Recalling what he witnessed earlier – middle-aged folk, mid-day staggeringly drunk, dancing to the same five songs like insipid foolishness junkies, shallow and emblematic – filled him with immeasurable sadness and muffled anger. Like what it must be like for one's frail, diseased ability-to-find-happiness to die burning in the throat like so much acid reflux. As before, even the backlash will become a limp, media soaked pop culture nightmare. And they want it that way. Day off here, far more stressful than any day on. Not his idea of a good time, or a bad time or any kind of time at all.

Rain beat down in sheets like out of control irony. Letters read backwards in puddles glowing the whole early evening green. Rumbling motor accenting the interminable wait for others to make a move. A tiny bird fluttering just below overhead light, the most fearsome predator those insects had ever seen. This happens the same way every day. And on forever.

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