen times, browsed briefly over the news and got lost in status updates, you realized there was something else you wanted to do (look for jobs), but you can't quite remember (look for jobs) what it was (look for jobs!). Shrugging, looking at the alarm clock with disdain, you put on slippers and leave the room.

Wolf sits on the couch, legs crossed Indian style with a length of steel wire in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other. He's making chain mail armor. Beside him sits Brandon, video game controller held between his pale, thin hands.

"Hey, man," Wolf says, looking up with a bearded grin.

"Hey, guys," you reply.

Brandon risks a glance over to you, nods, and then focuses back on the TV screen, smashing the buttons of the controller in rapid succession. You wish there was a button you could push to get away from everything. Shit in one hand, wish in the other... You look down, making sure to avoid the piles of poo on the floor. "You still haven't picked up after your cats," you say.

Wolf nods. "I know. I said I'll pick it up. I'll get to it in a little bit." As if on cue, BAMF rubs up against your leg. She wobbles off, leading you to her empty food bowl. She turns back and meows at you.

"Sorry, cat," you say, gingerly stepping toward the kitchen. "I won't supply you with ammo."

Scents of ambrosia swirl in the air to mix with deadly mustard gas, bringing tears to your eyes. The kitchen is still a wasteland, something from a Cormac McCarthy novel. It's the same bitter-sweet scent of road kill left to dry on the side of a street. You wish you had even half the energy it took to make this mess and can only imagine what kind of psychostimulants it would take to make any kind of effort to clean it. You could probably find a meth addict on the street to help clean... No.

The daydream ends when the toilet flushes and Gus steps out of the bathroom without washing his hands. He stares at you, wearing only a pair of maroon boxer shorts and a crooked grin, a Bill O'Reiley hardcover tucked in his armpit.

"You didn't work today?" you ask.

"Nope, I have the day off," he says.

"Lucky you."

"Don't complain. You make a hell of a lot more than I do."

You want to disagree, but you don't. "Why do you read that crap?" you ask, nodding at the book.

He misheard you. "I figured I'd get some reading done while I'm on the crapper," he says.

"No, I mean why do you read O'Reiley."

"Oh, because he makes a lot of sense. You should read him. Are you scared you might like him?"

"I doubt I ever would. He's a wack job," you say, knowing you shouldn't have.

He laughs, walks around the table, an altar to the gods of indulgence, and stands in front of the dirty white door, holding the knob. "And Jon Stewart isn't?"

"He's a comedian--it comes with the profession."

"Yeah, but too many people take his left-winged nonsense to heart."

You wonder who dropped him on his head as a baby and contemplate how very different he and Wolf are. You want to say the same about O'Reiley, but it's too early to start an argument. Instead, you ask," Have the bills come in yet?"

"I don't know. Haven't checked."

You nod, head to the bathroom. The kitchen door slams shut and you can hear the front door open so Gus can check the mail in his underwear. You sigh. You need to get out of here.

You're hungry. After urinating, you go into the living room and almost run face-first into an irate Gus. "Goddamn it," he says, the folded pages of a bill in his hand.

"What's wrong now?" Wolf asks, looking up from his metal work, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

"They messed up our bill again," he yells and stomps upstairs to his room.

You stand in the living room for a few moments, listening to Gus call customer service. You feel bad for the unlucky representative he gets on the line. Brandon laughs and gets Wolf's attention to the TV.

"Oh man! Nice one. His head bounced like a fucking Superball." They laugh and your stomach growls.

It's Wednesday.

You stretch, roll over and try to go back to sleep. Then the door opens and you hear the voice of an angel. "No kitty, stay out there," she whispers to BAMF. "Carl's sleeping. We have to be quiet."

You roll over. "It's okay. I'm up," you say and her smile at you can't compare with the brightness of the sun outside. She sets the empty laundry basket she was holding down and comes over to you and you scoot over to let her lie on the bed.

"Did you sleep okay?" she asks.

"Yeah, I got some sleep," you lie. BAMF meows and rubs her tiny head on the door frame and rolls her bulbous body over. "You think she's in heat again?"

"I hope not. Gus said he's going to get estimates from some local vets to get her spayed."

"What they really need to do is put a cork up her ass," you say. Danielle laughs and cuddles closer. You rub your hands through the silk of her hair and breathe her in.

"I have a load of laundry in downstairs," she says.

"Yeah, I saw you had the basket. Thanks. How was work?" Wednesdays are half-days at the bank she works at.

"Work was okay. The usual. I don't want to talk about it. I just want to lie here with you," she says. You can hear the invitation in her voice, but you feel no urge to act on it. You both lie there, wrapped together despite the heat and soon you hear her breathing softly, the faintest tickle of a snore stuck at the back of her mouth.

You stare up at the water-stained ceiling, thinking that she deserves a better home and wishing desperately that you could afford more. Will you laugh about this time of your life when you're forty and looking back? Who are you?

You unwrap Danielle from your torso and slide out of bed as carefully as possible though you know even a high school band, marching at full volume through the room wouldn't be enough to elicit even a stir from her. BAMF rubs up against your leg.

You pass through the living room. Wolf is asleep on the couch, curled up in an almost inverse fetal position, a section of the chain mail he'd been working on draped over the bicep of one arm. Wolf sleeps about as much as you do, but when he drops off, he's comatose.

You go into the kitchen and hear Brandon in the bathroom showering. After stuffing some of the garbage on the table into the can, you sit down, elbows down, palms cradling your face. The stretch of the skin around your eyes feels good and you stay that way for a long time. Numbers roll around in your head, not zooming like starships from a movie as they had in calculus class so long ago when you first met Danielle, the last time you remember being truly alive, but rather swaying down like a feather on a calm-before-the-storm breeze. You should check your bank account but you don't want to be more depressed than you already are. There has to be something better out there, something more.

"Hey," Brandon says behind you. You look back to see him fully dressed, steam rolling out behind him like a thick fog.

"Hey there," you say and a strange silence falls over the kitchen. Brandon goes about making his customary bagel and cream cheese breakfast, navigating the messy kitchen with a startling ease. He has only just moved in there with you and Danielle, making the three-day trip from Arizona. On the way over in his brand-new Kia Spectra, full of every possession he owned, he hit a raccoon. And not just any raccoon, but the King Raccoon, a raccoon so large that it took out his car. "Did you ever hear about your car?"

"Yeah," he says through a bite of bagel. "It's totaled."

"It's totaled? A raccoon totaled your car? How is that possible?"

"Don't ask me. I'm just pissed that I'm out a car."

"Yeah," you say. "I'm going to go out and get some food. Do you want anything?"

"No thanks. I'm good," he says, holding up his bagel. You wish half a bagel could fill you up...

It's Thursday and you're so close to the weekend you can taste it. That, and morning breath.

You get up and leave the room. BAMF is squatting on the hard wood floors, letting out a stream of dark yellow piss that flows down the slight slant of the house to drip down into the vent. You shake your head and walk across the room. Wolf isn't on the couch and you only smell stale tobacco. Then you hear a crash from the kitchen.

"What's broken?" you ask, busting into the kitchen. Wolf is standing in front of the sink, cigarette dangling from his lips, picking up and cleaning a large cast iron skillet.

"What do you mean?" he asks, dipping the skillet in a sink full of water.

"I heard a crash. I thought Mt. Dinnerplate finally tumbled down." He laughs and turns around. The table is void of dishes and trash and there are two heaping garbage bags sitting by the back door. "You're cleaning?"

"Yeah," he says. "Thought it was getting a little out of hand."

"A little? You probably just scraped away several new species of fungus. Mycologists would be beside themselves to come here to study."

You bend to pick up the trash bags and open the door. "You don't have to do that," he says.

"Don't worry about it. You're cleaning the dishes. Believe me, this is the least I can do."

Wolf thanks you as you walk out the door into the summer afternoon. You make your way down the steep stone stairs to the garbage bin and toss it in. Good luck with that load, Mr. Garbageman. The lid barely closes.

You walk back into the kitchen. The table is covered by several bath towels with cups and bowls upside down and drying.

"Do you know if Gus ever called the vet for BAMF?" you ask.

"To get her fixed? I don't think so. He didn't mention it this morning."

"Yeah." You sit at the table and complain about being hungry.

"Well wait until I'm done with dishes. I can make us some chicken curry and rice."

You perk up. Wolf is an amazing cook. You sit and listen to him for the next thirty minutes or so go on about the ingredients, naming different spices that subtly changes the overall taste, how Indian restaurants use certain peppers to control the temperature. In the mean time, Brandon wakes up and shuffles to the bathroom where he showers.

You help Wolf dry and put away the dishes. You look at the grimy counter tops and think that this will be a clean as they get. You get a handful of paper towels and some disinfectant spray. You soak the counters with the spray and wipe it clean; crumbs fall to the dirty floor. One step at a time.

"Thanks, buddy," Wolf says. He reaches up on the refrigerator and grabs a 20 pound bag of rice. He gets out what he needs and goes about making curry and rice, adding spices and meat, boiling the rice. "Are you going to be joining us?" he asks Brandon.

"What is it?" he asks.

You laugh. "His family lives by two rules: starch and chocolate. If it's not Hershey or mac and cheese, he doesn't know what it is."

"Pretty much," Brandon agrees.

"It's chicken curry. Come on, try it. You'll like it."

"I don't know. I guess."

The three of you eat at the somewhat cleaned table, sitting around and chatting for the next couple of hours. After three plates of curry and rice, you get up and stretch.

"That was as good as an enema," Wolf says.

"Dude, TMI," you say. "I should probably get to my room and lie down before work."

"Sounds good, man." Wolf says.

"See you," Brandon says.

It's Friday and you hate it.

You've always had trouble being active on Fridays. You want to just throw in the towel, give up and let the current of the weekend take you. You stand up and stare at the clock as if in a standoff. You really want to call off work. You might even get some chores done--maybe even take a little nap. The bed calls to you and you look back. The mattress hangs off a box spring that's too small for it, and while it is almost entirely without lumps and has been softened by some type of space cushion, you know it doesn't provide the oblivion you desire.

You look back at the clock. It's changed, blue numbers irreversibly close to the time you have to leave for work. You have to decide now whether you stay or go. On one hand, you need a break from the monotony of typing all night. On the other, you need this job and being written up for absenteeism jeopardizes the steady flow of paychecks. Plus, you want to be able to move out soon.

You decide after a few minutes watching the last digit of the clock flip over silent and effortlessly to put off sleep, personal time, chores, seeing Danielle, even brushing your teeth so you can keep your employment.

And with that bit of discouragement, you start your day.

You open the bedroom door to see Gus in his maroon boxers. He's bent over the floor picking up a fresh pile of cat crap and looks mad. "Why doesn't Wolf ever clean up after his cat?"

"I don't know."

"It pisses me off! This whole house smells like urine and shit because of him. Look at this, the litter box is clean. I don't know what's wrong with that stupid cat."

"Me either," you say. You look around. The cat must not be that stupid--it was nowhere in sight.

He lifts up and stomps towards the kitchen, the poo balled up in a paper towel. You follow him and see him slam it in the trash.

"So, did you ever set up an appointment for BAMF?"

"Huh? No. Not yet. She hasn't been in heat for a while."

You wanted to say that wasn't the point but you drop it. "Have all the bills come in?"

"Not yet. I'm waiting on a few more to come in. I'll let you or Danielle know what your share is when they come in." Gus starts to walk out.

"Okay, man. Thanks."

You hear Brandon in the shower so you go outside and pee on a tree. Five people, one bathroom.

You go back inside and sit on the living room couch. Wolf must be in his room. You shrug and surf the TV a little bit, trying to find something interesting to watch. Nothing grabs your attention.

It's Saturday. Oh, thank God it's Saturday.

You stretch lazily in bed and think how nice it is not to have work looming overhead like a falling boulder. You stand up, pull on fresh socks (note that you really need to do laundry), put on your slippers and open your door.

Grey duct tape, nearly half a roll, covers the frame of your door, trapping you inside. From the living room, Wolf shouts, "Good morning, Carl." Wolf, Brandon and Danielle laugh.

In a cheesy Kung-Fu Master voice, you say, "Haha, you shall not have the last laugh." You reach down beside your bed and pull out your decorative short sword. You swing it at the duct tape, not cutting it but pulling it off the wall itself. You can see bits of plaster and paint stuck to the tape and know that Gus will have a fit about it later if he sees it. You pull the duct tape off of the blade while everyone in the living room laughs.

You carry your sword with you out into the living room and sit down on the couch. "Thanks, I needed that."

"Any time buddy," Wolf says. Danielle hugs your arm, smiling her perfect smile. Some movie plays on the television.

"You know what we should do to Gus?" you say.

"What?" Wolf perks up. Brandon laughs.

"Well, you know how he uses the restroom every morning before work?"

"No," Wolf says.

"Trust me. I can hear him grunting while I'm trying to get to sleep. Well, we should buy some clear instant Jell-O and fill the toilet bowl with it overnight."

Wolf giggles like a school girl and shakes his arms with excitement. Danielle laughs and says, "That's a terrible idea. What if we forget and use it in the meantime?"

"I don't know about you," Wolf says, "but we men can shit and piss outside in the wild like God intended us to."

"Well, I don't know about that. I don't want to get poison ivy again," you say.

Everyone laughs and you sit around watching the TV, not really paying attention. The movie had a budget of around $300 and it's easy to make fun of the cheesy acting and terrible Sci-Fi channel special effects.

"Anyone hungry?" Wolf asks a couple hours later.

"I am," Brandon says.

"Me too," you and Danielle say at the same time.

"Well, good," he says and gets up. "I'll go make something."

You all say thanks and sit there for a while with Wolf working in the kitchen. After twenty minutes, he comes back in, cigarette in hand, and says, "Come and get it."

You shuffle out into the kitchen. "What'd you make?" Brandon asks.

"Eggs in a blanket. My dad's recipe. We had this last time I went down to visit him. We had this for brunch and a five course meal for dinner. It was amazing," he says, raising his fingers to his mouth and kissing them like a French chef. "Then we sat down and finished a 24 pack between us."

"Wow," you say and sit down.

"What's this green stuff?" Danielle asks, pointing at her plate.

"Oh, that's oregano. I find it adds a nice flavor to the eggs. It mixes well with the bread and the milk."

You laugh, shaking your head.

"What?" Wolf asks.

You take a bite. "Nothing, man. This is great."

"I'm really glad that you like it," he says. "I'm probably going to have a couple people over tonight."

"Cool," you say.

Brandon and Danielle toy with their food. You and Wolf already have one slice of toast down with several more to go.

When you're done, you go back out to the living room. Wolf suggests playing a board game and you spend the next few hours, until dusk, playing together under a dim yellow light bulb. BAMF visits from time to time and Wolf had to run her off once before she sat on the game board.

At about 8 PM, someone knocked on the door. Wolf answered and invited them in. He introduced them, but you don't remember. You spend the rest of the night boozing until, early in the morning, you stagger to your room to sober up. Danielle is there, snoring sweetly, arms and legs spread to claim the whole.

It's Sunday.

One of the only perks about your age is not getting hang overs. With last night a Polaroid covered in lichen, you can't remember how much you had to drink. You only remember having fun and Danielle going to bed early.

You get up from bed, staggering a little bit, feeling a pinch drunk still, and make your way to the living room. Several strangers are crashed on the couches. Wolf is leaning against the side of one couch, video game controller in hand.

"Did you have a good time last night?" he asks.

"Yeah. How about you?"

"Oh yeah. I'm still drunk," he says.

Part of you hates all of this but another part of you says you deserve it. You leave Wolf in the living room and look for Danielle in the kitchen.

"Dani?" you call.

"In here," she says from Brandon's room. You go inside. Brandon is passed out on his bed, wrinkling his bedspread. Danielle is at his computer, keyboard on her lap.

"What are you up to?" you ask, pulling a chair in from the kitchen.

"Playing a game," she says. It was one of her favorites, a simulation game where you made people, families, houses and lives. It was a game where you were in control of life and not vice versa.

"Did you have a good time last night?"

"Sure. Yeah. I don't really like the taste of alcohol."

"Yeah." You are quiet for a couple minutes. It's a comforting silence, the silence of friends and lovers.

"I can't wait to move out of here," you say. "I can't wait to start the next step. You know, after college."

She looks at you seriously and pauses the game. She puts her hand on yours and nods. "Me either."

"I mean, the guys are great and all, but I just don't want to live like this forever. With all the mess, all the alcohol."

"No, I understand what you mean."

"Yeah," you say. You sit with her and watch her build your dream house. She has a little man in the house named Carl with a slight gut and a tiny woman named Danielle and they seem to be doing fine. You talk together in her brother's room for hours, a week's worth of conversation in a day.

You think of all the things you should be doing. The laundry. Changing the oil. Buying groceries. Tidying the house. But you choose instead to spend your Sunday in the company of Danielle, listening to her talk about the needs and wants of the people in her game and falling in love again every moment.

When it's dark again, you take her out to see a movie. "We really shouldn't be doing this," she says.

"Don't worry. We have the money."

When you come back to the house, the drunks are either gone or asleep and you go to your room to lie together in bed. You talk about work, about the coming school year and soon, Danielle has fallen asleep. You watch her for a long time, the street lamp outside making her skin look like marble. And before you know it, you've fallen asleep as well, thinking about tomorrows years from now.

You leave the house and drive your truck to the dirtiest, slowest McDonald's in creation about mile away. You should start walking there--it is just a mile--but you can't be bothered. You hate walking and have never been any good at it. When school is in session, you dread walking to class, coming in out of breath and sweating. You know all it would take would be a less sedentary life style, going outside to ride a bike, playing in parks, but you don't have time, you don't have motivation.

You order a cheap meal at the counter and sit by yourself at a booth. The greasy food fills your stomach and you think about how poor your diet is, how greasy your nose and fingers feel after eating, even after scrubbing away with napkins. You leave, stomach bloated and unsatisfied, wanting to promise yourself that you would start cooking at home, that you wouldn't waste your money or life eating unhealthy, processed foods and supporting an industry responsible for killing hundreds of thousands a year with dollar menu heart disease and super sized obesity but you can't. You long for a clean kitchen and a pantry stocked with fresh vegetables with the desire of an adolescent boy looking at a pinup girl.

When you get back, the house is as silent as it gets: Gus is upstairs watching the Fox News Network at full volume; virtual gunshots echo from Brandon's room in the kitchen; and Wolf is laughing over some TV show in his room. You don't see Danielle anywhere and you have a little time to kill before work, so you...

You pick up that book you've been looking forward to after searching around the room for a few minutes. It's a fantasy, your favorite genre. A friend suggested it to you and even let you borrow his dog-eared copy. You only wish that you had more time, more inspiration to read. Lately, you've felt like you had ADD or something. Everything seems to take so much concentration.

After settling down and removing your bookmark, you realize that you have no idea what's going on. Stranger than that, you feel like you've read this before. You try to shake the feeling and start the chapter over again. You don't want to put down another book never to pick it back up again. Danielle makes fun of you for that. Sometimes you'd get even two hundred pages into a book only to put it down and forget about it. Maybe from the beginning of the chapter you can piece together everything that's going on and get sucked back into the world of make believe.

Probably not.

You struggle through poorly constructed character details, each one a cliché seen in dozens of other novels you've read. It moves on to choppy, stilted dialogue a ninth grader must have come up with. Add some overbearing, obvious plot elements... More asinine character details... Unpronounceable names... More bad dialogue... Poorly written, shoddily executed action sequences... and you're done. You really feel as though you've read this before. After a while of trying to lose yourself in the book, you sigh and look up at the clock. It's about time to leave for work.

In your room, you flip on the TV. As the darkness fades from the screen, you hear two political talking heads debating about an issue. Bored, and having heard the same arguments a dozen times, you change the channel. The screen flickers and you catch snippets of screaming salesmen, ads for a headache cream (you know exactly where they can apply their product), the prepubescent drama of a kids show and, in the lower channels, the drone of daytime talk shows. Cycling through several times, noting that nothing changes with each pass through, you finally land on your standby: the animal documentary channel.

While not overly entertaining, most of the shows are at least moderately interesting. Plus, you hope to catch something that might finally break BAMF of her terrible potty problem. The generic host's soft and forgiving voice helps you bare through it, putting you in an almost trance-like state. If it weren't for the show dog competitions, this channel would probably be your favorite. At least the channel doesn't cut to infomercials at four in the morning like the others.

After losing yourself for a while in one jungle or another, you glance over at the clock. It's about time for work.

You knock on Wolf's door and he calls back, "Come in." You open the door to what appears to be a dank, dark cave--you wouldn't be surprised to find paintings on the wall older than those found in Lascaux. His window is covered by a thick blanket held up by thumb tacks and hope. "Hey, Carl. What's up?"

"Not much," you say as you walk in and sit on his bent futon. "Just bored."

"Tell me about it," he says sitting up on his bed, his shadow cast on the wall by the light of the muted television screen. He's reading a graphic novel, one you recognize as his favorite. He sees you looking at it and offers it to you as though it is a holy book. "Have you ever read this one, man?" he asks you for the hundredth time.

You shake your head. "Not yet. I've been meaning to pick it up."

"Oh, it's killer. The artwork is fantastic and the characters are unbelievably brutal." He smiles and says, also for the hundredth time, "It's one of my favorites."

You nod and fall into the familiar flow of conversation between old friends, all the while silent, make-believe realities wax and wane inside the glow of the TV. You talk about the good old days back on Woodcrest Drive where you both grew up; Wolf painfully details the recipe he'd like you try some time, punctuating its greatness by clapping his hands excitedly. After a while, you fall into a companionable silence. You wonder if you'll ever be able to be long silent around Brandon this way.

"What time is it?" you ask. He tells you. "Shit, I need to get ready for work." You leave.

You go to the kitchen door and see Brandon's room off to the left. He sits, keyboard in lap, staring up at his computer screen. "Hey," you say. "What's going on?"

He looks over at you. "Just checking up on a forum," he says.

You walk in and sit on his neatly made bed. The room is bright from the three grimy windows. "Anything new?" you ask.

He types a few words before saying, "Not really."

"Yeah." You nod. You look at his bookshelf, a shoddy, wobbly thing that shouldn't be able to support ten books let alone a flat-screen TV and several of the newest gaming consoles. The TV is aglow with a pause menu for the game he's been playing. You point at the controller. "You mind if I give it a whirl?" you ask.

"Sure, no problem." He picks up the controller. "I need to check where I am first."

"Sounds good."

Brandon leaves the pause menu and explains the story so far, including his current mission. The game he's playing is about building up a crime syndicate, stealing cars and murdering people. He tells you the staggering amount of prostitutes he's killed and the number of times he's been arrested. Walking the main character, a shady looking man in a cheap suit, around with the joystick, Brandon says, "I'll let you play in a minute. I was in the middle this mission and I want to finish it before I forget."

You nod and watch him play the game for the next few hours. Luckily, you like watching people play games. You watch as Brandon steals cars and either sells them for profit or makes them blow up for sport. He runs around the virtual city punching people with glee, running once he incites a gang war.

Brandon notices the time. "You should probably be getting ready for work," he says, turning off the console and starting to stand up.

"You're right," you say, stretching. You leave and go back to your room.

It seems like no matter what time you leave home, you always arrive at the office late. It's a little after 8 PM; the summer sky shimmers outside the second story window, lit in baby blues and golden pinks--and only a hint of the smog rolling in south from Cincinnati. You clock in as you watch the dusk start to unfold and can hear a phantom jail cell slamming closed. Another night will be wasted here, confined and silent, doing work that doesn't matter, that helps no one.

The large, warehouse-office hybrid echoes with a hundred others typing, endlessly typing. There is no talking. No one looks away from their screen as you walk to your small cubicle, your enslaving computer terminal. Dante could not have conceived of a worse place and for a moment, as you log into your computer, you wonder if this really isn't some hell you're in.

But you know it's nothing but your little piece of that American apple pie.

With your computer up and running, you open the programs for your drudgery and look for something to take you away from your desk. Bathroom break? No, you have a routine: every night at 10 PM, whether nature calls or not. Coffee? Sure, coffee.

You stand up, a tumbleweed blows across a dead Spaghetti Western set, and you get to the coffee pot, the only nectar strong enough to bear the burden of this type of work and fight the allure of a thousand Sand Men. What are you even thinking?

Sand Men? Tumbleweeds?

You get back to your work station, the black liquid magma threatening to melt through the Styrofoam and eat through the desk. You start typing. You transfer the information of one screen to another. Shipper name, shipper address, shipper phone number, consignee name, consignee address, consignee phone number, a description of the package, its declared value for customs, repeat.

You feel every second. You don't type words--you carve each individual letter and number into granite with hammer and chisel. After each keystroke, you glance at the clock. You earn every second that passes, know each minute as intimately as lovers.

Somehow, an hour's passed.

Then another.

You get up, stretch, walk to the loo, play Tetris on your phone, flush, return, type.

You leave on your break, play Tetris on your phone, return, type.

Repeat with your lunch break (though adding stale food fresh off the Wheel-O-Death vending machine), return, type.

You type each new image. Every time you finish, another appears. It breaks you down into molecular components. It is torture. You would rather be cannibalized.

You glance down at the clock. It's 4 AM.

You survived another night. Perhaps not with all of your sanity, but you made it.

You park your truck beside the curb and sit for a few moments. Your brain is dead from inactivity; not talking, not thinking, not being--these take a toll on your cognitive functions. It feels as if you are all input, no output. You see visual stimuli and respond accordingly, without thought, through instinct. You are numb and realize that the effects could be permanent if you don't find something more to life soon, like how your mother told you that making a funny face could cause it to stick that way.

You leave the truck entering into the silent night and walk up the overgrown stone steps to the house, past the industrial sized trash can. All the lights in the house are on but the porch light. That had blown some months ago. You get to the door, unlock it, and swing it open. The smell of cat shit rolls over you like an ocean wave as you step in. Wolf and Brandon are awake and they don't seem bothered by the smell. BAMF looks up, innocently, and Wolf flails both arms in greeting.

"How was work?" Wolf asks. He and Brandon are playing an old hack and slash game together.

"It was work," you say, feeling like Echo the nymph.

"Cool man. Brandon and I are kicking ass. You wanna watch?" Wolf asks. Brandon laughs. You...

"Not right now," you tell Wolf.

"Oh, all right," he says, disappointed. "Is something up?" he asks.

"Dude," Brandon says, smashing some buttons on the controller. "You're getting killed."

"Oh shit," Wolf says, turning his attention back on the TV.

"I'm going to try to get some sleep. Keep it down, okay?" you say. They're too busy kicking ass to hear you.

You avoid the messes scattered on the wood floor and make it to your bedroom. The room, dark save for the glow of the clock and one offensive street lamp, is nice and cool after work. Danielle sleeps on the bed, a butterfly waiting to break free of a cocoon of blankets. You wish you could wake her up but you know she wouldn't be happy. She values her sleep more than she values anything else in the world. She snores softly as you tip-toe through the room, shaking off your work clothes and dropping them on the floor. If sleeping were an Olympic sport, she would be a gold medalist. You try to keep it down to the volume of a New Orleans funeral. Once you're ready, you turn off the light and climb into bed with her.

She says something in her sleep, laughs and rolls to face away from you. You rub your hand over her back and feel her warmth, the curves of her body. You settle in and pull the blankets around you. You roll on your side, readjust the pillow. You scratch yourself and roll over, spooning Danielle. She's too warm and you turn to lie on your back. You stare at the ceiling and try to keep your eyes closed. The street lamp burns through your eyelids and taunts you. Danielle continues to snore softly.

Sleep. Just sleep.

Chore lists pass over your eyelids like credits at the end of a movie. Laundry, grocery shopping, applying to other places for work. Finding another place to live... Time goes by and the lists dissolve, replaced by an internal film featuring things you want to say and do to the people you work with. With imaginary bravado, you fling words at your boss and start to storm out when you realize that you're asleep, dreaming. And instantly that false world fades away and you snap your eyes open to the painful street lamp's glow outside on the street. It's hopeless. You...

You tell Wolf and Brandon that you're hungry. "That sucks, man," Wolf says between pushing buttons and flicking ash from a freshly lit cigarette. You travel through the house and make it to the kitchen and turn on the light. You see a mouse scurry from beneath the old fashion stove and run into a crack in the wall near the bathroom door and sigh. You need to get out of this place.

You look through the refrigerator to find several moldy science experiments and wilting vegetables sitting in the open. The only thing you and Danielle have in there are a few bottles of condiments and a pitcher of off-brand Kool-Aid. The bottom third of the refrigerator is full of golden brown bottles of beer. You rub your hand through your hair, grab your shoes and leave out the back door into the near-morning twilight.

You start your truck, put it into gear and drive slowly pass the mostly dark houses lining the street. All of them, like yours, have seen better times and you wonder what it's like for a house to get old. You wonder if a house can remember the families that lived inside it, if it can remember how easy it was sold the first few times it was on the market now that only drifters and college students could be convinced to move into them. You feel like a house.

You turn into the McDonald's near your house and want to turn back. There are a few cars waiting in the drive through, idling while a high school dropout or migrant worker makes their meal. After an eternity in line, you pull up to the voice box, order the most greasy food on Earth, pay and sit in the parking lot. You eat in silence, watching the streets become congested and thinking that it's about the only dawn you get in the city.

You sit there for a long time, until it's full daylight. Your eyes are bleary and stale feeling but your mind pulses in mocking awakeness.

In your room, you fish for that fantasy novel you've been reading and hold it to the light. Stock art adorns the torn cover showing a generic scene with generic heroes and a mildly menacing villain shadowed in the background.

You lie down beside Danielle and start to try to read. You're proud of yourself when you're ten pages in but then your mind starts to wonder and you end up re-reading whole paragraphs before comprehending.

You look at Danielle beside you. She's lovely. You reach out and grab her hand while she sleeps and she squeezes your hand and turns towards you, snuggling close. You sit there for a long time in your bedroom with your finger between two pages. You and she should start talking about moving out. You know that, despite her brother coming to live there, she hates it: the messes, the lack of privacy. What you really hate is being on opposite schedules. The night steals away your time like a busted hourglass. You should get back to reading.

You open the book and stare at the same sentence for a long time. Your eyes focus on an ink smear your finger made. Soon, it's light outside. Danielle snores beside you and you hear your roommates get ready and go to bed. Half of the world is waking up, the other half is going to bed and you're stuck in Neverland.

You lie there, checking the clock from time to time. Then you get ready for bed, brushing your teeth in front of a pale, fat, haggard man watching you. He's not what any boy would dream about growing up to be.

"Scoot over," you say to Brandon and sit on the couch.

You watch as Brandon, a hulking barbarian, smashes through enemies, walls and crates alike while he runs through the dungeon. Wolf, on the other hand, flourishes as a skimpy wizardess holding her staff in a slightly suggestive manner. He calls fire and lightning from the sky (ceiling?) to strike opponents who have no idea what's coming their way.

They call out to each other for treasure when they see it and plan strategy real time. You've known Wolf for over ten years and feel a little jealous that he and Brandon are getting on so well. But then you start cracking jokes and laughing about enemies and video game exploits and you remember why you moved in in the first place. You love these people. You love Wolf's eccentric nature, always explaining in minute detail the recipe to a dish he had when he was a small child. While you could leave out Gus's grumpy, combative nature, you've known him since he was a small child when he and Wolf started fighting each other. And Brandon--he's your girlfriend's brother. He might be shy, but he's going to be family.

After an hour, you get up. "Anyone want a beer?" you ask.

"Sure," Brandon says.

"Hell yeah I can use a brewski," Wolf says.

You go to the kitchen, dig a couple of beers out of the fridge and bring them to the living room. You pet BAMF by the kitchen door and she leads you to the full food bowl. You hand a beer to Wolf and Brandon.

"How many men does it take to open a beer bottle?" Wolf asks. You shake your head, knowing the joke, and grab the bottle from him, twisting off the cap. "That's right. None--the bitch better have it open when she bring it to you."

The three of you laugh and you sip your beers while they annihilate the indigenous populations of subterranean dungeons. Between levels, Wolf tells you stories about his family, some so disgusting that you want to forget them right away. Brandon relays information about movies and video games that are soon to be released and discusses their finer points. You sit back, sipping your beer until it's gone, putting the dead soldiers on the cluttered table and going back for some more.

Soon cars honk outside and the sun is moving up to hang in the sky.

"I'd better get to bed," Brandon says.

"Yeah, me too," Wolf agrees, stubbing out a cigarette.

You climb in bed at around 6:45 AM with Danielle. She stirs slightly as you pull the covers up and over but settles back in. You look at her, at her full lips, at the innocent roundness of her eyes in sleep and you feel what you've felt for the last few years--love.

You use the remote to turn on the TV and turn down the volume. You watch as one infomercial moves into another. Ab machines, erection medication, wonder diet pills, amazing stain removers, essential kitchen supplies--everything a proud American would spend money on.

You watch a plane fly overhead, shiny aluminum catching the sunlight. It's starting to get warmer out and you sigh. Danielle's alarm is going to go off soon. You want to go to bed, need to go to bed, but every time you close your eyes your brain gums up with heavy traffic, like there's an accident at the entrance ramp of the highway to sleep. You can't wait until you're past this stage, graduated from college with your own house and a new family. With a job that doesn't make you sympathize with enraged postal workers.

You turn off the television and roll your body away from the window. You look at the faded, poorly painted walls and listen to Danielle's soft breathing. You close your eyes, knowing that Danielle's alarm will be sounding any moment. You'll pretend to go to sleep if you have to. She worries about your insomnia.

The alarm rings, eliciting a jerk from Danielle. She grumbles and struggles out of bed to find shut it off. You lie still, listening to her gather clothes for the day. Before she leaves the room, she leans over you and kisses you on the cheek. "I love you, Carly-Warly," she says. The door squeaks open and shuts with hardly a sound. You lie there, listening to the world around you for hours, opening your eyes periodically to check the time. You should probably get up to at least be productive, but you don't want to move. You're too tired to sleep, too tired to be awake. You're in limbo, a hazy stage somewhere between alpha and theta waves. Eight AM comes and goes, followed by 9 AM. Somewhere between 9 and 11, you fall asleep, entering into a dark, blank state of being, dreamless just like your life.