He was a small dog and the fur standing up on his neck did not have the intended effect of making him look bigger. His barks were yappy and made him sound smaller than he was. His only ferociousness lie in his shiny white teeth, but this dog would never dream of biting anyone, he was too afraid of everything. The window offered the dog enough protection to act as big as he liked towards the robin that had taken up residence in the bushes outside the house though.
"Shut up, no one likes you!" yelled Nick.
This did not help the situation as the dog seemed to double the speed and ferocity of his barks and he also increased the pitch to new heights of annoyance. Finally, Nick had had enough and he pulled his jacket on and walked out the door, slamming it as he left. The door startled the robin, and once Nick was out of earshot, the dog stopped barking because his critter had flown away.
Nick was above average in height with thick brown hair and blue eyes. He liked the outdoors but never liked to spend too much time away from what he called "civilization," which was actually just a hot shower and central heating and it didn't matter where they were. Nick felt civilized even in the back woods of northern Pennsylvania where the cabin his family owned had literally just that: a hot showed and heat. The heat wasn't of the central kind, but it sufficed to keep the place warm nonetheless. He was intelligent and the kind of person that frowned on humility. He never had a problem telling someone when they were wrong and for a long time, took great pride in his ability to do just that, evolving this into a kind of game that no one else ever liked to play. More often than not, though, the folks Nick would play this game with never had any idea there was a game being played.
The leaves were falling around Nick as he walked. It was one of those picturesque fall afternoons: lazy with a chance of rain. His long legs could move him quick enough when he wanted to, but he much preferred a lazy stroll with his hands in his pockets to get around town. As he walked, he lost himself in thought. Nick found himself doing this with greater and greater frequency these days. An hour could pass and it would seem as if it were only a minute when Nick was in this contemplative state. He never dallied in his mental pursuits, they were always and only of the loftiest type. He thought much about good and evil, he thought about love and life, and he thought about the future. He would carefully plan and mastermind the most beautiful of crimes, but never carry them out. There was always some great foe that needed vanquished, if only he had more motivation.
Casually, Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarette pack. He lifted one to his lips and sat down under an old maple tree, the kind that were common around the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Silver maples, he thought to himself. The unlit cigarette hung loosely from his mouth as he fumbled in his jacket for the lighter. Too many damn pockets, thought Nick. He stopped fumbling and put his chin on his hand with his elbow resting on his knee in a reflective pose and waited a few minutes idly rolling the cigarette over his tongue and between his pursed lips before lighting up.
Nick was tired. Not the kind of tired that can be fixed with a good night's rest, but the kind that needed a year or more of sleep. The kind of tired that not even a Van Winkle nap could cure. He was tired of his situation, weary because his youth was waning and he'd nothing to show for it but a pile of debt. He hadn't been working his job for more than a year and he wanted to quit, no, he wanted to just leave. He planned on not showing up for work one day and never calling or going back. He'd leave town, leave the state or even the country and never turn back. Surely somewhere there was something that would help soothe his weariness. It was a grandiose plan, but those were the kind he was most accustomed to: grandiose and unfulfilled.
Nick laughed out loud. He did this a lot and mostly at himself, a kind of short exhaled guffaw that escaped from his nose. The current topic swirling in Nick's head was nauseating and it caused his mouth to curl down on the side, just as if he'd tasted something terrible. The thought that was leaving an awful taste in his mouth was the prospect of settling down and finally dealing with the source of all his anxiety: the pressure.
Most other times throughout his life, Nick shrugged all the pressure off his shoulders and kept going with a stubbornness that could be credited to a bull. He'd plod ahead with the course he had laid out in his mind regardless of the consequences. He often convinced himself to do things merely by repeating the mantra "Consequences be damned." He would often foolishly rush forth into the fray, into whatever got in his way.
Nick had at least a dozen applications out for new (more gainful) employment but all he ever received in response were what he called "fuck off letters". These were carefully worded rejection letters that "took too long getting around to telling me to go fuck off" and Nick hated those. A simple phone call would have put his worried mind at ease better, instead he felt like a nameless cog in a faceless machine constantly whirring and moving with no direction. Coincidentally, this was also the metaphor Nick liked to use whenever he spoke of anywhere he felt was too "corporate".
Nick felt the pressure from his family, they expected him to be successful. They expected him to be something, Nick simply wanted to exist. He wanted to succeed, but in his way. There was no corporate ladder to fame or infamy in Nick's image of his future. He would prefer to ... well, he didn't quite know what he'd prefer to do and this was part of the problem. Continue schooling as he felt he ought to? Continue trudging through the world of the working man in his current 9 to 5 with advancement opportunities quickly arising sometime in the same amount of years? Continue anything? The idea of simply walking away grew more and more appealing with each passing day of ... status quo.
Gone are the days where the boring tedium of a "day job" could be forgotten with the first few swigs of a hearty cocktail or sips of a dirty martini on a Friday afternoon. Gone are the days when he could light up a tightly packed bowl, fill his lungs and make the worries float away with the first puff of smoky deliciousness. Gone are the days, he thought.
Nick wondered which direction he ought to take. He knew a decision was necessary, and soon. It's not like there were no viable avenues for him to take the next step onto, there were plenty. None that were of any particular interest, everything seemed so terribly dull and boring. He only hoped that it would all make sense someday. That it wouldn't all be as pointless as he worried it would wind up being. That somehow, in the midst of it all and through extreme adversity, he could find some meaning in a meaningless existence. Maybe that was all the meaning there would ever need to be: that nothing meant anything. Nihilism but not even for the sake of nihilism, nothingness with no meaning or purpose, existence just because. Nick stood up under the maple tree and lit another cigarette. He paused, looked down at the flame burning between his fingers and read the label. "Kool".
