NaNoWriMo - Day 4, Part 1

The dingy cream-colored paint on the ceiling swam in his vision. He breathed raggedly, hands crossed on his chest. A tightness was growing in his side that threatened to spread down to his leg, so he levered himself off the floor and grabbed an aspirin before showering. The heat of the water melted the knotted muscles a little, and he felt almost human, rather than a ball of assorted aches and pains, physical and mental.

He dressed for work early, hunting through the laundry for a black shirt and finally resorting to the pile of mildly dirty clothes in a basket by the back door. In truth, he could wear whatever he wanted, but he felt that to flout the dress code he set for his workers was bad policy. Although they never seemed to follow it anyways.

It was still too early to really leave when he stepped out in the glaring sun, blinking and fumbling for his sunglasses. He recalled that they had broken last month and sat down on the front step of his wide, rambling wooden porch. The upstairs neighbors' car sat in the driveway, mud-spackling the queer shade of maroon paint, while beside it his Triumph bike gleamed like a nicked but carefully polished gem. Clean because it sat there, as useful as a sundial in a tsunami, he thought. Between the rain and his leg, he'd be lucky to use the damn thing once this summer.

His own car needed to be washed, though it didn't have the same coating of dirt as the neighbours'. Another thing he probably wouldn't get to this summer. He sighed, limped to the car and drove to work.

For once, parking was easy to find.