Chapter 2

When John woke up the in the morning, it was still dark. He squinted at the clock and saw that it was 4:30 in the morning. Even though it had been a week since he had set his alarm clock, the habit of fifteen years was firmly in place. "I don't have to do this anymore" he thought drowsily. In that half state where he was too awake to fall asleep yet too tired to want to get up, he just let his mind wander in that almost dream, thinking on everything that had happened, coming no clearer to the answer of where he future lay than he was when he left his office for the last time.

The dim light of dawn crept through the window of his small white walled bedroom when John woke for a second time, covered in sweat. His thoughts of his future had faded with his consciousness, to be replaced with a nightmare. He had been George on the subway, except there was no one to talk to. As he felt the pain and started to fall, he only saw the blank faces of the other passengers. But as he was stumbling it wasn't pain he felt; it was loneliness. Nobody cared whether he lived or died. He felt the panic as the darkness of his dream enveloped him.

As he sat up and swung his legs off the bed, John tried to shake off the feeling of dread. "That was George, not me" he mumbled to himself. "Not me." He laughed grimly to himself. "I am worse off than he was," he thought, "at least he had somebody to share part of his life with."

Suddenly a feeling of resolve came over John. He was not going to end up like George. Or any of his money-obsessed former co-workers, slaves to the bullshit and backstabbing, the pathetic desire to be the rich big swinging dicks that they worked for. The funny thing was that most of the people he worked with were rich, they just didn't know what was enough. "Fuck that," he thought. "Fuck them!" he said out loud, staring at the wall.

He got up off the bed and shivered in his boxers. Walking down the hall towards the bathroom, he turned up the heat on the thermostat. He shuffled into the white and blue tiled room; he could hear the familiar clank of the old steam heat beginning to pulse through the radiator. He turned on the old AM radio tuned to Bloomberg business news, started to brush his teeth as he turned on the water in the shower. As the water began to heat up, he turned back to the sink, spit out the toothpaste and rinsed his mouth and the brush. Stripping off his boxers, he turned back to the tub, kicking them into a corner by the door. As he leaned down to turn on his heated shaving cream dispenser, he caught sight of himself in the full length mirror on the back of the door. It had a crack in the upper left corner from the previous tenants. John never cared much about his surroundings, as his spent little enough time at home.

Not very attentive to his appearance, John was shocked to see himself in the mirror. He looked like crap. He was in good physical shape, a slim 6'2" build that belied his 37 years - a full head of dark hair on his head, and a sparse patch of hair on his chest. The hated exercise routine that he had only let lapse since his layoff had given his arms and chest a bit of breadth and definition that showed athleticism without the vein popping rubbery look of so many of the steroid fueled Neanderthals at his gym. But his eyes were sunken, he had not shaved in a week, and his pasty white skin had an even more sallow look to it than his office dwelling, suit and tie wearing previous life would explain.