Rest of Life

He couldn't move. His head throbbed and spun. He couldn't decide if it was the flu or the drinking last night. It was probably a combination of both.
She wondered if the note had reached him. She scolded herself for not handing it to him in person. She trusted her friend, but so much could happen. She waited impatiently for word.
He took a sip of the drink. He wasn't sure whether he liked it or not, but at this moment it didn't matter. She had made it especially for him so he would have forced it down even if he had absolutely hated it. That's simply the way things worked. She made him a new-fangled drink each day and he took a sip of it and smiled, saying it was excellent.
He wondered if he should disclose the truth to his friends. It would be a risky move. Yes, the truth would make things a lot easier if they all stayed on the same page, but the truth might fracture the group leaving everything in even more of a mess than it was not telling the truth. It was time to decide which way to go.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas...
If you can imagine a furry humanoid seven feet tall, with the face of an intelligent gorilla and the braincase of a man, you'll have a rough idea of what they looked like -- except for their teeth. The canines would have fitted better in the face of a tiger, and showed at the corners of their wide, thin-lipped mouths, giving them an expression of ferocity.
The alarm went off and Jake rose awake. Rising early had become a daily ritual, one that he could not fully explain. From the outside, it was a wonder that he was able to get up so early each morning for someone who had absolutely no plans to be productive during the entire day.