I don’t know if it was the headache that woke me up or the godlessly loud chirping from the birds outside. This was the grand daddy of all hangovers and I’d be a dead man by the afternoon, I was positive. The night before was not even a blur in my memory, it simply wasn’t there. I vaguely checked to make sure that I still had my pants. My Levis were there, as were my shoes. My shirt, however, was MIA. It wasn’t really a good shirt anyways. I was glad to find myself in my own bed but I wondered if my left foot was broken or just sprained.

I couldn’t go back to sleep now that I was awake, my stomach was boiling, my head was exploding and the birds outside the window wouldn’t shut up for one damn second. I considered moving but thought better of it. I rolled onto my stomach, attempting to smother myself to death with my own pillow. That was when I felt something cold and hard jabbing into my chest.

The surprise got to me and I rolled over a little too zealously.

THUMP

I rolled off the bed and became a victim to the force of gravity, careening downwards and hitting my head on something hard and expensive. I made no effort to get up for a very long while. I wondered once or twice whether I was bleeding out of my eyes or something.

I summoned up all of my godlike strength and sat upright. My head split open, only not really. The pain in my head blurred my vision for a few seconds. When my eyes cleared I looked down to see just what sort of object I had ravaged my skull upon. It was an old violin. I took careful precautions not to care about it right then.

Next I held up what I had been holding in my hand, the cold, metal thing which may or may not have broken my rib.

It was a large, antique key.

I made it not my business to care about the key either. I slowly got up and put a shirt on. I stuffed the key in my pocket and headed for the door. I made a last check of my room, noting, absently, that there was a fake parrot lying on the floor and that the walls had been smeared with what was unmistakably lime jell-o. I turned and left out the door.