It wasn't a good day today.

First of all, I overslept a little, which actually isn't like me at all. Usually, I oversleep a lot, like for a half hour or so, which frankly? Is tiring. So tiring that I usually also leave work a half hour early each day.

But it wasn't just that. I also managed to sleep wrong on my fucking neck somehow, and I've had this whopping damn kink in it since. I spent a large part of the day furiously massaging it; it's on the left side of the back of my neck, so I would reach up and back around with my right arm to prod at the hunched little mass of angry muscle. We had a leads meeting today, and I found myself unconsciously doing this. Soon the other leads were staring at me.

"Are you okay?" one asked.

"I'm exposing my armpit. It's how our people show submissiveness. It means I agree with what you're saying."

"Your people?" she echoed.

"Lutherans," I replied. I work with Philistines, but I didn't want them to know I think that, so I helpfully swiveled around to show them all my armpit. At the same time, I kept working at the aching knot, but it held fast and throbbed vengefully.

When the meeting was over, I hobbled miserably back to my office and tried to do some work on the computer, but by this time my entire left side had gone numb, and my left arm hung limply, useless as a Democratic congress. There was really only one thing to do, and so with my right hand I reached into my file cabinet and removed from it my trusty bottle of whiskey and poured a belt, and soon felt much better.

After my third pour, my supervisor showed up at my office. "Listen," he said. "We've got to talk about you showing up to work late every day, and some other people are telling me that you leave work early. And you're really erratic in meetings, so much so that there are whispers of 'voodoo' going around the . . . hey . . . are--are you drinking?"

I usually get along with my boss just fine, when he sees me, which is rarely due to his river blindness--long story--but if there is one thing that I cannot abide, it's being micromanaged. I rose purposefully from my chair three times (the peripheral neuropathy and the whiskey were taking a toll) and thundered, "Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!" and then clouted my supervisor violently over his head with the half-filled whiskey bottle. His eyeballs barrel-rolled impressively and he slumped wordlessly to the floor; I dragged him deeper into my office and stuffed him under my desk and covered him with an impressive drift of unread email printouts, many of which seemed to feature subject lines like "HR IS VERY CONCERNED" and an unusual amount of exclamation points.

The day wasn't getting any better, and I wasn't getting much work done. It was time for a nap. But where? Where would nobody in the company in their right mind ever want to go? After a moment of swaying and scattered thinking, I had it: the server room. We have one of those, right? I assumed we did, and after a few minutes of lurchin' and searchin', I found it. I think so anyway . . . it had urinals on the walls, and I figured, well, that's a convenient feature that our IT people had thought of. Smart. To make sure that people got the message, I crafted a hand-lettered sign and slapped it on the door. It read "DANGER! SERVER ROOM! HIGH VOLTIGE! AUTHROIZED ENTRY ONLY!" I turned out the lights and curled up on the cool tile floor and let the darkness take me.

When I awoke some time later, it was pitch black in the server room, and my mouth tasted like a stack of dead jackals. I staggered upright and turned on the lights and gratefully availed myself of one of the urinals in the server room (seriously, those IT guys have good ideas). The server room, had no windows, so I stealthily crept out the door and stared out the windows: it was night. Hours had passed, and everyone had gone home. My left arm was tingling a little--a good sign--but was still virtually useless, so catching up on the missed hours of work wasn't feasible. Plus, there was the little matter of my supervisor's body stiffening under my desk. I've smelled decaying bosses before, and I didn't feel up to that again. Not today. So I went home.

Unfortunately, my repose in the server room--the IT guys are smart, but a tile floor? Stupid--had not gone as well as planned. I hadn't had a pillow, so my neck is all fucked up even worse than it was when I woke up. Frankly, it feels like a goddamn fistula running from my brain down to my neck. And my mouth still tastes foul and cottony. And--hell, thinking about it some more--my boss is dead, which, frankly, is depressing. He was a good guy, and didn't deserve to be mauled by a drunken clinically depressed person with left-side paralysis.

Like I said, it wasn't a good day. I think I'll have a drink. As for tomorrow, I guess I'll just call in sick.