Chapter THREE! (better late than never, eh?)

My first thought on waking up was that maybe I shouldn't.

Waking up again, some time later, I felt almost terrible. As far as I could tell, I seemed to be in some sort of bed, or maybe one of those cot things that they have in rustic cabins in the woods. It seemed like a bed that you'd find in the kind of place that charges a lot of money to make you feel like you don't have any.

Perhaps I'm at some kind of mountain retreat. Most likely it's some kind of leadership building exercise, and any moment someone will tell me to climb ropes with my coworkers, presumably somehow causing us to sell more insurance or...

or.....

or whatever it is that my coworkers and I do.

I tried to think about work, but it's not generally a pleasant thing to think about even when your head isn't swathed in bandages and so I stopped.

Or a hospital! A hospital is another place that has beds like this! Also a place where heads get swathed in bandages!

This revelation left me feeling like I had accomplished something, and feeling bolder, I turned my head to look around and saw what was easily the most heavily fortified hospital I'd ever seen. Almost looked like a jail.

So. Taking stock. I have: 1 orange shirt, 1 pair of orange pants, 1 cot-thing, and no idea what's going on. Well, surely a doctor would come by and bring me up to speed when I was good and ready – in the meantime, it seemed like a good idea to go back to sleep.

CHAPTER 2.1

First of all I am so sorry it took me sooooooooooooo long to write, won't happen again, I promise.

SUDDENLY!!! Bright lights filled the alley (which, by the way, was real dark until then) and I caught brief glimpses of my alleyway companions as they scattered into all sorts of nooks and crannies; leaving me standing all alone, knee deep in trash squinting into the harsh, sudden brilliance.
“Hey!” said a gruff voice “what’re you doin’ in the dumpster?”
“Who said that?” I said
“Me.”
“Me who?”
“Me Policeman. That’s who. Now what the heck are you doin’ in the dumpster?”
“Well, see officer, I… uh…” not wanting to admit that I hadn’t the foggiest notion how I ended up in the dumpster I fell back on my brilliant storytelling skills.
“I’m not in a dumpster.” Okay maybe they aren’t that brilliant. I could tell that the policeman wasn’t buying my story so I decided to run for it, I hopped out of the dumpster and sprinted away. Or I would have if I wasn’t still half-blind from staring into those headlights, what I really did was hop out of the dumpster and sprint two steps into the police officer. He apparently wasn’t amused and that’s how I wound up in jail.

sure am sick of the dumptster

I was beginning to realize that I might be in this dumpster for a long time, given how slow this novel is being writ...

Chapter Deux

Well, at least I was well received.

I considered searching out the source of the (somewhat derisive) cheers, or perhaps the source of the rather surprising bite on my toe, but I honestly didn't feel up to either enterprise. Instead, I decided to sprawl gracelessly where I fell and collect my thoughts. Presumably they were lying around there somewhere -- maybe they'd find their way back to me if I just stayed still for a while.

Before they could make it back, I felt another bite on my toe. Having learned a lesson from my earlier toe-bit experience, I calmly yelped, jumped to my feet, slammed my head into something, slipped on something gooey, spun around, and fell down. This time, though, I landed on something soft, and somewhat less smelly than my previous spot. (And, all modesty aside, this time I fell much more gracefully than before. Apparently practice does help.)

My landing spot cussed and pushed me aside. The good spots are always pushy.

CHAPTER ONE!!!

Really cheap champagne and rat poop, neither known for smelling nice, have very distinct scents that combine to form an even more distinct and quite unpleasant one. It was this uniquely unpleasant smell that crept into my nose and forced away a very nice dream about gerbil ballerinas. I lay there trying desperately to fall back to sleep before the big finale when I noticed my bed felt particularly lumpy, and wet, and icky and that the smell that had roused me was by far one of the gentler ones swirling in the immediate vicinity. I was trying to remember how long it had been since I washed my sheets when something bit me on the toe. I let out a girlish yelp, jumped to my feet, slammed my head into something, fell down, got up again, slipped on something gooey, spun around, fell four feet to the ground and was met with a sudden cavalcade of drunken cheers and clumsy applause. It was then I realized that I had just woken up in a dumpster.

The long-awaited TITLE of the novel!

Qualtaghs

or

Why does the quality of my day depend on the clerk at the 7-11?

Introduction part A

One word by itself is boring, but a bunch of words in a row... WOW!! So get ready gentle reader for a bunch, a big bunch, a really big bunch, a... um really extra big bunch of words, IN A ROW!!!!