Charlie Baxter began his walk home the same way he began it every night for the past five years. First he shuffled a cigarette loose form a crumpled pack of what ever the cheapest brand was that week, and placed it between his lips. Sheryl, a coworker at Big Daddy Lumber, passes him adjusting her coat and mutters some pearl of wisdom into the health effects of smoking. She holds the door open and waits for Charlie to exit. There is always the same look of disgust that surfaces on her face as he lights a cigarette, exhaling the deadly cloud of chemical directly at her eyes as he exits into the cold night air. And after a firm smack on the shoulder, courtesy of night shift manger Sheryl, the lowly forklift operator Mr. Baxter began his walk home the same way he had begun it for the past five years.

Moonlight gleamed on the rain soaked surfaces of the cracked street. A dingy yellow light spilled out from the sodium street lamps that littered Charlie’s route home. Four blocks and twenty minuets later he would be kicking his boots of inside of his depressing one room apartment. Charlie stopped walking. He imagined himself there. And just like his walk home, it began the same way for five years and running. Straight to the fridge to grab a case of the cheapest beer on the market, a whole case so he didn’t have to get up again before he pissed himself and passed out , and then head over to the couch. There was just a window where most people would have kept a TV but Charlie wasn’t most people. Most windows held some sort of scenery, even in a city, yet all this window framed was the dark and dirty red of the adjacent brick apartments only six feet away. Charlie then imagined himself opening the window, first abandoning the beer where most people would keep a coffee table, and then sitting on its ledge with his legs still in the apartment. From this position he could see his piss and beer stained couch, an open pantry as bare as the best fictional desert he could contrive, and a stove cluttered with an array of pizza boxes wearing their grease stains like a rash, or was the stove wearing the pizza boxes like a cancerous tumor? Charlie couldn’t explain why he was so focused on the details of the surroundings in his daydream and more then that he couldn’t explain the daydream at all, this was very unlike him. After taking in his bleak and dismal landscape of living space he leaned backwards and fell straight down six stories. As his body collided with the cold concrete Charlie snapped out of the daydream and stood trembling in the moonlight staring down at the side walk washed in the ghostly yellow that shined from the many light posts, once symbols of hope that would light the way home now loomed dangerous and foreboding. The cold breeze made him shiver as it found the beaded sweat on his face and neck. His mouth was dry and his lips pursed together uncomfortably in anticipation of the cigarette he was groping for deep in his coat pockets. What is this feeling? And why the hell did I just imagine myself committing suicide? His thoughts were frantic as he lit the cigarette that jittered between his lips. Understanding flashed in his eyes like lighting. Fear was the emotion crippling Charlie on his walk home from Big Daddy Lumber that began the same way it had for five years and running.