I squint open my eyes, and all I see is white. It’s not bright. No sun. Just all this thick fucken fog so dense it’s like it’s right there at the window. I blink, since it hurts my eyes. A pain that starts right in the middle of my face pulses out through my whole head. 

Fuck.

What day is it again? Do I need to switch on my computer just so my bosses at the county get read receipts for emails? Y’know, that’s basically my whole job now. They ask me to actually do anything else, like make a spreadsheet or some shit, and all I gotta do is give them a look, like, You can’t even use Excel? What a chode! They're too embarrassed to ask for anything. So, yeah . . . work equals having two laptops on instead just this one I’m using to record my last days for you nameless fucks.

It’s Saturday. One laptop it is. Nothing else’ll be different. I’ll still sit in this blank, empty room, wishing I could sleep away my fucken hangover (this one’s a doozy . . . almost making my stomach want to turn), watching more YouTube, fapping regrettably (my poor battered cock!), and wishing I was actually a person. All I see is white . . . all the walls, and filling the window. There’s nothing else.

“X?”

Shit, it’s my damn wife calling from downstairs, her voice all shrill, but orderly, like a stuck-up older sibling who you know wants nothing more than to tell you what’s good for you.

I don’t say shit, not at first.

“X?!” She’s louder. Closer.

Fuck!

“X?!” she cries from right outside my door.

“What? I just woke up.” I sound so dry, like a bleached skeleton half buried in the desert.

“What are you doing today?”

None of your fucken business! But of course, being a failed tool, I say, “Nothing.” Shit! That’s kind of like opening the softest parts of your neck up to a wolf.

“Can you take Jolene to Fresno?” She says it like it’s actually fucken reasonable.

Fucken Fresno?! No! I feel like swarms of birds are pecking at my brainstem while a group of goblins stomps up and down on my withered junk. I ain’t doing that shit. Besides, why would I give Jolene, my wife’s younger of two nieces, a ride?

Well . . . we’ll get to fucken Jolene in a minute.

“No,” I say kinda flat and even. “I don’t feel good. Can you take her?”

“Can I come in?”

I lurch against my multiple pains, and sweep away bottles and tissues, closing open tabs, y’know… “Fine.”

She juts open the door like an oaf, and pokes her big-ass head around, her face covered in inches of cream no one at home on weekends has any fucken business ever wearing . . . fucking ever! I guess you could say I’m hit all anew by the downward sloping decline of her body. Gets me every time. Tits sagging, and nowhere near passing her massive gut. Thin, no-ass, triangle hips that scream get the fuck away! in tones of tightness and closed resistance. The twinkle in her eye says, Hey, isn’t this a fun private joke we’re sharing . . . this ridiculous life we’re stuck in where you get drunk and fap yourself silly, wake up dead as shit, and now I get to make demands of you since you just told me you aint got shit to do, you loser-asshole-dickface-fuck?! Or maybe she’s happy to see me. Fucken yay (hope you’re catching the dripping goo of sarcasm I’m trying to put across in letters on a screen)!

I guess her liking me has never been the problem.

But her body’s always been misshapen. She’s always hated dick. Fun for her is sinking into a couch all day on her phone. Yeah.

“I can’t take her,” she says like it’s a prepared speech. “I got my keto meetup in an hour. Plus, she . . . she asked for you for some reason.”

“Asked for me? Why’s she need to go to Fresno?”

“It’s for a test to get a job with the state. I’m guessing she wants you to take her since you work for LA county . . . like, maybe you can give her pointers for getting a government job.”

“Jolene wants a state job?”

I don’t know Jolene too well. I think she’s 18. Maybe 19. She’s been living with her mom, my wife’s way hotter sister, for a couple months. Before that, I only got a vague impression she was traveling around, doing photoshoots for Instagram or some shit . . . making money from that somehow. Of course, I always guessed she was getting taken care of by rich creeps (like me . . . well, the creep part, not the rich part) probably giving her a realistic glimpse at what work in entertainment would really be like.

The idea of her doing anything so mechanical and set as a state job just doesn’t make any fucken sense at all. I’m getting kinda curious, even though I still feel like utter shit.

“Alright, I’ll go,” I sigh in a voice that asks aren’t I just the greatest? “What time?”

“Now. She’s downstairs and ready.”