Dear Coach Carter, thank you for your inspirational movie.

"You're not seriously going to wear that pink thing are you? You look like a fucking flamingo."

"I like it, it makes me feel safe. Why do your hands smell like feet?"

"What the fuck? Why do my...no they dont. And why the fuck are you smelling my hands. Get the fuck away flamingo hand smeller. You are such a child predator. Who the fuck are you anyway? Do i know you?"

What a fucking nightmare. I woke up with a hard jolt, lying face up in my bed with beads of sweat resting on my forehead. My legs were sweating and my heart was pounding like death would arrive at any second and steal my last breaths. And that would be that. Suffice it to say that there was no cloaked skeletal creature with a sickle in my room that night. Just me and my demons.

I never had dreams. None to remember anyway. Nothing that stirred me like the sight of a middle aged man in a pink poncho smelling my hands. I felt that my dream was an omen since it was such a rare occasion for such vivid images to appear in my head. I got up and washed my face. 5:02 in the AM. The water felt soothing running off my chin and back down the sink. My body had taken on a case of the cold shivers and the warm water was quite welcoming.

I sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my temples, trying to purge any and all images of the nightmare from my brain. 5:09 AM. I didn't have to be awake for another hour and a half. i discreetly smoked a cigarette out the window from inside my room. There was still no light outside save a dim shimmer of the moon. The sun would be up in about an hour and life would be filling the streets like water in a basin. I dropped the butt of my cigarette in an empty beer can and laid back down to bed. 5:17 AM.

My eyes would not draw closed. Perhaps I was too shocked by the lingering memory of the dream or perhaps my body simply did not require more recharging. I laid on my back staring into the ceiling trying to manifest some more sleep. 5:21 AM. My eyes finally began to shut and I could feel my body drifting into sleep mode. I thought of soothing meadows and birds sailing across the sky. Anything but pink flamingos or hands or feet or raincoats.

CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK. The unmistakable sound of shots fired through a handgun. At 5:30 in the morning. In fucking urban middle class white town. Where there is not so much as a car accident or petty theft. Fucking gunshots. Glorious.

I drug my ass half awake to the kitchen window and spied out. There was already a crowd of people outside hovering around a silver Volkswagen Jetta. The driver's side window was shattered and a limp body lay inside.

Sirens echoed off of the budding horizon. More people made their way out to the street to gawk at the madness. I went back into my room and smoked a cigarette on top of the covers, blowing smoke rings into the ceiling and waiting for the next link in what I imagined would be a long string of shit for the day.