written by Thom Garrett
edited by Danna Colman
It was going to be one of those days.
There must have been a brief power outage in the night as evidenced by my silent alarm clock calmly blinking 12:00. “Sonofabitch!” I launched out of bed and pulled on the cleanest dirty clothes I could find. No time for breakfast. No time to shower or even shave. I could be excused for looking like crap, but if I were to be late, this day of all days, well…
I held the laces of a shoe between my teeth as I hopped down the hall on one sockless foot while I pulled the other one onto the other one. I heard the chime of the elevator around the corner. “Hold the door!” I shouted. In hindsight, that was probably poor judgment. I dropped the shoe from my teeth and then hopped right on top of it, tumbling to the floor. I sprang to my feet with a shoe in each hand and sprinted down the hall. “Hold the door! Hold the door!”
They didn’t hold the door. It slid shut with a self-satisfied swoosh. “Sonofabitch!”
I took the time to pull on my shoes before running for the stairs, instantly regretting my decision to rent a room on the sixteenth floor. I did my best Fred Astaire to descend as quickly as possible, my feet just a blur as they flowed like water, step after step, floor after floor, until I hit the concrete of the…
