The room is almost completely dark now. Stagger hasn't gotten out of his chair all day. He looks left along the surface of his dark brown solid oak desk, and then looks right. He stares at the object that is just out of the reach of his outstretched right hand. He doesn't move to reach it. He's still not sure.

He lowers his hand back to his lap, his head balanced on the fist of his left hand. He opens his fist and begins to rub his forehead with his thumb and the side of his hand. "When did things get so complicated?" he asks himself. He pauses while he tries to formulate an answer.

Life was easier when his future consisted of a large and ominous question mark. He remained hopeful that his dreams would come true, even at the age of twenty-three. He never knew what he wanted from life. Maybe he didn't know what life wanted from him.

He looks again to his right. His object has become barely a shadow of what it looked like earlier in the day when he put it there.

His looks had similarly declined over the past few months. He didn't used to look like this. He used to wear expensive sweaters, with many different designs, shapes and sizes. He had a sweater for each day it seemed. But with summer approaching, he became less and less interested in how he looked. He packed away his sweaters, and his pleated pants, and his Timberland boots.

David Stagger sits alone in his room in the dark with a tight white tank top tucked into his Old Navy jeans. He picks up the piece of paper in front of him again. "Calculus 3 - F, Dynamics of Mass Communication - D, Global Networks - F, Spanish 2 - C".

His hair is slightly edged out of place by his left hand as it traces the top of his skull and down to the top of his neck. "What is worse?" He thinks as a tear dances down his cheek "Getting kicked out of college, my father dieing at the beginning of this month, my transmission failing, or losing my job?"

The tears streaming from his eyes are pure concentrated dissatisfaction. The confusion in Stagger's head has driven him to the brink.

Maybe he shouldn't have had sex with his friend's sister just so he could say he had sex in the last six months. She was a little younger, and not entirely attractive but maybe there was more to it than looks. Maybe he shouldn't have been drunk when he went for a drive that night two years ago. Maybe he was lucky that his three-month-old daughter was the only one to die in the accident that night, and the family in the car that he hit was entirely spared.

All of his twenty-three years have all come into question, and they are all on trial right now. Stagger brings his feeble life into a time of judgment. He looks to the left of his desk and sees the picture of his daughter. He cries again. He grabs the only picture ever taken of his daughter, Shannon, and rips it from the frame and holds it over his chest as he weeps.

He looks to the right again.

His cell phone begins playing the tune "Sandstorm". Stagger stands up, walks to his dresser and presses one of the glowing keys and shouts "Hello!"

"Dave, it's Melinda."

"What's up?"

"We have to talk, can you come over?" she asks quietly.

"Is your brother there? Does he know that you and I.um"

She exhales softly but then replies, "Yeah, he knows."

Realizing that whether Melinda's brother knew if they had had sex was of little significance anymore, Stagger says with exigency, "It doesn't even matter anyways. Look you caught me at a really bad time."

"Is everything ok?" she asks.

"No, everything is not ok. I'll talk to you later. Or maybe not."

"Wait Dave!" she yells.

"What?" he shouts irritably.

"Dave, I'm pregnant."

The only sound in Stagger's room was the crackle of a newspaper his bare foot was stepping on.

He finally assembles a thought and says, "Are you going to keep it?"

"You mean are WE going to keep it? Yes, WE'RE going to keep it."

He stays quiet again for nearly a whole minute. "I.I just." David's eyes well up again. "I just.can't.do this...anymore!"

He ends the call and places the cell phone back on the dresser. He walks back over to his seat and sits down. His cell phone rings. David keeps staring forward, not ignoring the ringing, but not knowing it was ringing. David's head has gone into overdrive. His senses are lost. He can't hear or smell anything and he can barely see.

In a daze he looks to the right again. He picks up his father's glock and holds it in his hand by the barrel. He still can't hear his cell phone ringing. Suddenly he hears his father speaking to him as he peers down the barrel of the gun with his finger on the trigger. Stagger can't make out any words, but he knows it's definitely his late father's voice.

Stagger jumps out of his seat at the sound of a loud thumping at his bedroom door. "Who the hell is knocking at my door?" he thinks. He gets up out of his chair and grabs the doorknob. He knows that no one else is in the house. Maybe his mother had come home from vacation a week early.

He pulls the door toward him and there is nothing in front of him. The only thing he sees is the reflection of a street light in the living room mirror. Stagger tilts his head to the right and smiles. He closes his door and places the glock on his dresser.

Maybe he doesn't need it anymore.