Excerpt: "The Body In Studio B"

Chapter One

Despite what you might have heard, I’m not a lazy person; it’s just that I find it hard to get up in the morning. That’s why I have two alarm clocks, and that’s why both of them are all the way across the room, so I have to get out of bed to shut them up. Even so, sometimes that doesn’t do the job; half asleep, I can stagger over to the dresser, turn them off, stagger back to bed, and fall asleep again—all without ever opening my eyes. But really, like I say, I’m not a lazy person. Even if I do occasionally take a nap in my office during lunch hour. That’s not laziness. That’s only recharging my batteries. And after you’ve worked at the same job, for the same boss, in the same basement office for more than fifteen years, your batteries sometimes need a little recharging. As a matter of fact, more than once I’ve considered replacing mine entirely by up and quitting, leaving the whole hellhole behind. But like the song says, I ain’t no fortunate one. I need that weekly paycheck to keep me clothed, fed, and under a roof—even if it does occasionally leak.
That morning in November, I was pretty doggone glad that I had a roof, too. During the night, Mother Nature had dropped nearly a foot and a half of snow on the Upper Peninsula, and the winds had played havoc with it, piling it here and there like a kid playing in the sandbox creating battlefields and barricades for his toy soldiers to hide behind and fight over. I wasn’t looking forward to fighting my way to work; the urge to stagger back to bed after turning off those damn alarm clocks was strong within me.
Ah, but deadlines are deadlines, and I was facing one.