My Cardboard Balcony

A Desperate Habit by Belinda Roddie How do you deal with the outside world without becoming a fanatical alcoholic? The glaze over your eyes will give the false impression that the world is tinged with gold instead of rust. How do you manage to live day to day without trying to rot your insides with narcotics? The artificial high is temporary, but at least it takes your mind off the end of humanity for at least twenty minutes. And all your friends seem fine with drinking sparkling water instead of dunking their heads into a plastic tub of bourbon. How do they survive the deluge of bad news, while we sit in the corner swallowed by shadows, and we drink and we smoke and we pray for the pain to go away?

We sifted through boxes and boxes of video game cartridges and old consoles, blowing away their blankets of dust and leaving them shivering in the cold. We stopped ripping through cardboard when we saw it: A gold cartridge from the Super Viking Entertainment system. We couldn't believe our luck. "Wondercat World!" we gasped as we held up the shiny, plastic game.