• "How ya' doin', kid?" A small, paunchy man asks as I step towards the counter.

    Tired, I think I respond.

    Whether or not I answered, he rings up the items I toss on the counter. A pack of Marlboros and a silver Zippo lighter.

    "That'll be $10.99," he coughs, sticking out a pudgy hand.

    I drop a twenty. Keep the change.

    I can't help but smile to myself. I'm a minor purchasing cigarettes, and he didn't even glace at my ID. Fake, though it may be.

    I hop in an old red Chevy truck. It reeked of cigarette smoke and gasoline, was chipped, rusted a burnt orange, and the entire backseat was overloaded with CDs of every genre. Of course it was mine.

    I take a look in the side mirror and examine my reflection. It looks haggard, the once-bright eyes now dulled over with sleep deprivation. I frown, my doppelganger copying my expression. I remember when I looked my age; younger. Now I look like a mental patient struggling with sobriety.

    Shaking my head, I start the engine, listening as it sputtered to life. I pull out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

    Without looking down, I push a large button to turn on the radio. The sound of some rapper recounting his night of "slappin' a ho" against a sporadic melody fills the truck, and I wince. What garbage.

    I reach behind my seat, grabbing for a CD, any CD. My fingers wrap around a particularly scratched album, and with that same hand, I open it and place the cover on my lap. Without taking my eyes off of the road, I take out the CD and shove it into the slot, silencing the brain-rotting radio emissions.

    The radio buzzes and whirs. A moment of silence, before a quiet guitar begins to strum a too-familiar song.

    I swallow. Hard. I stare ahead at the road, not really seeing anything, not really feeling anything. Memories flow into my mind, like a blot of ink spreading on cloth, and I can't focus on anything else. Tears make everything so blurry...