It was 3:45 a.m. and Joe couldn't sleep. The sun hadn't even considered waking up yet, and it would be at least an hour before the first bird would utter its shrill chirp. For now the world was a dark, soundless, and private place for any creature that happened to be awake to notice.
A strange excitement buzzed in Joe's brain as he lay underneath his bed covers. This was unusual. Joe was no morning person. At least, not in his adult life. Joe could remember back to a time when he was very young. When things were different. It was that time when the restless energy of youth called, and all those underage had to answer. Sometimes Joe would wake up when there wasn't yet anything to watch on TV. He would wait patiently, reading a book, or making himself some oatmeal, until the channels started blinking to life, waking up from their static blizzards. Whatever they were showing was not really important. Cartoons were preferred - but anything felt special, somehow privileged, because chances were that very few others out there were watching. Even the exercise programs - Joe coveted them all.
Joe was a fat kid. Somewhere in his freshman year of college he straightened himself out, though, and he had become something of a health nut ever since. In tandem with becoming more healthy in body, it went unnoticed to Joe, at least on the conscious level, that he was also becoming more scared in his soul. Two weeks before his high school graduation, Joe had buried his father. It was a terrible cancer that had done his old man in, and the third of its kind Joe had the sorrowful opportunity of witnessing in his young life. He had images permanently seared into his brain matter of his father's shriveled body, his oddly taught skin that made him look both younger and sicker at the same time. To Joe, it was the ugliest way a decent person could go.
In high school Joe kept a pack of Marlboro reds tucked in his pocket at all times. He'd light up with his friends after school outside the local McDonald's. Then they'd eat at that McDonald's - whatever their adolescent gullets craved, they were too young to give a shit. An extra 1/4 pounder for dessert after that Big Mac you just sucked down, on top of that medium fries and Coke Classic? No problem, friend. Gluttony was, after all, doubly useful at such an age as an effective deterrent against all the beer that was to be bought illicitly after leaving Mack D's. Don't knock that extra 1/4 pounder with cheese, pal - it's going to save you its weight in embarrassment (God-forbid you find magic marker on your face in the morning). Two evils, each working hard to cancel the other one out. Real teenage beauty.
Joe felt feelings he hadn't had in years coarse through his veins. He was up early and feeling like the best thing in the world right now would be to hop in his car, throw on the heater, get some smooth jazz on that radio and cruise until dawn.
Joe soon found himself behind the wheel of his car. He felt that old, tingly feeling he used to get as a kid. He felt like the world was all his.
And, Dear God, he felt like a Big Mac.
There was a McDonald's nearby, he knew that. He'd never been to it, but he remembered seeing its lights on at all hours driving by on his way home from a friend's place or a sporting event that had gone into overtime.
There was a 7-11 next to the McDonald's. Joe had forgotten about it until he saw the colored lights while pulling into the Mickey-D's parking lot. Joe craved a cigarette badly. It was true then, he thought. It was a physical addiction you never really, truly, could get rid of, huh. Here was the proof. After all these years, and Joe felt like rewarding his discovery with the most appropriate plaudit.
Joe didn't think. It was too early in the morning for thought. He marched into 7-11, plunked down a $10 bill, collecting his Marley reds and change. He eagerly unwrapped the cellophane from the cigarette box like a kid at Christmas as he exited the door, the bell dinging above his head.
Joe stood in the moonlight, his breath pluming smoke into the crisp evening air. It was so darn quiet. Before Joe knew it, the cigarette was already gone to its nub. He was walking when he threw the smoke away. Joe barged through the doors of McDonald's...
As he sat under the bright flourescents, munching on his Big Mac, Joe began to come down from his lapse. Thoughts of cancer metastasizing in his lungs, working in diabolical concert with all that McDonald's burger-grease, hardening like air-exposed plaster in the arterial walls of his heart scared him sober.
Joe felt all of a sudden disgusted. He forced himself to mash what was left of his food back into its wrapper, and back into the paper bag from whence it came. Joe stood up and threw it all into the gaping mouth of the restaurant garbage can.
Driving back home, Joe felt hungover. Instead of feeling spry and on top of the world such as he had at the onset of his very early morning, he now felt weak and fat. Gross and disgusting. Was this just an isolated event, he began to wonder, or is it the beginning of a manifest destiny journey down the horrible yellow brick road to a carcinogenic demise?
Joe was almost home as these thoughts barraged his weary brain. He could at least flop on his bed soon and leave it all for the next day's worries. He was getting very tired. It was 4:58 a.m. and worrying about one's penultimate demise, Joe realized, could take a lot out of a body.
The steering wheel leaped from Joe's hand. The car shook as the force underneath it bucked back and forth. His foot instinctively moved to the brake, putting the car to a stop in the middle of the deserted highway that was now shaking back and forth.
It was an earthquake. Joe could see the street signs react to the violent jerking of the ground below them. Trees creaked and debris bounced along the surface of the pavement like a massive game of Bed Bugs.
It was a big one.
After the initial shock wore off, Joe realized the shaker had found him in what was likely one of the safest places he could possibly be. He was unharmed, right as rain in his car on the empty pre-dawn freeway. To be certain, the experience was still teasing at his nerves for the rest of the drive home, but he had ridden out the event without consequence, and that was the main thing.
Joe pulled up to his place. He stared at it through his car window.
The second floor had caved into the first, where Joe's bedroom used to be.
The collapse had probably killed the others inside. Joe supposed there was a slight chance they could be alive and trapped in the rubble, and realized he had better set about to investigate, just in case. In a way it was kind of a good thing. He knew full well he could use the exercise, and the fresh air he would take as a fitting bonus.
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