The chill in the room leaves me on edge as I pick the pieces of myself up off the floor.

‘An arm over there a leg over here where is my goddamned ankle?’ I think to myself as I go about the business of waking up sick and cold. I have to be out of the building before my sister has to leave for work, she doesn’t want to see me any more. I shuffle through the hallway and out the front door. Its winter again, still dark out, streetlights are still on. Trucks glide effortlessly along four inches off the ground. I have just enough credit for coffee and the newsfeed.

I make it through the doorway into the dizzingly tall and narrow confines of Zuxbie’s. I narrowly squeeze past the only other patron and make my way for the last stool at the far end of the counter. Zuxbie scuttles out of the tall kitchen door behind the counter. The scratchy tapping of his hind legs on the tile flooring is straining my ability to keep from getting sick all over his counter again. If I were to get sick Zuxbie would throw me back out into the cold, and probably beat my verterbrate ass in the process. His middle legs slide the other patrons order onto the counter. He turns his thorax slightly and drops his middle legs to the ground dropping back to eye level.

“What the fuck do you want?” he clicks and slurps.

“Coffee, the feed, and the key to your lavatory my slender chum.” I lay my chipped credcard on the table. He looks at me with his inscrutable compound eyes. My distorted vision is no help, but I think he is in a decent mood today, he pauses before handing over the key.

“I will hand you the key. It comes with two warnings, you keep quiet, and you make mess I make you into mess too.” One of his middle legs drops the key unceremoniously onto the counter.

Once inside I stand over the toilet. A risky proposition, more likely to make a mess. Normally I would bite the bullet and kneel in the cramped space. My knee is too swollen for some reason. The world vibrates as I brace myself. Its coming. Its almost here. Finally I gasp and out comes the horrible burning bile. Viscous and black. I finish and clean my face. Luckily there is no mess to speak of, excluding myself. I shake like a wet dog until I can collect myself enough to squeeze myself out of the bathroom and back onto my adjacent stool. A large cup of coffee and a small biojack sit waiting for me. My lips tremble as I purse them to blow the steam off the coffee. I take a tentative sip and settle the cup back down on its saucer. I pick up the bio jack with one hand brush the hair away from the space behind my left ear just under the hairline. I insert the jack and my vision flickers as it adjusts to focus in on the newsfeed.