It was a rat's nest.

Not a literal one, but that is what her hair seemed to resemble every
morning when she got up. It was going to take at least an hour to get it under control and she
was sick and tired of it. She peered into the mirror and wondered if it was worth it. It wasn't.
She opened the drawer and picked up the hair clippers.

The towels had been hanging from the rod for years. They were stained and worn, and quite
frankly, just plain ugly. Debra didn't want to touch them but she really didn't have a choice. It
was important for her to see what was living within them.

Twenty seconds were all that was left and Richard could hear each one tick by. Fifteen
seconds now remained and the panic began to fully set in. Ten seconds and he wasn't sure he
had enough time. Five seconds, four, three, two, one...

He had three simple rules by which he lived. The first was to never eat blue food. There was
nothing in nature that was edible that was blue. People often asked about blueberries, but
everyone knows those are actually purple. He understood it was one of the stranger rules to
live by, but it had served him well thus far in the 50+ years of his life.

The paper was blank. It shouldn't have been. There should have been writing on the paper, at
least a paragraph if not more. The fact that the writing wasn't there was frustrating. Actually,
it was even more than frustrating. It was downright distressing.

Barbara had been waiting at the table for twenty minutes. it had been twenty long and
excruciating minutes. David had promised that he would be on time today. He never was, but
he had promised this one time. She had made him repeat the promise multiple times over the
last week until she'd believed his promise. Now she was paying the price.