It was a dark and stormy night.
Or, at least, that’s what the news report had said. Jeffrey couldn’t hear any rain outside, so the weatherman was probably wrong. Motherfucker. He was always lying. To Jeffrey, to everyone.
In fact, it wasn’t even really nighttime. The sun was just now dipping below the clouds. It was more like twilight. But Jeffrey had all the shades drawn, aluminum foil taped to the corners of his windows and large black curtains that wrapped around the blinds. His apartment was entirely dark. He lived up on the thirteenth floor, but you couldn’t tell.
It was like a dungeon.
It was furnished about as extravagantly as well. A single folding chair sat in front of an old television set. This was the kind from before high-def had become all the rage. Jeffrey missed those days. He didn’t know what the fuck a pixel was or how many he was looking at, and he didn’t care.
He also didn’t care for digital cable, so he had had one of those converter boxes installed after the switch a few years back, and the antenna was tucked neatly behind one of his curtains, right up against the window, where it could receive enough signal to at least get the local news.
So that’s what he watched. Every evening. The local news.
He peeled the wet plastic sheet off the top of his microwavable dinner. This was all Jeffrey ate. Behind the chair, which was in front of the TV, in his studio apartment, was a small kitchen counter with a window, which wrapped around in an L-shape and had a single microwave oven sitting next to his convection oven, which he never used. At the end of the counter was his refrigerator, which held only microwavable dinners in the freezer.
Jeffrey didn’t go grocery shopping often.
“And so, authorities spent nearly three hours attempting to remove the woman from her apartment, where she was promptly taken to the hospital and subsequently died when she stroked on the operating table.” The newswoman straightened a pile of paper on her desk, and then smiled at the camera.
Her co-anchor, a man named Dan, “Dapper” Dan on Channel Five!, looked over at her. “Wow, what a large woman,” he quipped, attempting to fill the dead air between stories. Jeffrey rolled his eyes.
“Yes, she is rather rotund,” Diana replied, wearing a large plastic smile.
Jeffrey huffed and spooned a large helping of watery mashed potatoes on to his spoon and shoveled them into his mouth. He swallowed loudly. This was pathetic. He couldn’t believe the shit they put on the news nowadays. He grabbed the remote sitting on the arm of his chair and adjusted the tray sitting in front of him, then pressed the CHANNEL UP button with one of his sausage-like fingers.
The TV landed on some reality show where peopled are candidly filmed ordering fast food in a popular restaurant, and when their meal is ready the cashier, a celebrity in disguise, throws the food in the patron’s face and laughs hysterically as the cameras capture their shocked reactions. Jeffrey didn’t much care for this show.
It seemed like a waste of good food.
He flipped the channel again.
Entertainment news now. Jeffrey sighed again, and grabbed the over-nuked brownie from the plastic tray and popped it in his mouth whole, chewing with his mouth open and working the rubbery chocolate into a malleable, swallowable material.
This was garbage. Nothing but attractive, overpaid people telling you about more attractive, overpaid people, and how much you needed to be more like them. Jeffrey hated celebrities.
They fucking disgusted him.
“Tupac sightings in Chile today, and then later see what Tom Cruise said when our cameras caught up with him! But first!” And then there was some video of a paparazzo running up to some other celebrity in the airport. They started to say something. “Go fuck yourself,” was the quick response.
Jeffrey nearly choked on his brownie. This shit counts as news, now? Dear Lord, he thought. Save us.
Jeffrey didn’t have a girlfriend. The main reason why is that the last girl he was with kept telling him to be quiet when the entertainment news was on.
