short story

	In the heart of America between the aorta and arteries is a boring town with boring people where nothing ever happens. Rolling hills make waves of earth across the horizon. Dawson, Kansas, an average town of about fifty thousand, sat nestled in between a prairie valley carved by an ancient ocean floor millions of years ago, where the skies, in accordance to the hallowed state anthem, are not cloudy all day. It is in this boring town with boring people where nothing ever happens that –
	“Excuse me, but I can't see where you're going with this introduction at all,” a whiny voice piped out from the darkness, shattering the carefully-worded scenic envisioning of the rural Midwest. The scrawny naked body of twenty-three-year-old Jesse Analplay stumbled out of the shower grumbling and moped around the nether of his musky one-bedroom apartment's bathroom for the lights. His hands fumbled and padded the wall in the blindness. The light switch seemed to elude him.
	“Oh, for the last time, it's Anople. Anople! Ay – NO – PLAY.   My dad's side of the family are Italians or something! I dunno. Now would you stop turning off the lights and setting up a scene? I'm trying to get ready for work!” He blurted at the ceiling, but his concerns were largely lost to the roar of the overhead vent which had unexpectedly decided to turn on the moment he started talking to it. Also drowned out by the metal rattling of the air duct were the many subsequent curses, cries for help, and desperate pounds on the fogged-up mirror in front of him. His tangled brown hair mopped the steam off the glass as he pressed his forehead repeatedly against it, for Jesse's very soul had been in the throes of torturous agony since earlier that morning at breakfast when all that hot coffee spilled in his lap. He owed it to his clumsy nature and subconscious cues to destroy himself slowly and did not blame anything else for it having happened to him.
	“That is an outright lie, you utter maniac!” he hollered once again in vain at the heavens. “You did that on purpose! And you didn't even mention what you did to my pancakes, my stove, or anything around my stove,” accusing some cruel god of starting that freak grease fire. Perhaps it was his surly attitude towards the supernatural and divine that beckoned the ire of an angry and long-neglected Greek god. Or perhaps it was because he was simply too ugly to earn any deity's favor. After all, a nasty crop of acne had just broken out across his face, smattering the length of his nose and nostrils with tiny white dots crested on mounds of red pus-filled skin volcanoes that he was deftly eager to seize. With the coalition force of both his forefingers he laid waste to the invasive zits, but his still-greasy hands would clearly only impassion the acne insurgency.
	He paused from his facial shock-and-awe campaign. “I wouldn't have greasy hands if you'd have let me take a shower without turning the lights off and babbling about America's congested arteries,” he confessed.
	“But I'm not confessing to anything!” he lied.
	“I'm not lying!” he stammered.
	“SHUT UP!” he whispered. Attempting to dispel his irrational anger, he heaved a mighty sigh, counted to ten, and hunched over the sink, making some effort to stay focused on the task at hand. The hum of the lights illuminating the dank bathroom ensured there was at least one incredibly annoying noise to keep him company. He opened one of the drawers to the right and produced a tube and toothbrush, clearly self-conscious about how his moldy breath would affect the many people he would have to interact with at work—an entry-level grunt at a local business.
	“Moldy? Seriously?” he objected.
	“I'll have you know my teeth and breath are fine, thank you very much,” he boasted, baring his pearly-whites to the mirror. “I had a lot of work done on them when I was younger – crowns, veneers, braces, the whole shebang, y'know? I've kept very good care of them over the years.”
	Except they weren't exactly pearly-white. In fact, they seemed a bit more like the color of a hard-boiled egg left out for two days on a kitchen counter, baking in all the sunlight, formaldehyde, and cat piss that usually befouls food of this nature. He would remember the neglect he's paid his teeth had he not smoked so much cannabis on a regular basis and yellowed his teeth with it.
	“But I've never smoked before in...myy...liife,” he said, unconsciously bringing the immaculately-rolled joint to his lips, caving into the temptation to be incredibly stoned the day of his first presentation to his boss and superiors.