She had never even gotten around to picking up the laundry.  But in the grand scheme of things all of those mismatched socks and stained t-shirts were not that important.  Never mind the fact that work was tomorrow.  SOme things pop up.  Pop up, start you in the face and remind you that you had been intending to catch the next bus back to the home state.  Except she had never expected it, this thing, to have been a newly born ghost.

See the day had begun as normal as it ususally does.  Wake up to blaring alarm, followed by a scratchy rendition of a U2 hit played on a seriously-badly-coming in radio station.  Then plastic coffee steaming out of a ruined or nearly ruined paper cup.  Oatmeal, instant gratification breakfast topped with that almost expensive brown sugar, bought in bulk.  And  the  regular phone calls from that company bugging her about a late payment on one of those credit cards that her credit rating had hanging over her head.

Even the walk down to the laundramat was uneventful, the usual druggie-morons on the same  street corners; "Hey babe you need an upper?"  These morons would be picked up later as they always are, and replaced with reinforcements of a slightly younger generation with newer lines but the same worn out faces.

Jeff, the laundry guy takes the laundry asks if she wants it by 1:30... and then goes back to his cross word that he has never in his life ever finished.  Sitting next to him is the well pawed through 1988 webster's dictionary, and the cold and  musty smelling cup of-god-knows-what... probably that think viscous of an excuse coffee they serve there.

Walk back home and it starts to rain.  Well as much as it ever does this time of year.  More like a  sense of mush sliding down invisible strings and causing torrents of sggravation to not slip accidentally into traffic.  Almost bumps into the homeless dude on the corner of Winters and Buxley. "Have you got 67 cents I could have?"

"Nope."  Keep walking.  Why 67 cents?  Must be a psychological thing.

The neighbors cat is sitting on the front steps again.  Fat fuck, it is.  Garfield has nothing on Mr. Whiskers.  She tries to nudge the creature out of the path to her door.  It doesn't budge.  Thing must weigh 30 lbs at least. tries to push it again.  Looks carefully at the  sleeping animal, and then realizes that it's eyes are open, not blinking.  And it isnt breathing neither.  Crap!  What a place for this dumb fucking cat to die.  SHe thinks about  awakening the neighbors and  having them  come  take the cat corpse off her front step.  But thinks better of it all... and grabs the shovel that is next to the door.  Carefully leverages the carcass and shoves it into the snow bank.

"Fwomp."

 Brushes the rest of the snow from around the door and buries the cat in it's ownd personal igloo.

Key in lock.

Inside to very messy apartment.  The place had never been clean.  Living there now  what had it been at least 18 months.  Had never unpacked.  What would be the point.  Gonna have to move againa t some point.  Can't stay in one town for too fucking long.  At least she couldn't.  Trouble would always come and find her.  Regardless of whether or not it was small town Virginia.  Or New York fuckin' city.  Never mind all those small town between New Mexico and Ohio. EH.  Fuckit.

She brushes the  pile of bills off the kitchen table(if you can call it a table, more like a broken door on one  horse and a broken horse- so long as you didn't nudge it with more force than a light patting, you had no worries of it deciding to tip into the broken stove top).  Wipes them all up and tosses them into the  trash.  There was no way she was paying all those idiots.

Turn around and walk into the bathroom.  Toilet is broken. and is leaken  all over the floor.  It was one of those toilets that you really could not sit on... without it going throught the floor and  with you findin yourself sitting very uncomfortably in the basement... amidst a mess of  piping and all the crap-literally- that had been in those pipes.  The shower is stained a delightful pink color.  Something out of a Barbie Doll cooloring book.  Naturally bacteria.  Why clean?  WHat was the point.

Use the facilities-carefully- as usual.  Turn and look into the mirror.  Al though why she wouldn't have the faintest idea for.  The thing was a s cracked up as a politician's smile of goodwill.....

....(to be continued.)