Capter 6

Oliver Files finally woke up from the new year's eve party. He could barely remember anything from the last few weeks. "Have I fallen asleep for all of January?" Oliver thinks to himself. He looks around his room. There are school books and papers on the tables and floor. He looks at a paper he has written and does not recognize it. Somehow, in the mix, Oliver Files had gotten back to school and started class while in a mindless daze. He had written papers while sleeping. Oliver read the papers he had written while he sipped an RC cola. He didn't like them. They were boring. Oliver turnede on the tv. He tried to remember his last few days home, but he could not. "I will talk to some people on the computer or something." He thought. He crunched the can and threw it in the garbage. He walked out onto the porch and looked around. He wondered if he had been dead, a zombie, doing daily tasks. He imagined himself eating his teacher's brains. He imagined himself eating some customer's brains at the gas station. He wondered if he still had his job. Nothing is too certain right now. Oliver doesn't even know what got him here. He walks back into the house and walks through the hall, past the bathroom, into his room. He turns to the dresser and opens it. He tosses his clothes on the floor of his clean room. A Jimmy Ray t-shirt flies from Oliver's hand, it hangs on the bedpost a second, then falls onto the carpet. Oliver finds the box of casette tapes. He takes it over to his bed. He puts a tape in the tape player. It starts with the sounds of ten pin in the mountains and low voices laughing, there is a quiet snoring along with some harp music in the background. The first voice on the tape speaks, "Twenty years." Oliver looks at the cieling and listens to the tape trying to remember the past few weeks.