The purple phone looked incongruous sitting on the dirty, scarred table in front of him. It lounged there, smugly indifferent to the gaze of the man watching it, waiting for it to ring.

It was a cheap Jitterbug, bought for a one-time usage. Once it rang, it would be confined to the trash, never to be seen again.

The man shifted restlessly in the old rickety chair. A fat roach (there seemed to be no other kind in this dirty apartment) skittered across the dark linoleum underneath the table. Its claws made a disgusting clittering sound.

Still no ring.

The flier had gone blowing across the street yesterday. On a whim, he snagged it as he was trudging home from his dead end job at the Holiday. He read it, and came to a standstill on the leaf-littered sidewalk.

It was as though a bright solar flare had gone off in his brain. This could be the answer to all his problems. He had no family, no girlfriend, no regular friends, and a dead end job at a Holiday gas station that barely kept a broken roof over his head. He had no prospects, nothing to look forward to, nothing to brighten his days. And that situation did not look to be changing.