National Novel Writer's Month

It was three in the morning and I was out of ninty-nine cent shampoo. I was also out of soap and newspaper for the bird cage. The apartment was the smell of wet rocks and ditches. There were brown stains on the ivory carpet. Spilled cereal, some generic Lucky Charms knock-off, had summoned a swarm of flies. A cockroach had made a home under the sink. In my dreams, that cockroach had a family and friends, perhaps a late night sitcom. Inside my mind, a cockroach was having a better life than I was. I was laying on a torn comforter with the radio next to my head. It was a black radio with a missing battery cover, the antenna was bent. I had been laying on my stomach all night. The glass sliding doors had been left open and a cold breeze was blowing inside. I crawled forward and rested myself at the threshold of the open door, the balcony was long gone. I watched a woman hang up sheets and a few shirts, they were all yellowed. I was on the seventh floor, so the view was enough to see the plastic bags that had been torn and taped as curtains, the stained clothing that hung from the the clothelines, and the shoes tied to the tree branches. I was still tired. It was time to find breakfast. I closed the slinding door and went for my cardboard boxes, they might earn me enough for a piece of a biscuit.