Chapters 1-4

1. Ants

     I apologize in advance if the following extended analogy ends up sounding completely Disaster Movie retarded. I won't judge you. There are millions of people out there who think the Earth is only 6,000 years old and I've heard that some of them can even poop in the big boy potty so there's no reason to feel dumb. But I digress.
     Imagine a town. Doesn't matter how big, or how rich, or any of that. We'll call this town "Wherever" because the details are irrelevant and I know how busy you must be.  Reading a book and such.
     So on one particularly sunny day in Wherever, our good friend Mr. Whoever has just received a big ol' promotion. He can now call himself Vice President of Whatever at the Wherever branch of Who Gives A Shit Incorporated. Hooray! He wants to celebrate the news -- and who wouldn't with a job title like that -- by purchasing a few choice gifts for his loving family.
     Mrs. Whoever is a woman of simple tastes, so he buys her jewelry or some shit. She's irrelevant to this analogy.
     Cindy Whoever, his 11 year old daughter, has been asking for months if she can have pet mice. She's been pretty good lately and could certainly learn some responsibility by taking care of small pets, so Mr. Whoever gets her two cute little mice.
     Billy Whoever,  Mr. Whoever's 8 year old son,  is incredibly gifted for his age. He has a great interest in insects and seems to be steadily heading towards a promising future in entomology. To support that interest, Billy is going to get his very own ant farm.
     This concludes the simple and easy to follow portion of my analogy. Please remain seated during takeoff.
      You are now an ant. One of the first to hatch in Billy's ant farm, actually. You and all your ant buddies get some sweet-ass tunnels dug out, you find food and water, blah blah blah. All things told, life is awesome.
     Let's zoom out a little. Your entire world, this ant farm, is just some dirt in a clear plastic box in some little kid's bedroom. Whether you know it or not, you will live or die by the actions of a child. You can see through the plastic into the bedroom but even if your tiny ant brain could comprehend a room outside your world -- sorry, "ant farm" -- there's no way you could fathom the idea that in the room next door, two mice are in a cage doing mouse stuff with no idea ants even exist.
     No, as far as you're concerned, the entire universe consists of your ant farm, Billy the Waterbringer, and the vast and impossible realm known as Billy's bedroom.
     To speed this lecture up a bit, let's now suppose that you and all your fellow ants are sentient and capable of logic. You know there's some giant, unbelievable creature who looks nothing like you. He lives outside of your world but he watches you from time to time. He leaves no pheromone markings to communicate with your people, so you have no idea what his motivations are, but he brings food and water every day.
     Billy gave you life and continues to keep you alive. All hail Billy!
     In Billy's world, though, he's just a kid. Sure he's bright and lovable, but he ultimately doesn't know shit. He does what his parents tell him because they're grownups. They cook dinner and buy him ant farms. All hail grownups.
     Billy's parents aren't exactly gods themselves, though. Mr. Whoever got his life-changing (and ant-bringing) promotion because after years of dedicated work, his boss finally acknowledged him. All hail bosses.
     On and on it goes. But you're an ant. You and the other ants will go on pondering about Billy and Billy's bedroom and make all these theories about how amazing the universe is but you couldn't possibly conceive it. There are millions of kids like Billy and millions of bedrooms just like his.
     By now you can probably tell where I'm headed with this. Fuck you, I'm gonna sum it up anyway. The terrible truth is that we, as humans, are ants, looking outside of our world into Billy's bedroom and wondering why he doesn't speak to us in Ant-ese and give us all the answers.
      I mean, we're lucky to have him around to feed us. There are ants out in the real world that don't have a Billy to tend to their needs. They have to forage for everything and get stepped on or eaten by birds.
     But at least they won't starve to death when Billy goes to summer camp and forgets about us.

2. Click

     With my luck, today probably would have been the twentieth anniversary of the last time I wet the bed. I mean, I can't prove it or anything. Nobody keeps that sort of thing on file. Nobody I know at least. But still. there I was, wet and groggy and ashamed. The shame is really the shittiest part, you know. Sheets can be washed and mattresses can be flipped, but even when you live alone and nobody could possibly know about it, your piss-stained ego won't let you live it down for a while. Incidentally, I didn't have much time to dwell on it.
     When you first wake up every morning, you might notice your brain turning certain functions on one at a time. Maybe you notice you're thirsty a few moments before -click!- you realize your morning dump is gonna be ahead of schedule. Maybe your arms are awake enough to hit snooze a million times before -click!- the "You're gonna get fired if you're late again" lobe warms up. Everyone's a little different.
     The point I'm trying to make is that you can't call me stupid for worrying about my soaked bed for just a couple minutes before I noticed my grandparents sitting on the couch at the other end of my shithole studio apartment. I must have left my door unlocked. What the hell are they doing here?
     "What are you guys doing here?" I asked in that 'Of course I was already awake!' voice you use when anyone over 40 catches you sleeping past noon.
     Grandpa poked his nose over the comics section of his newspaper and chuckled, "Oh, we were in the area. Just thought to drop by. Hope you don't mind!"
     "We put a pot of coffee on," said Grandma, mulling over the crossword puzzle she no doubt stole from Grandpa's paper, "Should still be good. You might wanna nuke it."
     I ducked into the bathroom to put on dry clothes. Thankfully they didn't seem to notice my damp situation. Back outside, I poured myself a cup of coffee, took a sip, and tossed it straight into the microwave. Cold coffee tastes like nightmares. They've been here a while, I guess.
     It was right around then that another part of my brain decided to click on: I hadn't seen my grandparents since Grandpa sold his company and they moved to Barbados. Hell of a time for a surprise visit. Maybe somebody died.
     "So what have you kids been up to?" I asked.
     "Living the dream, champ," Grandpa smiled.
     "It is just marvelous in paradise, Alex," followed Grandma.
     "Well you'll have to buy me a ticket to come visit sometime."
     I sipped my now-acceptable coffee and sat on my bed as far from the wet patch as I could manage. An empty prescription bottle stared up at me from my bedside table. Well damn. Looks like I'll need to hit up the pharmacy before work.
     Oh shit. Work. I'll have to-
     Grandpa's trademark combination of belly laughter and smoker's coughing interrupted my thought. He leaned over and showed the newspaper to Grandma.
     "I swear, Alex," Grandma scoffed, "Your grandfather must be selling stories about you to whoever writes these silly Calvin and Hobbes strips."
     "I can't get enough of 'em!" added Grandpa, "They're the only reason I buy the paper anymore."
     I laughed. Unexpected visit or not, I missed the hell out of those two. They had the casual back-and-forth wit of grandparents you'd see in sitcoms or someth-
     Click.
     Calvin and Hobbes hasn't been in the paper for years.
     It all started making sense. They've got to be going senile by now, right? Maybe a little? I mean they've got to be at least eighty or ninety years old.
     Click.
     They don't look nearly that old. Maybe sixty? Sixty-five? That Barbados air must work wonders-
     Click. Click.
     I glanced back at the empty bottle of muscle relaxers on my nightstand.
    Click.
    I sat in shock for a moment after everything in my head came together for the first time of the day. Roger and Myrtle McGowan never made it to Barbados.
     There were three people in my apartment who absolutely should not be alive anymore.

3. Danny Boy's

     Small business owners are the heart and soul of this country. Someone very important said that one time. Look it up. They risk their livelihoods wagering on a dream. In some cases, hard work and dedication can be rewarded with success, wealth, and a bit of local fame. Daniel "Danny Boy" Cavanaugh, son of Doyle and Eileen Cavanaugh, was one of these cases.
     Born to Irish immigrants in 1924, he was a quiet, thoughtful young man who grew up humbled by his family's "Even the shirts off our backs" approach to generosity despite living in desperate poverty. A strict Irish Catholic upbringing left him disciplined, and his father worked himself to the bone to afford to send him to school. Danny was the first Cavanaugh ever to receive a high school diploma and his father was proud of him until the day he passed away.
     Shortly after graduating, Danny left for college at his family's request. He worked in kitchens full time to afford tuition, and saved enough for a semester of business school every year or so. All things told, it took ten years to finish his degree. During this time, Danny met the love of his life, Anne Wallace, and they were quickly engaged to marry.
     Upon receiving his business degree, Danny sold all of his earthly possessions to put up against a business loan,  purchased the restaurant he worked in for the last decade, and started living the American dream. After a year "Danny Boy's" had already become a local treasure.
     Danny Cavanaugh passed away in 2009 at the ripe old age of 85. He opened thirteen Danny Boy's restaurants in his time and he considered every single employee family. He was a great man and I consider myself lucky to have worked for him briefly before he died and left the empire to his entitled prick of a son, Danny Cavanaugh the Second.
     You can't call him Junior, mind you. It's the Second, no matter what the DeVry degree hanging in his office says. If there's anything you need to know about the man, that's it right there. We call him Deuce. He thinks it's because of the "the Second" thing but it's really because he smells like shit.
     "What the fuck ever," you find yourself thinking, "What about the dead people from the last chapter?"
     Is it so unfair of me to give a little exposition in between cliffhangers? To paint a little picture for you?
     Fine, barbarian. We'll do it your way.

     I woke up to soaked sheets for the second time that day. Vomit this time. No pee smell. Must have dreamed that part. Could be worse. No grandparents either.
     I sure didn't dream last night's suicide attempt, as evidenced by the assortment of semi-digested pills glued to my face by my own bourbon-scented bile. I felt like death. Is that ironic? I can never tell.
     Better luck next time, I guess.
     A smarter man than me would have gone to the hospital. That's because most people smarter than me have health insurance. Here in my world you just treat it like any other hangover: drink some Gatorade, splash some cold water on your face, and get your ass to work like the rest of America.
     So that's what I did, and less than an hour later I tossed a garbage bag full of ruined sheets in a dumpster and left for my shift at Danny Boy's.

     In the five years since Danny The First passed away, his son successfully drove twelve Danny Boy's locations into the ground. The last remaining bastion of hope for the company was the first location purchased by the late Mr. Cavanaugh. It's not a bad place, I guess. It's not like the food was awful, Deuce just had no idea how to run a company or hold onto employees or bathe.
     "You look like shit warmed over,"  I heard the second I walked into the restaurant.
     Deuce's wife Julie is a terrible bitch, by the way.
     "Late night," I lied.

     Four hours, nine tables, and thirty dollars in tips later, I was hiding from Deuce behind the building, taking my sweet time to finish what would be my only cigarette of the shift when Tom burst out of the back door, slammed it, and gave it the middle finger.
     "I swear to god, tomorrow's the day, Alex. Tomorrow I start murdering," he muttered as he pulled a lighter and a half-burnt joint from his apron.
     Tom's a cook. We hang out.
     "You look like shit," he followed, fighting with his lighter against the October breeze.
     "I tried to kill myself last night," I admitted.
     He mouthed the word "Dumbass" as he held in a lungful of smoke.
     And that's all he said about it. Tom didn't waste words. We both knew he'd listen to me if I wanted to go into detail but talking about suicide is a terrible way to spend a smoke break.

     I worked the last two hours of my shift feeling a little bit relieved. Deuce only accosted me one time that night -- No I was not aware I looked like shit. Won't happen again Deuce!-- and I left a little before midnight having very nearly made minimum wage.

4. Hobo Joe

      The worst part about living in a college town is that it's fucking impossible to find an honest to god dive bar on a Saturday night. If it's not a club, it's some local music hotspot full of hipster trash. In lieu of this fact, Tom and I do our night drinking safely on the roof of his apartment building.
     To be clear, this isn't one of those flat, big city, fire-escape-having roofs you see on TV. It's a sloped, shingled, get-down-from-there roof sat atop a three-story apartment. Little things like that never once bothered Tom though, so there we sat, liquor bottles in hand. I think the kids these days would say I was "turnt."
     "That bitch Julie," Tom announced, "Is such a bitch."
     Tom hit the nail on the head with that one.
     "Tommy honey, table three's steak is too dry. I need you to fix it," I had a pretty good Julie impression. It helped Tom vent.
     "Fuck you, Julie! You moron!" he replied, "Well done wasn't cooked enough for them and you made me char the fucker! Do you think I like incinerating someone's thirty dollar meal?"
     He threw an empty beer bottle at the neighboring building and it shattered satisfyingly. Tom drank vodka exclusively, but collected beer bottles specifically for our after work ritual. It was a nice touch. We get together a couple nights a week, get stupid drunk on a roof and pretend to be people we hate so we can scream at each other. And break bottles. Try it sometime.
     "Feel any better?" I slurred.
     "Like a million pesos buddy," Tom exhaled blissfully alongside a cloud of cigarette smoke, "What about you, man? You're not going to go home tonight and--" He mimed hanging himself. The entire process, from trying the knot to twitching body. It was uncomfortable. "--are you?"
     "Probably not," was the most honest answer I could come up with.
     "Why'd you do it, anyway?" was his next question.
     All I could do was shrug and take a swig of bourbon.
     Five minutes of silence later, Tom asked if I needed a ride home. I opted to walk. It was only a few blocks.

     Hobo Joe is what the children in my neighborhood call the homeless gentleman who wanders around the area most nights. I don't think that's fair because I feel like "hobo" refers to a specific breed of wandering drifter that this individual is not. Regardless, the name stuck.
     Despite being a bit on the batshit crazy end of the homeless guy spectrum, I looked forward to running into him on my late night stumble home. It made it fun, at least, and depending on how lucid he was on a given night you'd get a couple of stories out of it.
     My favorite Hobo Joe story involved Tom purchasing a gallon of cooking wine for some sort of sauce he was making. We walked past his alley on the way back to Tom's place and he saw what we had. He assumed, due to our bulk purchase of shitty booze, that we had become homeless too. Tom, being the gentle soul he is, insisted that we play along. We spent an entire day just following this guy around, passing around a jug of what may as well be vinegar, pretending to be homeless. Maybe you had to be there. It was fun.
     Those are the kind of memories that flash through your mind while the rest of your brain is trying to process the sight of the friendly neighborhood hobo laying lifeless on the pavement of the alley he called home. His face was a mess of deep vertical cuts and gouges and his empty eye sockets stared up at me, locked in a staring contest with my soul.
     After a few moments the rest of my thoughts hit the inside of my forehead like a semi. I emptied a stomach full of whiskey into the storm drain. What a waste.
     I pulled out my cell phone and shakily dialed 911. A nasally female voice picked up the line.
     "911. What's your emergency?"
     "He's dead!" Holy shit was I drunk.
     "Sir, calm down. What is your location?"
     I took a few deep breaths. The stench took this opportunity to fist my nostrils and I threw up again.
     "I think I'm between Poplar and Kingston. In an alley. A homeless man is dead."
     I had never in my life heard a 911 operator laugh. And I've called in some funny shit in my day. One time Tom tied a bottle rocket to his eyebrow ring with predictable results. Not even a chuckle. Here I am now, reporting a body, and I get Fran Goddamn Drescher.
     "If you're going to kill homeless people, fine. Just don't brag to me about it while I'm stuck here at work, you big tease!"
     "I didn't kill him!" was the only response my mouth would make.
     "Mmhmm," Fran moaned sensually, "Was it a nigger? I love it when the life leaves their beady yellow eyes, don't you, Alex?"
     My brain promptly hit the "off" button on my limbs and I collapsed, my skull meeting concrete with a sickening crack. I laid there, unable to move, as Hobo Joe's eyeless visage turned to meet my gaze.
     A tar-black centipede, pincers glistening in the streetlights' glow, wriggled its way out of his mouth, slowly skittering its way toward me. No hind end appeared -- Hobo Joe was unraveling like an old sweater before my eyes and the creature was his loose thread.
     As I felt the pinch of the first of a billion legs dragging themselves across my cheeks I let out a scream that was immediately muffled by a mouthful of hobo-centipede. The feeling of those legs pulling the thing down my throat made me retch, and the only thing I could hear over my own ringing ears were the guttural moans of the 911 operator apparently reaching climax, emanating from the shattered cell phone on the ground beside me.

     I woke up in a cold sweat in my bed. My heart was racing, my head was pounding. My phone wasn't plugged in and I had no idea where it was. I didn't feel like there was a giant centipede inside of me but Hobo Joe didn't exactly seem to notice in the past.
     "Morning, buddy! Your grandmother and I are making breakfast. Hope you're hungry!"
     I screamed.