Sully sat in his livingroom. Sully sat other places too, of course, but at the moment, he sat in his livingroom.

Sully didn’t sleep well anymore. Maybe it was that his wife left him for a Taylor Lautner cutout from the theater. Maybe it was his lumpy mattress. Maybe it was the absolute, nihilistic, existential horror he felt every time he poured another bowl of Frosted Flakes.

Whatever the cause, he sat up late most nights, watching Late Show, after Late Late Show, after Extremely Late Show (now with more Carson Daly!) until his eyes were bloodshot and the veins in his wrists stood out like catatonic snakes. Sometimes he had waking dreams. Other times, the analgesic banality of late nite TV put his mind into an induced state of Stage II sleep.

But tonight was different. Tonight, a beam of light cut through his window and across the room, scrawling its intrusive luminosity on the wall opposite. It was the unmistakable sick-blue glow of a halogen headlight. No one else ever drove down Sully’s road.