Dark Room - First Draft

A Story by EMG

My room was dark. Good I thought. I like the dark. The absence of light stimulated my brain. My heart was heavy. I had another falling dream. Same old s**t. O f**k my head started to pound. The hangover had crept up on me. Hammers struck my temples. A gurgle in my stomach. I felt like I was gunna puke. I ran down the hallway to the shared bathroom at the end of the hall. God it reeked, I wasn’t the only poor basterd with a hangover apparently. I showered and returned to my room. I searched for my phone, gone. Must of lost it last night. I checked my wallet. 50 bucks. All my money, 50 bucks. I checked the window. Rain. I liked the rain. It sounds cliché but I liked how the rain washed the filth of the earth. Sure all that filth went strait to the ocean but f**k it I don’t like the ocean anyway. I threw on my windbreaker and jeans and crashed down the stairs outside.

The shopkeeper’s name was Manuel. He was an all right person from what I could tell. F**k what did I know he just manned the register. He always scolded me for buying cigs. Some days I messed with him, I’d say s**t like “were all dying Manuel, act accordingly” but today when Manuel looked up from his USA Today and said “these things will kill you” I simply said “F**k you Manuel” and walked out. So satisfying is the phrase “f**k you,” I thought. I decided to us it more often.

I lit my first cigarette of the day. I inhale deep. Cigarette smoke is better than air, in my opinion. I could breath in Turkish Gold smoke for the rest of my life and be completely content. Girls f*****g hated smoking but I managed okay anyhow. I twisted around and around in the rain. I wasn’t bored so much as ready. Ready to do something, yet nothing occurred to. So I kept spinning slowly around, puffing on my grit in the rain. I must have looked a f*****g loony to passers by if there were any. No one came out in the rain; I don’t blame ‘em it was really f*****g cold and wet at this point. I stopped twisting about and caught a reflection of myself in the window. F**k I needed a shave. My blond hair was short and neat, but my face! Holy s**t a tangled mess of dirty blond hair covered my boyish face. I had blue eyes but there was a slight hint of grey in there. When people asked what color my eyes were I just said great because it sounded better, more mysterious. Women liked mysterious. I know. I’m pretty mysterious. I needed a job and some weed. Which, if you think about pretty much go hand in hand. I need a job for money and I need money for weed.

I walked to China Town. Far a*s walk but its okay if you have some music playing, but my phone was nowhere to be found so I had to do it hum to myself all the way. I was a damn good hummer by the time I got there. Chinatown’s a crazy place. You can anything there, literally. F**k, I bet you could still get opium there if you really wanted, and if you knew a guy. You always gotta know a guy.

I walked into the first restaurant I saw with a help wanted sign. Chin’s Chinese it was called. It was all right. Not good, not bad. A little fat aged man hobbled out. I thought it looked like Confuses. Except without the stupid facial hair. I never got why someone would have facial hair like that, I mean that’s a lot of work to look like an idiot if you ask me. Anyway, Chin was super happy that someone answered his add. “Jess, jew is perfect.” His y’s where bad. I almost laughed in his face it was that funny. But he loved me from the very moment he set eyes on me. I would be his busboy and waiter. Not so bad. I’d make min but I’d also get all the tips. I met the only other poor soul that worked there; his name was Devon, right f****r if you ask me. Tall skinny with red blotches on his face. When you talked to him he just stood there with his mouth half open, head to the side, almost drooling. Gross. He was like a dog; he just cocked his head side to side and didn’t talk back. It was like talking to a f*****g wall. God I hated him. Really for no other reason than he was a dumb s**t. He was showing me how to wash dishes and take down orders. Really Devon I can figure it out on my own. O and if you think watching paint dry is f**k you would of f*****g loved to here Devon try to explain how to wash a dish. “So, essentially” he used big words to make him seem smart, I hated that, “you gotta take a dirty dish and uses this shower head thingy” he gestured to the nozzle above the giant sink “to blast all the food off and then use soap to clean it and put it over here.” He pointed to a stack of clean dishes already standing adjacent to the sink. “Clean, dirty. Clean, dirty, clean dirty” he pointed back and forth between the two piles. Holy s**t Devon not everyone is as slow as you I can figure it out for myself. That’s what’s wrong with today. Everyone has to be hand held through life. No one can figure s**t out for themselves. Our culture is all codependents on each other. F**k that.

My first day at work came that Friday. All the college kids where there. If I had a date I would take her to some s****y Chinese place, but it was cheap and “in” and a cool place so I could understand why. I was the host. I stood at the crumbling podium; I looked like some pathetic politician, leaning up against the ornate red wooden