He woke from a relatively pleasant dream to the dull sense of despair he usually felt when faced with the prospect of another day. It wasn't a sudden waking, but rather a slow and painful transition. He felt the peace and beauty of his dream as it left him, he felt his consciousness gnawing away at it like a cancer . He could do nothing but lie still in his bed as the tranquillity of sleep was gradually stolen from him.

It took him a moment to figure out what day it was and what he should be doing. His wife was not in bed beside him which meant she had already gone to work. He assumed it to be Tuesday, his day off. A glance at the clock told him it was 11 a.m. He lay there awhile, feeling no great urgency to begin the day. He used to look forward to his days off of work, but lately he considered them more as nuisances than anything else, empty hours he somehow had to fill. There were things he would like to do, of course, places he would like to go, but all of them would take up much more time than existed in the span of a single day, so what did it matter? At least when he was at work he constantly had duties assigned to him so he never had the chance to think about all the things he would like to but couldn't do.

He eventually got out of bed, used the bathroom, and made a pot of coffee. The coffee he made never seemed to taste very good, but he drank it out of habit, and the caffeine sometimes made him feel better. He sat on the couch and watched the television as he sipped his coffee. He flipped through the 76 channels his cable afforded him, never lingering on one station for more than a moment or two. The things on the television rarely were of interest to him, none of it seeming to relate to him at all. Unreal people in unreal situations, saying and doing things real people never would. Even the news bored him, none of it having any direct effect on his day to day existence. He spent what was left of the morning as well as the early afternoon flipping through channels and drinking coffee.

When the phone rang he didn't move from his spot on the couch. It rang six times before the machine answered it and he heard his wife's voice. "Joe...Joe, are you home? I just wanted to remind you to wash the dishes because Steve and Nancy might be coming over tonight..." He sat half listening to his wife's voice, feeling a slight and dull feeling of hatred rise within him at the sound of it. He drank his coffee and hit at the buttons on the remote control.

Eventually he had to use the bathroom again and was forced to momentarily leave his place on the couch. On the way to the toilet he paused to look out a window down onto the street below. It was a dull day outside, a nothing day. It was overcast and humid, a day like countless others. He watched the people as they walked along the sidewalk, some of them looking almost truly alive, as if they really had places to go and things to do, things that somehow mattered. He wondered what it would be like to be one of those people. He saw a dog wandering about in the street. The dog looked lost and confused. The dog looked scared and hungry. The dog look frightened by the people and cars passing by. As he watched the dog he felt more kinship toward it than he did to the people. The dog was easier to understand, the dog made more sense. For a moment he considered bringing it up and giving it some food, but quickly thought better of it. His wife didn't like animals, and certainly wouldn't let him keep a dog. Besides, it seemed unnecessarily cruel to give the animal a temporary haven only to put it back out on the street again an hour later. He closed the curtains so he wouldn't have to look at the dog or the people anymore.

He used the bathroom and returned to the couch and continued flipping through the channels on the television. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing. Click. He paused on a news report. The attractive lady on the screen was telling of a fellow from such and such a town who killed his wife and 2 children with a large shotgun, then drove 20 miles to the home where his parents lived and proceeded to kill them in the same fashion. They rolled footage of the police surrounding the home where they had the man trapped. The man actually managed to take out one of the cops with his large shotgun before they put 5 carefully aimed bullets in his head. He flipped over to the next channel, thinking at least something was happening somewhere.