Short Story: Why Not

He coughed, cleared his throat, and moved on.

The clerk at the counter looked smug. "You're limited to two boxes of Sudafed," he said, "We can't let you buy that many."

The man was tempted to begin making meth, solely because they had started regulation.

He had a bad view of the world.

He walked back to the car.

When he got home, he unloaded the groceries, two brown bags. The produce would have poked out the top like in old movies, but he didn't buy produce. He only had one mouth to feed.

The television in the living room was covered in dust, the remote hidden in a drawer. His nephews would storm the desk and capture the remote, only to be befuddled by its lack of batteries. He didn't buy batteries. He hated them.

The oven was spotless. He liked food. He was not unique in this sense.

He shut the door carefully behind him, doubly checking the locks. He was always worried he would fall asleep without locking the door. He crawled out of bed in the early night to check. It haunted him.

In morning, the coffee pot would beep and start its usual hissing and groaning. He always made four cups. Always.

The Raisin Bran box would get empty fairly often.

He would often shave before he went to sleep, to save time in the morning. Sleep was like a free time withdrawal unit. He'd always say, "It's quite okay, to get less before day."

Sometimes it would be 3 a.m. and the mirror would be fogged by his breath. He had a dry-erase marker on the bathroom counter and he would write on the mirror, carefully. It rarely made sense. It often rhymed.

He was handsome. His clothes were neatly hung in the closet; shirts always without wrinkles. His bed wasn't big enough for two people.

It was shoved in the corner. Around the feet were books, magazines, a box of tissues, legal pads, eraser debris. He sketched a lot. He liked making comics. He never showed them to anyone.

In a file cabinet on the wall were his writings. They were numerous. Some were terrible. Some were great. He never showed them to anyone.

His computer sat on a large, wooden desk. Its keyboard was well worn.

Some speakers on the floor. They were big. They played things that he liked. He was not unique in that regard.

He was smart. He had degrees. He made a lot of money. He lived alone.

He thought too much.
He wrote too much.
He prayed too much.

He believed in luck for a while.

He had a couple pictures in his desk, of smiling faces. Beautiful, smiling faces. They only existed in two dimensions. They only existed in two dimensions.

He would walk to work sometimes--it was only a few blocks. He would see happy people. He liked to watch their ignorance.

The checks got bigger every year. The writing on the mirror got longer, nastier, messier. It began to disturb.

He walked to the park one day. Looked around at the sky.

He sat down and wondered, "Why?"

He smiled.