Alex slumped on the floor with his shoulders pressed against the coolness of the concrete. The metal of the windowsill stroked his skull as his head rolled from side to side. Bare-chested and cold, he stared across emptiness of his new concrete room like all the other concrete rooms stacked on top of one another, and watched feet appear and disappear underneath the door. Voices spoke into cell phones and coughed. He waited for the stillness to come before he could get started. Minutes clicked by on the face of his alarm clock. The daylight filtering into his room from above turned to dusk, and then to gray shades of purple as the sun slid. It was moments like these that made him wish he had a higher purpose, and he mourned the fact that he couldn’t be good on his own. The light passed with the hours,...

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