I still tasted the last of the toothpaste. The minty feeling reminding me I’d have to replenish both bathrooms if there was anything left between bills and food. Hell, my family might have to go a week with rancid breath. That ought to be fun.
I shifted in my recliner. A torn, ragged thing I found at a thrift store that’s now even more fucked up since crossing my threshold. My kids—did I school them today? — have picked at the old fabric until stuffing jutted out like skin through ripped jeans.
I made a last futile attempt at comfortability, then settled in, ignoring the serrated leather cutting into my flabby thighs.
I fixed on my reading glasses and snapped open my magazine. For a moment I brood over not buying one of those tablet things that Renee has when I had the money, but soon think better of it. She could barely go two taps without Big Brother trying to sell her some shit she looked at two days ago.
But… I’d take the ads any day.
It’s better than this unexplainable dread that fills me as I leaf through the streaky magazine paper. Every page detailing how the world is falling apart. Hell, how it might even die before my own little shits come of age. I let the pages slip between my thumbs, fast forwarding through all the bullshit.
I just want a happy fucking ending.