The charred aftermath of the burnings hung like dead air, still and impossible to ignore on each individual in the town. All was in disarray, which would have usually created a sensory overload for his small mind. This time, however, it was as though the chaos was more predictable than the fluff of life before this apocalyptic nightmare. 

Realist or pessimist? Hard to tell sometimes.

The contained workings of this small town drew Louie in, and without doubt, he knew fate had turned these sour events just for him. It was punishment for his feeble attempts to live normally. Kicking a flyer off his shoe, he checked his watch for no reason at all. There was no reason for anything anymore, really. 

He walked toward the library, sweating, absorbing the scents of the smoky remains and the liquor-sharp tang, that stunk like a thousand bars from hell. Braxton Chambers, perhaps the only one who could move on with life after such an event, sat weeping on the steps to the library. 

Louie walked to the boy, sat next to him, and asked, "What did the alien say to the librarian?" 

"Take me to your reader."

He didn't laugh.

This was it. This was everything that Louie had dreaded, this was why he moved from the city to the miserable town, the reason he decided to work at a simple bowling alley instead of the family business, like his mom always wanted. Every aspect of Louie’s life needed to be planned. Calculated. Organized. Predictable.

From the very beginning of his day, down to the simple clothes he wore and the items he carried, each and every element was perfectly synchronized and uniform. The hustle and bustle of the city that he lived in before was too much. One day, there was street construction that altered his entire route to work, making him change his direction, therefore setting off his entire day. Even the most mundane irregularities of life, like uneven pavement or a creaky stair stimulated a haywire effect that went off through Louie’s whole body like a virus. Like a corruption. Like a takeover.

 What Louie’s neighbors didn’t know – never knew – was that within all of those moving boxes stacked high in his room, teetering dangerously, and obstructing almost all possibility of movement in the apartment, was that they contained journals, scribblings and diaries of each day of his life, all of his thoughts, all psychotic. The ramblings were irrational and paranoid, and they were his outlet for these electric thoughts. As he looked out his window, from room 1201, from the godforsaken Wilshire Tower, the record player spun, and from it sang…

      “This is the end,

Beautiful friend,

This is the end,

My only friend…

There’s danger on the edge of town,

Ride the King’s highway, baby

Weird scenes inside the goldmine

Ride the highway west, baby..”

 The rattlesnake tambourine and the hollow vocals drove Louie into explosion. The world was ending, as he predicted. His thin frame began to shake and rattle, it was all over now.

 “No safety or surprise…

the end…”

 The scene below surpassed what he expected, but he knew it was to come. Grabbing the only box that wasn’t packed with his journals, he threw the contents onto his bedspread, looking for.. searching for.. just what he needed. No more waffles, No more bowling alley. No more simple, happy life. Exactly what he predicted was upon him. He needed everyone to know that he was right, all along. All of the religion in this town was phony. It disgusted him. He needed to find those lost, stupid lemmings and give them his writings. It had taken him years to filter through his warped mind a coherent writing that he could share with others, and yes, yes, this box contained exactly one thousand printed copies of his predictions. He would scatter them everywhere. He would throw them from the heavens! Ha! The heavens! As if such a thing existed! The boy with the lemonade, the alcoholics, the floozy women, they would all burn! He knew it! He knew it all along! He gathered them in his arms, they littered the ground with their explosive truths. He pushed the old man in the stairwell, another lemming, he thrust upon him the truth. Stupid old man. Now he knew. They all would know.

Glancing at his red plastic watch, Louie calculated that he had about 20 minutes before he had to be at the bowling alley- just enough time to buy a doughnut at Jorri Rae's diner before work. Somehow, things seemed to unravel when life was just slightly off schedule. 

Louie rounded the corner, and there was Jorri Rae's, where you could get the best stack of waffles around. Inside, he saw a few people that he recognized, though he hadn't been at Wilshire for long; A tall brunette that he recognized from the first floor hung her head over a stack of greasy food, and a few others moved about the diner, ordering large plates of what they hoped to be comfort food on this unsettling day. Perhaps, if he wasn't in such a hurry, he would say hello, but the day was slipping by. 

This is how Louie usually spends the few first hours of the morning - in a rush. If the morning was cut out of every day of his life, it wouldn't matter much to him. Clock in, clock out, and it's done with. This particular rainy day was no exception, aside from the new carnival that seemed to have sprung up overnight. 

On a whim, he bought a ticket for the ferris wheel.

Louie took a deep breath and looked around his room. The floor was barely visible, covered with boxes that were stacked to the ceiling. Pulling off his pinstriped pajamas in exchange for his bowling alley uniform, he made his way from his twin bed to the apartment door. He slid the small, silver key into the front pocket of his button-up shirt, along with 5 one dollar bills, topped with a winter coat.

Preferring the stairs to the elevator, Louie loped out into the harsh weather. Watching each and every step he took, he became engrossed in the angles the broken pavement made on the dirty streets outside his apartment building. Lost in thoughts of the perfect, mathematical patterns, he didn't hear the small plink of that very important, very small key falling out of his pocket as he passed the lonely, dripping wet lemonade cart. Louie's mind is often preoccupied with such thoughts.

On any other day, Louie would have spent his money on a cup of lemonade, but the weather proved otherwise. He wondered fleetingly why the boy wasn't there, and was a bit discouraged. Louie always had a joke up his sleeve, and no one else around here seemed to have a sense of humor. But, as usual, his mind wandered back to the distractions of his surroundings and the fear of being late for work. 

Louie is a man of absolutes. There are few areas in his simple existence that have any sort of grey area. The only grey area that is noteworthy, in Louie’s life, is the grey canvas that is framed by a sturdy red frame.

Like his medium, Louie’s eyes are each carefully encased with red frames, that magnify his otherwise small, beady eyes. Louie has multiple pairs of these red glasses. These glasses, like that simple grey screen, are also particularly important to Louie.

Louie got his first pair of glasses and his first etch-a-sketch on the same day, when he was six years old. That Monday was a particularly terrible Monday. But we won’t talk about that. Some things are simply better forgotten.

More importantly, no one could have guessed that those two items would still be in his life, especially as a man of 23. As Louie’s eyesight has plummeted since then, he has gone through many of these glasses, and is now legally blind without them. They rest at his bedside stand atop a small piece of scotch tape. They are in that particular place, so when he reaches for them in the morning, his long, thin hands always hit the mark.

This morning, as he has for countless mornings, Louie’s alarm clock went off at 6:01 AM. Hitting the alarm clock first, then sliding his glasses over the slight bump in his nose, Louie thought that today was going to be different.