Big day ahead (part one)

I woke up on the sofa that I had been calling home for the past two months, feeling pretty rough. I'd been sofa-surfing for that long since being evicted from my previous flat with zero notice, as a result of multiple complaints from other residents of the building. They'd quite reasonably become fed up with the constant noise and parties, and things had come to a head.

I'd been caning whatever drugs I could find for a long time, but had a real problem with crack, using until I ran out of money, then thieving and defrauding others to get more. I'd also got a heroin habit, although it was pretty minimal (but growing rapidly).

This time, when I woke up, I had to face my boss. I'd not been in the office for three weeks or so, the stories about me were legion, and lurid, and I'd been called in for a last minute meeting as to my future. I was their top performer, but this was counterbalanced by my unreliability and ever more ludicrous excuses as to why I was absent (when I bothered to make one up).

It took me a while to get out of my duvet; it was late September, and the flat I was in was on the top floor of a block; a sauna in summertime but, due to the shape of the complex acting as a wind tunnel, a freezer in autumn and winter, my breath clouding in front of me and leading me through the flat.

I went to the bathroom and splashed my face with water, cold, of course. I had no money, and no power. Light was by candles, warm washes and baths were a thing of the past, and life was pretty much not worth living. To add to everything, not only was I trying to shake off that washed out, thick headed, heavy feeling of a crack comedown combined with a hangover, not only was I beginning to rattle, but I had to meet my boss, and as if that wasn't enough, I had to answer my bail, to be charged with fraud.

I leant into the sink, washed with watered down shower gel, improvised shaving foam and, as I scraped several weeks beard from my face with the bluntest of razors, I looked to the day ahead with little enthusiasm.