Randy kicked the entry door to his apartment closed behind him. Throwing his light jacket on the countertop of his small kitchen while continuing his tired walk into his dimly illuminated living room. Randy allowed the full weight of his body to fall into the couch below him causing the already worn springs to squeak sharply in response. The male squirrel stretched out, and closed his eyes, to evade the sight of the ever-darkening room caused by the now setting sun.
Traffic had been the worst he'd ever seen. It was now just past 7:00 o'clock meaning that he had been stuck behind the wheel of his truck for just over two hours. He had become accustomed to the terrible gridlock of driving, since moving to Chicago 8 years ago, but today he was shocked to see his commute time more than double. By the time he finally made it inside his drab living quarters he was beyond frustrated, and was a little more than tempted to help himself to his roommate's liquor cabinet.
Randy opened his eyes as he started to stand, only to notice the red light of the answering machine blinking wildly at him from the lone end just to the left of him. Randy let himself fall back onto the couch before reluctantly hitting the play button. With his luck Tyler, his feline roommate, was in need of a ride somewhere. However, he swore to himself as the machine's tape rewound, that there was no way in hell he was going back out into that crazy mess the city had become for the remainder of the day.
"Hey Randy." He let out a sigh of relief at hearing his sisters recorded voice coming from the message. Randy even found a small smile cross his lips as she continued to speak. "Sorry but I'm gonna have to cancel our dinner plans fer tomorrow. Shadows all riled up about something, and wants us to head to the Cabin tonight. Let's try fer dinner next weekend. Ok?" The message stopped and the machine started to rewind again.
By the end of the message Randy's smile had faded as his early frustration was replaced with disappointment. Spending time with his sister and her family had become the highlight of his life the past few years. Even more so after breaking up with his last girlfriend, Mei, a year back. He wasn't completely shocked at her change of plans as Sandy's husband, Shadow, never really seemed to care for him. It almost seemed to Randy that at times Shadow would go out of his way to keep him and his twin sister from seeing one another. It was just one of many unfortune parts of Randy's disconcerting life.
At 33 years old, pushing 34, Randy had always thought he should have at least achieved something in life besides his on again, off again, sobriety. However, it seemed the only time he had recently found real happiness, a real purpose, was as he leech off his sister's successfully family life. Randy stood up from the couch and wobbled a bit as fatigue overwhelmed his senses. After a moment he slowly made his way to his bedroom down the hallway to the left. He decided he'd had more than his fill of this irritating day, and would fast forward to tomorrow. After all there was no way it could be any worse the bleakness, he endured from the current day.
Randy awoke a bit dazed to the sound of a car alarm blaring through his closed window. Even on the 4th story of the building the racket from the street seemed to never have a problem making it into his room. For a moment he wasn't sure he had gotten much sleep at all as the sun was barely shining through his closed curtain, just as it had been when he originally passed out. Randy shifted in bed, causing him to partially kick his dark green comforter onto the floor, as he tried to focus his eyes on the alarm clock next to his bed. When his eyes finally focused, he was met with 4 blinking red zeros. "Great." He thought to himself. "Power must have crapped out last night too."
Pushing himself out of bed, in an attempt to escape the annoying alarm from the street, he made hast into the living area of the apartment. Randy couldn't help but hope his roommate had left some uneaten scraps, from his dinner, lying around. As a poorly fed bachelor he found he wasn't much of a picky eater in the morning, probably due to his excessive early day laziness, or his overall inability to cook very well.
Randy clumsily looked around the living area, and kitchen, but saw nothing edible in sight. "Tyler?" Randy shouted only to hear nothing in response. "Guess, he got lucky last night." Randy mumbled as he opened the fridge. After chugging down half of the remaining carton of milk Randy set it back in the door of the fridge, and made his way to open the two small windows occupying the cramped living room.
Randy looked down at the street a bit confused, as the car alarm that had woken him up early still dully made its way through his ears. The street was still flooded with cars, but they seemed to be unmanned and just sitting there. Randy couldn't really blame the drivers for getting restless and abandoning the vehicles for the night with how bad traffic had been the night before, but he was still in awe that at seeing it. It would likely take the rest of the day for that mess to get taken care of.
"So much for grocery shopping today!" He smirked while jumping onto the rickety tan couch. Yawning while he grabbed the TV remote, Randy pressed the power button as he finished stretching out his legs to the other end of the sofa.
The dull colored bars that flickered from the TV caused Randy to throw his feet on the ground in front of him as he flinched from the high-pitched tone that shrieked out of the 20 inch CRT television speaker. The words Emergency Broadcast System scrolled across his screen as he desperately changed channels only to be confronted by the same image. Randy stood up and peered the window out at the motionless traffic packed street below him, and then turned his focus back to the TV screen.
"What the Hell?" He quested to himself.