3 AM

Chapter 1

It’s always here, in the feet reddening bath, at 3 in the morning, that I realise I am a simply inadequate human being. I scrub madly away at my body, the filth of being worthless sticking to the swirled skin at my fingertips and the cracks of my body. I watch my black hair snake along the bends of my limbs and I faintly wonder if I'll be prematurely bald before I hit 40.     

I shouldn't have a name. I especially don't have one now, dripping in a wet porcelain coffin of my own making, sitting in this tub of loathing. Wishing I was smoking a cigarette right now but knowing it would only make me more piss in the pants frightened of the universe. Cancer is always ruining everything. I mean, I smoke anyways, because I am not a man that makes any sense. I give a fuck but I also don't give enough fucks. The eloquent struggle.    

You see, when good ol' Erwin, another friend I somehow managed to get stuck with, made me feel worthless, I mean, he wasn't mean or anything, I could just tell he just doesn't give much of a damn about talking to me at the moment and that made too many seams come undone tonight.    

I like people who don't find me important, I absolutely adore them.  Someone who finally understands how completely helpless I am makes me so sickly excited. It’s like meeting the truth. My parents had one child, one socially inept sad child and they tried their very low class best to make me the worshiped fountain instead of a penny being thrown. But here I am. The useless scrap soaking in now dirty water. Two hours of a bath and a shower later, I slip a lint- balled blue towel, a shit excuse too small but at least clean towel, off the silver rack and onto my raw body.    

I was always stupidly understanding, even as a child. I could tell that the adults with their big toothy smiles were nothing but criminals and cheats, That's why their too sweet corn syrup words never tricked me. No one does. That's why I am a miserable person. Because I don't baby myself with feel good lies.    

After dealing with the unimportant matter of high school I dropped out and got my GED immediately. I didn't have time for those fucking teachers who thought calculus  was more important than a kid's mental health. I became a writer. My pen name is Humanity's Strongest and isn't that the biggest fucking joke I've ever made up. But hey, I'm famous, no one knows what a terrible waste of space I am but somehow people like my “amazing” adventure books.    

So why I am in this rat-hole apartment with a neighbor who is abominably obnoxious? Because I can't take care of myself.  I don't understand why she likes me, who would want to occupy the same space with a blue little man, typing his cheap stories too slowly and wandering over and over to the refrigerator just to return to his room empty handed. I'm just so particular about everything. I have to be in a mood. But if it absolutely must be done, it has to be in my very particular way. Oh but when it comes to getting on my hands and knees to rid every microscopic atom of fucking dust I can get that done no matter what. Hanji, a living dust mite herself, makes sure I eat and tries to get me outside as much as she can. We've known each other since high school, she was a big clueless chemistry geek with a nose she hadn't grown into yet and big glasses that looked like mad scientist goggles. People were always making fun of her and it didn't even faze her. I respected that and made sure people would piss off when they would start tormenting her. Kids were scared of me, an all black wearing loner, like they should have been. I was known for breaking bones if someone thought they had the chance of bullying me because of my short shit stature. Hanji started to hang around me, saying thank you and what not, of course I told her it was only because the snot nosed fucks were being too obnoxious but she knew better and she made us friends without my consent. Yeah and she's the one who hooked me up with an Editor, Erwin, and here I am.     

It's not that I'm in love with Erwin. Love gets thrown into the trash with all the other lies: Santa, The Easter Bunny, and Strippers with a heart of gold. Its just the maddening daydreams that plague me constantly, when he leans over to click away at my computer, and I watch those thick juicy biceps stretch, I can't help but want to sink my teeth into him with Dracula fangs and suck the sexy out of him. Lust is a powerful thing. Lust always triumphs over love. That's why divorces and cheating are as bountiful as shit is in the sewer.