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his own thoughts by the fact that everything he did was to make his life better. “After all, isn’t that what god wants for me?” he would whisper to himself while zoning out in the middle of mass. ‘Had not the wars with the Lamanites ended in exhaustive bloodshed?’ he thought to himself whenever he was there. He thought about repenting for his sins every time he sat on the baby blue suede seats and listened to the same priest every Sunday, the same one who keeps showing up in his dreams. He knew his dreams were trying to tell him something, but whatever it was, it went against his logical, conscious mind, as if he had some sort of doubts tucked in the deep recesses of his brain where the skull meets the vertebrae. In an instant, the revisiting guest of burden and fear pressed his mind in a surging flair of anxiety, and he gripped the sides of his chair as tight as he could, stood up as if he had been on the edge of his seat, and threw the chair as far as he could into the middle of the hallway all while looking straight into the priest’s eyes in the middle of mass. Without a word, he eyeballed everyone in the room, one by one; the priest ceased his sermon immediately and doubled back in wide-eyed disbelief at the oblivious hatred of the odd man in front of him. Stan then eyed the door as he made a stiff stroll across the linoleum floor. As he strolled, he thought about how everyone had always treated him in a condescending way, as if he hadn’t been programmed to feel, in the way that Stan would put it, “weak and remorseful.” He thought about how no one wanted to sit by him or get to know him because he was a “freeloader.” He was halfway down the hallway before his face scrunched into a ball, and the fire within him catalyzed his stroll to a quick sprint out of the french doors, nearly breaking them off the hinges. That was the last time he had went to church. The nonsense was over now.
    His life was better now he thought, as long as Tammy didn’t find out about Monica. He went over to her house often while Tammy was away visiting her mother on the weekends. Tammy was going to medical school to become a brain surgeon. She was very gifted in her craft, and was interning for a small private company she had connected with in college. She had sewn up Stan’s cuts in the past, even saved his best friend’s life by assisting in the operation of removing a tumor in his brain. She was undoubtedly a very talented women, twenty-five years old with a bright future ahead of her Stan knew. For a great women such as this, however, there was a catch. She was jealous. Not only scorching with jealousy any time she saw him talking to another female in public, but whenever she saw him high. She was fascinated with him, and was devastated that she couldn’t be with him all the time. Even when he was tripping. She even told him that she dreaded she couldn’t be with him when away at school and visiting her mother who was sick in the hospital a couple times a month. Lucky for Stan, being unemployed and having a rich girlfriend who was enveloped in medical school gave him all the time in the world to find new hobbies. The hardships of his life were taken care of after he dropped out of college to be a stay at home boyfriend. Stan was only twenty-one, and his life seemed as complete as it could be for the first time ever. His life had seemed almost too good to be true.
    Stan woke up in the morning with a migraine. He took some advil to help with the pain, but couldn’t help but notice that his girlfriend wasn’t in the bed. She usually always is there, sleeping in with him until nine o’clock. He got up, brushed his teeth, slipped his socks on, and went to the kitchen where he poured himself some cereal. He looked on his phone for a half-hour before he cooked himself some eggs. He turned on the television and watched the weather report for the weekly cast. “For being so young,” Stan said to himself, “I live like an