Chapter 1 - Coffee Movement

Five minutes before the alarm went off, Jack woke up. A strange dream indeed. But Jack could only remember pieces of the dream and even those glimpses into his subconsious were fleeting. He remembered being in two different homes at the same time. Someone walking upstairs with a prostitute while her pimp waited for his chance to rob the house. He remembered being yelled at for putting chlorinating tabs in a lead acid battery case. Not easy, but in the dreamworld it made sense. In order to correct his mistake, he abandoned the foaming mess on the side of the highway. He saw people he knew doing things that they probably wouldn’t normally do. And soon he was left with no memory of the dream but the feeling of utter chaos.

Jack was puzzled and in dire need of a cup of hot coffee when Sugarloaf’s song “Green-Eyed Lady” started blaring from his clock radio. Perhaps it was the twelve-pack of beer or mountain of pizza and wings he had the night before, but in addition to the hot cup of coffee, Jack needed to have a crap. He hauled himself off the floor of his apartment which is where he spent most of his sleeping time these days. The bed was usually too far away at the time that he felt like sleeping anyway. The floor had an assortment of makeshift bedding available for him to nest. But when you’re a budding alcoholic, anything horizontal makes a good bed.

Coffee can take a variety of forms, but the best is when it is freshly made for you at the exact moment that you want it. Jack had no such luxury. His kitchen was a complete disaster from last night’s binge episode. The empty pizza box was straddling the empty beer box which had its side torn off leaving a gaping hole to its interior. A pool of grease had formed under one corner of the pizza box. Jack thought that if the pizza box could have absorbed that much grease, how much had he consumed? There were various plates and cups and pots and pans occupying every available section of counter space, but last week’s brew of coffee was safely contained in its protective domain. It was actually only three or four days old, but a couple of minutes of microwave radiation would take care of any potential problems. If of course the white fuzzy floaters had started to appear, Jack would have brewed another pot. But on this particular morning Jack needed caffeine as quickly as possible. The fog on his brain would seem less dense and his bowels needed priming.