Chapter 1

It is rare to find anyone that enjoys the sound of an alarm clock blaring its ear drum shattering signal to wake, especially as it often occurs at an hour that always seems much too early.

Brandon was no different than anyone else in this regard. Unfortunately, there was very little that he could do to rectify his situation. He had once tried to switch to the radio setting on his alarm clock but after waking up two hours late, he deemed that experiment a failure.

In spite of that initial setback, Brandon had developed a three step coping method, which was as carefully crafted as it was mind numbingly insane.

Step one in his elaborate plot to foil his alarm clock could be termed the ignore-it-until-it-goes-away ploy. The embodiment of this tactic involved grabbing his pillow firmly with both hands, and in a show of excessive force, crushing it up against his face and ears. If Brandon had thought this through just a little bit longer, and if it hadn't been first thing in the morning, he probably would have realized that his tactic had one fatal flaw in that it would really only work on a subject with the capacity of cognitive thought, and not, as is the case here, on an inanimate object that's only purpose was to wake a person up in the most aggravating way possible.

After fifteen minutes of undeterred screaming from the alarm clock, Brandon shifted into phase two of his plan and proceeded to mimic the sound coming from the alarm clock, only in a louder and much more irritating tone, essentially trying to shame the offending alarm clock into silence. This only lasted a few seconds, as all he was able to achieve was a sore throat and the start of a headache.

Finally, in an act of aggression that would cause even the United Nations to stand up and take notice, Brandon yanked the electrical cord from the wall, grabbed hold of the unsuspecting alarm clock, and chucked it across his room and into his closet.

Suffice it to say, Brandon was not a morning person.

With the alarm clock problem now solved, Brandon was able to continue preparing for the day to come.

The first step of his morning routine involved disentangling himself from his sheets and blanket, which doesn't seem like that hard of a task, however, for a reason that he could never quite figure out, he somehow always managed to entrap the lower half of his body so thoroughly and completely that to escape his cloth prison he had to employ tactics that were almost Houdini-like in their complexity.

By thrashing about his bed hard enough, Brandon was able to tumble to the floor, where he stayed for a few moments to catch his breath, and to allow his barely awake brain to plan out the next move.

While lying belly first on the floor, he squeezed his legs tightly together, and with a snake-like wriggle, finally managed to free himself from his linen.

He could never figure out how he managed to get himself so entangled during his sleep, but for as long as he could remember he had woken up with his lower body tightly packed within his bed ware. For the longest time he suspected his mother or sister of doing it to him in the middle of the night as part of their dedication to making his life difficult, but when he eventually moved into his own place and it kept on happening, he had to finally admit that it could only be chalked up to his own peculiarities.

Picking himself up off his bedroom floor, Brandon ran his hands through his light brown hair, which while naturally curly and only medium length, seemed to have the uncanny ability to stand almost on end first thing in the morning. Taking quick stock of himself, he was able to verify that nothing was broken, injured or missing. Arms, legs, hands and feet all present and accounted for. Nose still firmly attached to his face, though if he could have his way, he would have no problem with just a tiny bit of his nose winding up on the side of a milk carton. The rest of his head and face seemed to be in working order and in the places they should be.

With a grunt to voice neither his pleasure nor acceptance of his quick body survey, he stumbled his way in the dark towards his bedroom door. Seeing as he had not turned on any lights, nor had he put on his glasses, he misjudged where the doorway was and walked forehead first into the doorjamb, further indenting the molding of the frame with an obvious forehead shaped groove at about an inch below the six foot mark of the doorway.

Without missing a beat he rebounded off the frame, took the necessary one step to the left and stepped out into the hall. One of the problems about living in an apartment with no windows was the lack of natural light, which could easily be solved by turning on a few lights. Unfortunately, though his body was moving about, Brandon's brain was still fast asleep, so complex actions like turning on lights or putting on glasses were completely out of the question. So he stumbled blindly down the hall to the bathroom. In a moment of extraordinary foresight, Brandon had actually made of habit of making sure the hallway was clear before going to bed, especially after he tripped over his favorite turtleneck and sprained his ankle a few months back, which had been quite inconvenient for while not being considered fat at a weight of two-hundred and twenty pounds, he was also not in shape and it took him six months to actually feel like he had recovered from the injury

Reaching the bathroom with no incident, Brandon managed to flick on the bathroom lights, which actually didn't do much good, as his eyes shut tightly in response to such vicious treatment. So, still unable to see, Brandon flailed in the general direction of the bathroom sink, until his hand found a purchase on one of the faucets. Turning the faucet on, he bent down and splashed cold water onto his face, which resulted in his brain forming some basic thoughts. First, it was way too early to be awake; second, he couldn't see; third, something should be done to rectify number two.

Seeing as he was now sporting the awareness of someone that could be referred to as half-brained, he made his way back to his bedroom to grab his glasses, this time turning lights on as he went and deftly avoiding doorjambs.

He found his glasses on his bedside table that was only a table in the sense that it had a flat surface and was just sturdy enough to hold up his glasses and alarm clock. Rather than being made of wood and consisting of legs of some sort, Brandon's table was nothing more than an upside down cardboard box that had been initially used to help him move into his current surroundings.

With glasses firmly attached to his face, Brandon took quick stock of his room. While not flashy, nor particularly clean, he liked his bedroom. His bed, a single, was located at the upper right corner of the room from the doorway. In the upper left hand corner sat a white, very beaten up desk that he inherited from the curb outside his apartment, upon which sat his slightly decrepit laptop. He had one small closet, located to the left of the bedroom door, and because he did not have a dresser, all his clothes were strewn about in a pile inside the closet. His room was not adorned with any posters or decorations on the wall, but above his bed, written in large, black letters was a sign that he had taped to the roof with duct tape. It was created to save himself from the troubles that he encountered first thing in the morning. It read GLASSES and LIGHTS. It was a source of much chagrin on Brandon's behalf, because though it seemed like a great idea at the time, he had failed to realize that when he woke up in the morning he would need both lights and glasses to read the sign. Even though he was the only person aware of his mistake, it still bothered him to no end that he had even made it, and even though he could have easily corrected it by taking the sign down, he refused to do so because he felt that by keeping it up it would be a constant reminder to always think things through. Brandon had a tough time of letting go of his mistakes. Even small things like a stupid passing comment that didn't quite fit into a conversation bothered him, even if the comment was made over seven years ago while he was still in grade nine. He just didn't know how to let things like that and the sign go.

With a final bemused glance at the sign, he headed back to the bathroom now able to fully see. After a quick shower, Brandon stood in front of the bathroom mirror, evaluating himself with a practiced, if not terribly accurate eye. In his eyes he always considered himself to be too fat, too short and too ugly. It didn't matter to him that people often called him ridiculous when he expressed these thoughts about himself out loud, no amount of encouragement could dissuade him from his self perspective. If you were to meet Brandon on the street, you would see a person that, while no super model, was still pleasing to look at. Little things, like not being over six-feet tall, or having a slight overbite, or even having pale blue eyes versus bright baby blues, left Brandon feeling less than adequate.

Much of Brandon's ideas about himself could be traced back to his mother. Growing up, Brandon and his sister had nicknamed her Hurricane Mom, but it wasn't until Brandon had grown up and moved out that he had found an actual psychological term to apply to her: Bipolar. His mom had never been clinically diagnosed, and he didn't want to bring it up, mostly because he was afraid of how she would react. Brandon's first black eye was received at the hands of Hurricane Mom at the tender age of four. Brandon and his sister, who was two at the time, were dawdling and goofing around while getting ready for daycare. After being told to hurry up by his mom, Brandon made the mistake of not being able to find one of his boots. One minute he was asking mom where his boot was, the next he was waking up with a sore eye and a headache, with his mom trying to comfort him. She had one punched him into unconsciousness. How he ever convinced the people at his daycare that he ran into a doorknob was an exercise in expert lying on his part and incredible idiocy on behalf of the daycare's staff.

As harsh as she could be with her physical violence, it was really her deftness with verbal abuse that really stuck with Brandon. She would take every opportunity possible to cut him down.

If Brandon were to by a new shirt, his mom might comment on the shirt by saying, "You're really not going to wear that are you? It makes you look fat. Though I guess it can't be helped."

Brandon had grown up hearing nothing but criticism about his height, weight and looks. It's hard enough to deal with the regular bullying kids receive at school, but with the concentrated effort of his mother and school bullies, normal social interaction was almost guaranteed to be a difficulty.

He had finally moved out of his mother's house at the age of seventeen when, after a big fight she threatened to kick him out, he took her up on the offer. It was a threat she had used in varying forms over the years. It started off with a threat to send him away to a foster home when he was five, and continued until he was twelve, which was when he overcame his fear of the dreaded foster home and called her bluff. Rather than being daunted by this show of spine, she switched tactics and started to threaten exiling him to his father. Brandon's only memory of his father was a particularly harsh spanking he received at his hands when he was very young. The threat had the desired effect and Brandon wet his pants in terror. The day he realized that this too was a bluff was the same day he left home.

Now full dressed in a short sleeve button up shirt and a pair of Khaki shorts, Brandon sat down on his balcony, lit a cigar and sipped at his Coffee as the world slowly began to wake. This was the one time in the morning that things went smoothly for him. This could be attributed to another moment of inspired foresight that saw Brandon buy a programmable coffeemaker, allowing him to prepare the coffee the night before. He tried making coffee in the morning once, and after picking grounds out of his teeth while he drank his cup because he had forgot to put a filter in the maker, he realized the necessity of some acts of preplanning.

Taking a last pull off of his cigar, Brandon butted it out in the jam lid that he had converted into an ashtray, stood up and stretched, cracking his back in the process. It was just then that Brandon noticed something odd coming down the street. A bus, but not just any bus, it was the bus that he was supposed to be climbing on in an hour, except it was there now. With a sense of rising dread Brandon stormed back into his apartment expecting to see that he had somehow been outside for an hour, but the clock on the stove, microwave and coffee pot all confirmed that it was only six in the morning. Feeling slightly bewildered as to what was going on Brandon went back to his bedroom to grab his cell phone, flipped it open, only to have it tell him that it was in fact seven in the morning and that he had in fact missed his bus.

Now completely confused as to what was going on, Brandon flipped on the radio only to have it spout out the three words that Brandon didn't want to hear, "daylight savings time."

He vaguely remembered someone, possibly the annoyingly cheerful customer, reminding everyone about something, but he had ignored him simply because he found the man's cheeriness aggravating. With a string of loud curses that were impressive both in volume and creativity, Brandon got dressed, gathered everything he needed for work and left his apartment to go wait for the next bus.