The Spirals of Oz (unillustrated ver.)

Track 1 - Every Day is Exactly the Same

Our story begins with one person. He was just another person like you or I, but by chance or by fate, this story ended up being his.

He had dark messy brown hair and blue eyes that were usually cast downward. He stood at 6'1"-- practically all of which was limbs, giving him a vaguely spider-like appearance.

He had parents who he disliked. After almost two miserable decades of administering mild neglect and excessive conflict, they finally admitted that they disliked him too.

He made it through high school with average grades, few friends, and a passion for music. And at age twenty-two where our story begins, he was in the same position as many of his peers; working a dead-end job in order to pay for his college education.

He was studying audio engineering. Shut in the cozy, soundproof room with nothing but a decent pair of headphones and a mixing board was his favorite place to be. It made him feel powerful in a quiet, solitary sort of way he'd never experienced before.

He liked it.

He was good at it, too.

But colleges with such programs and equipment were rare. They were private schools that offered very few scholarships reserved for those who looked best on paper, which decidedly excluded him. His family's money also shut him out from grants or state loans despite their wealth being entirely inaccessible to him. He'd saved some money from working part-time jobs throughout high school, but five semesters in the money had simply run out. So he turned to pizza slinging.

He worked six days a week for six hours a day selling pizzas, two liters of soda, and cheesy breadsticks. It had been two long, greasy, miserable years since he'd left school, but his savings account stood at just six dollars and seventeen cents. Every paycheck, his ability to pretend that things would change dwindled, but changing the situation in any meaningful way seemed nothing short of impossible.

{FIG. 3: MC STANDING BEHIND A PIZZA COUNTER W/ DEAD EXPRESSION}

Taking on more hours was not an option. The pizza joint carefully kept his hours below the state requirements for providing healthcare, and overtime was absolutely forbidden. Twenty-five cent raises each year were gobbled up into the void of an increasing cost of living.

Better jobs required degrees, certificates, experience, or at least a car.

He didn't have a car. He couldn't afford a car on his wage. Which meant that a second job was off the table, too. Public transit was nonexistent. He walked an hour to the pizza place each day and an hour back to his tiny apartment late each night. Any time he needed to buy groceries or do laundry he had to walk to those places too. Between walking and working, nothing was left over for his interests, his hobbies, or other people– let alone for applications, interviews, or additional employment.

Maybe his lack of energy was why his most recent girlfriend had left him. Maybe not. There were plenty of potential reasons on the table after all.

Perhaps it was the apartment that they shared on the top floor of a dilapidated house sandwiched between two condemned properties. This charming little home featured dirty carpets drenched in cigarette smoke from decades before, stinking water that was unfit to drink, and a hole in the ceiling that the landlord refused to address. The creative use of a raincoat and a bucket kept the water from spreading into the apartment, but it didn't repel the blooms of black mold that crept along the walls from all the moisture.

Maybe it was the money; gone as soon as it appeared, burning out like a matchstick. Between his portions of rent to keep the (partial) roof over their head, bills, food, and the occasional eighth of weed or twelve-pack to will himself into the next day, there was simply nothing left. He couldn't afford healthcare, let alone gifts or dates.

Yes, it could have been any of these things.

But he suspected that the truth was she just wasn't willing to drown with him.

He couldn't blame her, but he could hate her.

And he did.

Almost as much as he hated himself.

Things had steadily been getting worse for months. One day she must have just had enough of the silence and the distance. She called her daddy and the two of them packed up and drove off with all her stuff, which just so happened to include the bed. And the kitchen table. And the TV. Plus three lamps, the sideboards, the dressers. Oh, and the cookware, dishes, blankets, washcloths, and towels. She'd even taken the welcome mat.

Everything she took was hers to rightly take. She hadn't touched anything of his.

But it surprised him how much of their life turned out to be hers, and how empty the place felt without her.

Practically all that was left was his stereo and the loveseat.

The loveseat. He couldn't even look at it without thinking of her.

They had spent many happy evenings on its cracked pleather upholstery. As time marched on, romantic engagements gave way to a dull routine of evenings watching TV in a daze. Closer to the end, he slept there for a couple of weeks, curled up in the fetal position to keep his legs from hanging over the sides while she slept in the bed, the physical space between them finally mirroring the emotional chasm that had developed.

{{FIG. 4: MC LAYING ON THE LOVESEAT, WITH THE SAME DEAD EXPRESSION}}

He drank himself into a stupor and dragged the thing to the curb that very night, opting to sleep on the wooden floor instead. Wrapped up in his jacket for warmth, he stared up at the popcorn ceiling until the alcohol lulled him into a restless sleep.

He replaced the loveseat with a futon he found left beside a dumpster. Bedding was upgraded similarly; he scored a ratty crocheted blanket at a yard sale and found a flat yellowed pillow his ex had either deemed not worth stripping from him or had simply missed in the back of the bedroom closet.

The food situation wasn't much better. Since she'd never been on the lease, rent became entirely his responsibility, evaporating the grocery budget overnight. Now his diet consisted of pizza slices left over from the buffet and 79-cent packages of Maruchan Ramen Noodle Soup (Beef Flavor). Both became entirely unpalatable in a matter of days. If he lacked a way to get fucked up enough to stomach either option, he simply didn't eat.

This was his life. Waking up late, going to work at a job he detested to earn enough money to pay for rent and not much else. Returning to college had become a distant dream. Without friends, family, or lovers, he was entirely alone, left watching his ambition drown in the chilly waters of reality.

But his situation wasn't unique. He was experiencing the same feelings that millions of other people experience every day. His story is so common, his suffering so familiar.

And he knew it.

He often felt sharp stabs of guilt for ever having imagined something more for himself. For being so arrogant as to think he was special enough or driven enough or capable enough to ever transcend being anything other than just another person with a miserable, shitty little life.

To help ease the pain, he had stopped thinking of himself as a person even. As far as he was concerned, he had become nothing more than a machine–a blob of flesh programmed to move through routines and coroutines in perpetuity.

As a machine, he felt he hardly warranted a name.

He had one, of course.

His name was Samson, chosen by his mother and father, but everyone besides his parents knew him as Sam.

Our story begins one evening, with Sam living through what he considered to be just another night after work. Three beers deep and post-piss, he happened to look up at himself in the mirror above the sink while washing his hands.

{{FIG. 5: MC'S REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR, STILL BEARING THE SAME DEAD EXPRESSION}}

He noticed something.

It wasn't the dark circles under his sunken-in eyes. It wasn't how long and unkempt his hair had gotten from months of not bothering to cut or comb it. In fact, it wasn't anything about his face at all. It was a small crack in the bottom left corner of the glass. He was pretty sure it hadn't been there before. And as he stood there, examining it, it began to spread.

{{FIG. 6: A CRACK IN THE CORNER OF THE MIRROR}}