5 am brought with it the sun, as Harry sat dressed on his desk looking out from his window. He hadn't slept last night, its like sleep had decided to ditch him completely. No matter what he did he would end up the same way. Awake.

He climbed down from his desk, carful not to make a sound, he crept from his room, down the stairs and into the kitchen. He quickly made himself some toast that he stuffed into his mouth as he left the house. It was still mostly dark. The sky was painted pale pink to the east and stars were still visible to the west. Beautiful. "One of the few beautiful things left." Harry thought to himself not really sure as to what he meant by it. He shook his head, wondering dully if he was going crazy. He lit a cigarette as he made his way to the bus stop he was at the previous afternoon. And waited for the bus to do its first rounds. He sat down on the bench, mind blissfully blank in the cool morning. Voices caught his attention up the street a ways. He turned and saw a group of four boys around Harry's age by the looks of it, coming up the sidewalk. Harry turned back to the nothing his was staring at before. Soon the boys drew nearly level with Harry who could tell they were high. One staggered up to Harry and the others followed.

"Hey, wanna hit?" the boy said holding a couple of pills out to Harry who just raised his eye brow.

"How much?" Harry wasn't a stranger to the drug scene but he wasn't a hardcore addict or anything.

"Ten. Apiece."

A rip off, but oh well. Harry dished the cash from his pocket and handed it over taking the pills from his pocket. "Thanks." Harry recognized them for downers. Good. They'd help him sleep tonight. He then ignored the boy and stood, stomping out his cigaret as the bus came around the corner. Again Harry went to the back of the empty bus, taking a seat against the window. He watched as the boys started laughing for no apparent reason.

"Idiots." Harry muttered as the bus pulled away form the curb. He got off at the place where he'd seen the woman and her baby yesterday and headed back to the pizza place where he would order a breakfast of undercooked, extremely greasy pizza and a coke, then he would wait a while for the Underground, the body art shop he works at, to open, emitting himself to four hours of poking holes threw people.

"Are people normally this negative?" he thought as he watch the bus dive away up the street. "I doubt it."

The pizza place was just opening as he got there. So he walked in, ordered but was told that he would have to wait a while for them to cook up a few pizzas before the breakfast crowd came, so Harry sat down at the same table he had occupied the day before and waited.

"A pizza place has a breakfast crowd? What ever happened to McDonald's and their prized rat burgers?" Soon Harry decided to just stop thinking all together, as all it was, was irrelevant. That's what you get for not sleeping.

Twenty dull minutes later his pizza was sent out to him. He took it and ate it trying to ignore the fact that it tasted like bread with nasty cheese on it. It was almost void of sauce and some how managed to have grease dripping in tiny pools around his paper plate. Finishing, he found that he was curious as to what kind of dorks came here for breakfast. So, just as promised, people were driving up and parking all up and down the street or walking, but all soon created a long line at the cash-register reaching all the way to the door.

Harry examined each in turn through the glass, before silently concluding that he needed a life. Harry saw the store manager staring at him through the window. To show that he'd bought something Harry sipped at his coke and holding it up as if to salute the manager, in return he just got a shake of the head as Mr. Manager went back to feeding his loser customers. It was just sad that Harry considered himself to be one of those losers.

Nine a.m crept up slowly for Harry but when he finally noticed the time he jumped up and sprinted up the street and down two blocks, arriving at the Underground five minutes late. He walked up to the front counter, hopped it and plugged his name into the computer. Harry's manager insisted that be done when they started there shift and ended it.

A tall, fat, bolding man walked out from the back room, hands on his hips.

"Your late." he stated. "Second time since you started here!" His jowls flapped as he talked, the man always reminded Harry of an oversized bulldog.

"I was finishing the new window displays you wanted sir." Harry said taking them from his pocket and handing them over. Anthony, who's last name was unknown, (Harry suspected his last name was something dumb so naturally Harry had been trying to figure out what it was) looked over the drawings Harry had done that night.

"These will be fine. There's a bloke coming in, in a half an hour who wants his entire back done." Anthony said while posting the drawings in the front window.

"You gotta be kidding! It wont be till past five when I finish that! I have a life you know!" A lie. But it was nice to say it anyway. And as to Harry talking back to his boss, Antony would let Harry get away with murder as long as Harry kept working for him. Harry's the best thing that ever happened to the this place. At least it's good to be wanted.

"Yeah so? I told the guy that you'd do it, he specifically asked for you. Your getting popular you know, and this guy's paying big bucks to get his back done so get your SHIT TOGETHER!"

"OK!"

Several hours later, the said guy left with his girlfriend's name tattooed in large letters across his back with vines and skulls and other crap put forever on his back. Harry couldn't wait for him to breakup with his girl and have him come in and ask for it to be removed only to have Harry tell him it can't be done.

-x-x-

Another several hours later, three in the morning to be exact, Harry was laying on his back in his bed perfectly stoned having popped the pills he'd gotten earlier. He still couldn't sleep, but when he rose in the morning he wont be able to remember if he did or didn't so it didn't really matter. Nothing matters when you stoned.

Chapter 2 is now fixed. Yay...

Nikki