The ceiling had a crack that looked like a crooked smile. Dean stared at it most mornings. Not because it fascinated him, but because there wasn't much else to look at. His phone battery had died sometime in the night. No charger. He'd pawned it last week to buy noodles and cigarettes. The cigarettes were gone. So were the noodles.
He got up slowly. The room smelled like old clothes and something else he couldn't place—maybe disappointment, if that had a scent. The apartment was a single room: mattress on the floor, flickering bulb overhead, a window that looked out onto a brick wall two feet away. Sunlight never really made it in.
He hadn't had a job in four months. His last one was cleaning toilets in a chain restaurant that shut down. They hadn't called him since. He stopped trying to reach out after a while. What would he even say? "Hey, just wondering if you need someone to scrape vomit off tiles again?"
His stomach grumbled. He opened the cupboard. One can of beans. No can opener.
Dean sat on the floor and stared at the wall.