He didn’t know why he shagged the chick, but he was sure it had something to do with the fact he was in a fucked up world.

He looked over at her sleeping silhouette with a churning of his stomach and a strain in his throat. She wasn’t ugly – not at all witchlike – nor was she fat from what he could remember. This just wasn’t the life he’d seen for himself as a young man. Where was the romance? He slid out of bed with well-trained silence and dragged what clothes he could find into her lounge, wrote a note, and left.

The dawn air hit him like a bullet as he stepped out into those first cold rays. Hours-old vomit crusted around his smart shoes and the stench of alcohol rose off him like the condensation of his breath.

Something clicked, there and then, on the steps of his one-nighter’s apartment building. This world wasn’t fucked up, it just had a lot of morally dense people in it, and there was always hope. With another step, he vowed to be one of those – a minority of hope.