It was a cold black morning in the northern hemisphere on an island created by a volcano. In those days it was always cold and black in the morning and there was a man who tended to the ashes of last night’s fire. He came around before you’d wake up, your feet were exposed near him and he would cover them with a thick scratchy blanket. His mother had given him the blanket before she died. She died a horrific death.

You wouldn’t want the blanket, you’d leave notes for the man, “Please, keep your blanket for yourself.”

But the man would never listen. He didn’t want you to die, for some reason, maybe because if you did, he’d be out of a job. And his mother had died from a case of cold feet, or that’s what he’d been told. He’d taken it literally, basically because he was a little slow in the head, and that’s why the only job he could get was tending the ashes of your old fire.

You’d wake up to a roaring fire and a scratchy death blanket.

You don’t remember that you watched TV for hours every night. That you squandered all those free nights on TV and arguments. That you came up with weird plans for writing that took everything into account but actually writing shit down. That you got hot with alcoholic headaches, that you ran after busses and stayed in bed and had sex in the afternoons.

A few people in those times went willy-nilly into the night like dragon faced gargoyles with no self respect. They came back later to confirm their dental appointments. One of the guys was experiencing the sensation of chewing on nails whenever he drank fruit smoothies.

But maybe that happened to everyone eventually. Maybe that was the point of it all, to realize your capacity for savagery, and to take steps to end your life before it all got too damn depressing and you found yourself sleeping on a pile of dead cats.