The Incredible Greg

At first there was nothing... then there was the big bang; trillions upon trillions of particles of matter began expanding at the speed of light; the heat and the energy resulting from the big bang propelling them further and further in all directions.

Billions of years passed, and the basic forces of the universe began to take shape; the gravitational pull of objects pulled other objects into their orbits to form the most primitive galaxies; disorderly clouds of chaotic entropy that would come together to form the first stars and solar systems, orbiting the infant galaxies' cores.

Yet the universe was not done, for millions of years later, the dust clouds orbiting the stars would begin to form more compact and uniform spherical shapes; namely planets. One such story is that of our very own solar system; a small grouping of planets orbiting a medium star on the fringes of a galaxy playfully named "The Milky Way".

Of all the planets in the known universe, the conditions to sustain intelligent life has only existed on one planet that we know of- an unassuming blue orb of water and dirt, suitably named "Earth". Through a 4.5 billion year journey of trial and error, Earth has sustained the birth, evolution and eventual extinction of countless numbers of species, each more fantastic and unbelievable than the last, from the most primitive single-cell organisms to huge, lumbering giants such as the Brachiosaurus.

Then the statistically improbable happened... for amongst all of these species, one race of glorified apes with opposable thumbs rose to the top of the food chain not through the traditional way of the tooth and claw, but through the size of their cerebral cortices...

That such fragile beings would dominate and survive where immensely powerful creatures such as the Megalodon have failed is the ultimate underdog success story; eternal proof that David will always beat Goliath; and that human beings are the most ruthless killing machines in this planet's history, who have somehow managed to tame Earth while simultaneously making T-Rex's closest living relative into bargain bucket meals at KFC; the closest evolutionary equivalent to tea-bagging.

Alan pondered the wisdom of mother nature, however, as he considered the most convincing anti-evolution argument yet, in the form of Greg the bouncer -or as he fondly nicknamed himself, "Crusher"; he was to a normal human being what an 18-wheeler is to a Mini Cooper, but his mental prowess was on par with an intelligent German Shepherd; and his heart-warming frown concentrated his facial features into a yogurt-lid-sized area in the center of his face. His forehead was a solid slab of bone, compacted to a near-diamond hardness -through years of daily headbutting contests with his radiator, Alan imagined- and his shaved dome shone dully with the light reflected from the cheap neon light bulb that hung aimlessly mere centimeters above his towering frame.

"I SAID, I SAID, ARE YOU ON THE VIP LIST?" Greg bellowed.

Greg always bellowed... though chronic tinnitus from the club's booming speakers was likely just as much to blame for that particular quirk as Greg's limited cranial capacity.

Alan mentally considered his long list of Greg-defying options, born of years of defying Greg; theirs was a small town, and he'd been lucky enough to have gone to school with him and had the chance to watch the daisy-crushing, cat-strangling, groin-kicking, adult-male-sized toddler grow into the fully-grown behemoth standing in front of him. He decided to go for a timeless classic; Alan had long since learned that anything short of a tactical nuclear strike on Greg's face wouldn't even register with him... so picking his pocket was embarrassingly easy, especially since he always put his wallet in the same unzipped leather jacket pocket.

With arrogance born of years of practice picking Greg's pocket to get back his stolen lunch money, Alan's hand deftly darted towards the same pocket, intending to use Greg's own ID card to get into the club. Yes, he'd tried it at least five times before, and yes; it always worked.

This time it didn't- Greg's jacket pocket was zipped... and what's worse, Greg's eyes had followed Alan's arm movement, and his facial features were beginning to scatter away from their traditional yogurt-lid formation in what Alan assumed was a triumphant look of sheer joy at finally having outsmarted an adult human being. As was usually the case with Greg, however, his body tended to respond faster than his brain, likely due to impatient frustration. Any minute now, the single solitary light bulb in Greg's brain would blink on. Alan waited patiently; only a monster would interrupt such a rare occurrence... but he started counting; usually it happened around the six second mark. It must have been a particularly clever deduction by Greg's standards, however, because the first signs of anger started showing somewhere around the 14th second... but it was difficult to be sure, as Alan's mind wandered for quite a while somewhere in the middle.

"I KNEW IT! YOU LITTLE RUNT WHO STEAL GREG WALLET!" Greg's grammar and sentence structure had never been his strong points.

Alan considered his options; physical confrontation was out of the question, he might as well take on a fully grown bull African elephant in mating season with his bare hands. Reasoning with him was not an option either; Greg took "shoot first, ask questions later" quite literally, and shooting people was one of the few things he both thoroughly enjoyed and was really good at... and if he really had to ask questions, he much preferred a dead audience. The dead almost never outsmarted him.

Almost.

Distraction was therefore his only alternative. He would have to escape, regroup, and come back a few days later... Greg's long-term memory at any given point in time stretched only as far as the previous weekend... you do what you can with the limited storage capacity you have.

Only a man such as Greg would still be fooled at age 28 by the "what's that behind you!" school of diversion, but there was no time -or reason- for Alan to come up with anything more creative.

He was just about to utter the words when something happened.

Something unusual.

The "Hardest" Town To Live In

"Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock"; went the clock he hung above his bed.

"Drip... Drip... Drip... Drip"; went the steady trickle of water droplets from the leaky faucet in his bathroom.

"Howl... howl, howl, hoooowwwwwwwwwwllllll!" went the neighbor's dog.

"BzzzzzZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZ"; went the mosquito as it flew tantalizingly close to his ear, then away, then back again just when he thought it would leave him be.

"Meeeoowwwwwwwwwwwwww <screech> FCHHHHHHHH"; went the cats, right on cue.

"Squeak... squeak... squeak squeak squeak squeak SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK"; went his upstairs neighbors' bed... accompanied by faint moaning, which somehow simultaneously aroused and repulsed him.

"Beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep"; went the cars on the nearby main street, whose easy accessibility had been the main reason he'd chosen that God forsaken apartment in the first place.

"SNOOOOORRREEEEEEE"; went his roommate, impressively managing to make himself heard through two closed doors and the white noise coming from his broken TV set -which his roommate insisted he couldn't sleep without turning on at full volume.

And that was not all; for the entropy of the cacophony was echoed -if you'll pardon the pun- in the arrhythmic flashing of the faulty street lamp right outside his third floor window, and artfully imbued with the red hue of tens of tail lights which his ancient, tattered shutters couldn't quite block.

The potent mix of unwanted stimuli was enough to drive any sane person completely mad... and his relationship with sanity was already severely strained, at best; if sanity incarnate had been one of his neighbors, they would have been slipping passive aggressive notes under each others' doors and stealing each others' newspapers.

For the thirty seventh time in so many days, he cursed his inaction and vowed to do something about his nighttime pet peeves... and for the thirty seventh time in so many days, he mentally rolled his eyes at the notion that he would actually be proactive and do anything about them.

Some of them were perfectly within his control; he could take down the clock and smash it to tiny little pieces with the hammer he bought when he'd moved in; his mind still alight with noble ambitions of independence and DIY manly handiwork... but which hadn't been removed from his toolbox since he put it there, for fear of his unpredictability and anger management issues... and for good reason, now that he thought about it.

He could ask his landlady to replace the rubber seal on his faucet or change the whole faucet... or he could even fix it himself and be done with it, but both options would entail speaking to his sexually starved cougar of a landlady if he didn't want to lose his security deposit... and he didn't particularly relish that conversation, especially considering how she reveled in shamelessly and inappropriately flirting with him and watching him squirm under her piercing gaze as he attempted to formulate the least offensive "no thank you"s he could so she wouldn't kick him out of the apartment. Besides, spending his own meager earnings on repairs to an apartment he didn't own rubbed him up the wrong way... it was like changing the engine oil on a rented car.

His other problems required even more refined diplomacy, however. He'd never been the most sociable of people, but his limited earnings restricted his housing options severely; it was a choice between legally sharing a suspiciously affordable, spacious and conveniently located apartment with one annoying roommate; and illegally sharing a remote, tiny studio apartment with a very nice Bengali family but which also would have forced him into a daily three hour-long commute to work as well as frequent unavoidable awkwardness and averted eyes as Mr. and Mrs. Shah attempted to raise the family count from four to five.

He turned over in bed and lay on his back, lost in thought; come to think of it, most of his issues had to do with his hatred of dealing with other people; okay, so maybe he couldn't do much about the mosquitoes, the lonely dog, the street lights and noise, the horny cats or the horny landlady (well, technically he could do something about the latter, but of course she was as attractive to him as a week-old tuna sandwich left in the sun), but he could at least have a word with his roommate and the upstairs neighbor.

"So why doesn't he?" You're probably asking. Why would a grown man be so passive about everything wrong with his life when he could make a stand and end his problems?

Because after living there for more than a year, the fight was completely sapped out of him and he'd long since learned that there was no use. It was like trying to kill a hydra; fix one problem, and three others would immediately sprout in its place, some of them orders of magnitude worse than the original problem he'd been trying to fix. It took him a few furious weeks and several anger management courses to accept that maybe it was best not to disturb the karmic balance of dickery and just learn to live with his problems... it was much easier than having to face an entirely new set every week.

You see, nobody had warned him when he'd moved to that town that everyone -and everything- were dicks. At any given point in time, there was a 100% chance that someone, or something, was being a dick to someone -or something. You would be perfectly justified in letting out an incredulous snort at this point, o reader... for the odds that an entire town would only be populated by dicks are infinitesimally, almost anomalously low. You'd probably even be prepared to wager some of your own hard-earned savings to back that up... but by Aragorn's chin cleft, you'd lose all of it.

It wasn't named "Dickville Town" for nothing.