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I dream I’m in a glass elevator going up the side of a tall building. I’ve never actually been in a glass elevator before or even a really tall building for that matter. The three-story hotel on Main Street is the tallest building in this hick town and the elevator is so slow you’re better off taking the stairs. I’m not usually afraid of heights, but as the car climbs I feel more and more uneasy. I want it to stop so I can get off, but I can’t find a control panel. A vast city opens up below me and I’m not certain that this really is a glass elevator. It seems to be just a narrow platform hurtling up the side of an impossibly tall building. My guts are knotted and it’s hard to breathe and there’s nothing to hold on to. The lift stops and I’m on a steep roof. I’m so high up that I can’t hear any noise from the street. I feel dizzy and sick. Suddenly, there’s someone else there with me and we’re struggling. I can’t see who it is, but it seems like whoever it is is smaller then me and yet they seem to over-powering me. We get close to the edge and I try to scream, but the wind takes my voice. I startle awake just as I drop off the edge.

The remnants of the dream evaporate, but not the fog in my brain. My subterranean bedroom only has one ground level window and I’ve blacked it out so the only light is the green glow of the clock radio and the click every minute as the next number drops down is often the only sound I can hear down here. It clicks and I look over at it. 6:05. I’m still staring at it when 6:07 clicks down. I can’t figure out how this number applies to me. Is it AM or PM? Am I late for work or have I only been asleep for a couple of hours? I feel the top of the clock and the alarm switch is off, but should it be? Maybe I forgot to set it or maybe I turned it off when I was still half-asleep. Rotating shifts are fucking me up worse then the actual work. I get out of bed and open the window. It’s light out, but it’s summer so 6:10 could be AM or PM. I sit back down on my bed and try to remember…anything. When did I work last? The shifts all seem to meld into one long shift. What did I do before I went to bed? Was I drunk? Possibly. Was I high? Probably. 6:16 and I still can’t find any markers to tell me even if I’m supposed to be awake or asleep.

Finally, at 6:19 I decide that AM or PM my mom would be at home and if I hadn’t shown up for work the mill would have called and she’d wake me up. I pull on a pair of shorts and go out the basement door. My own private entrance opens up underneath a wrap-around deck and faces out into our large back yard.  Here under the deck is my own little sanctuary. It’s covered and I can hear anyone approaching so this is where I keep my stash. There’s a good sized doobie in my roach jar, almost half a joint, so I spark that up rather then rolling a fresh one.  On this side of the house the deck reaches a large hedge that goes along the property line. Because of the shade from the deck, there are no leaves on the hedge down here. Our neighbour keeps the Model A Ford he’s been fixing up for the past 10 years parked against the hedge. It’s completely covered with a tarp except for this side. He figures our deck will protect it. I stand close to the hedge a piss on it through the branches.

I sit down on a milk crate to finish my joint and I start to remember stuff. Well I’m not certain what day of the week it is, but it’s my Saturday. I finished work at midnight last night and now I’m off for two days. Dave and I drank a couple of bottles of wine in his parents’ restaurant after it closed last night. He told me this hilarious story; the night before he’d come home liquored up and really high and decided he wanted to have a bath. They have one of those old fashioned claw foot tubs. It’s really deep and the spigot is really narrow and it takes a long time to fill so he had lots of time to get something to eat and have another beer before his bath was ready. Well, the booze and the weed and the food mixed with the hot water and Dave passed out right there in the tub. Lucky for him he only slid down to chin level, Unlucky for him was his mom coming into the bathroom the next morning and finding him naked and blue in a tub full of water. The way Dave described waking up cold and wet and naked and hung-over and his mom’s hysterical screaming and then his dad running in and both of them yelling in Japanese and broken English.  Fuck it was funny. Hell, that’s an even worse way to wake up then how I woke up today.

I go upstairs, eat last nights leftovers and go back to bed for another six hours.

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