This short story is a snapshot inside the mind of a neurotic minded person going through a mental breakdown.

By: Vanessa Woodson

Every morning I wake up to the sun shining through my right window, blinding me as I begin to open my eyes. My dog, Koda, barking up a storm. He insists every morning at exactly 7:02, he has to go outside. It really gets on my nerves. Can’t the damn dog just take a rest and sleep a little? Especially since I am the type of person who will sleep in until the last minute but will still be on time. 

After I get up and let the damn dog out back, I pour myself a cup of coffee, which my husband has so generously left for me, and go grab the newspaper from the front stoop. I sit down at the kitchen counter as I sipped my coffee read the newspaper and enjoy my toast. Then that damn dog starts barking again, I turn my head a look through the glass window and say “quite you!!!”. I turn my head back and glance at the clock above the stove, 8:21. I realize I have to deal with my boss in exactly 89 minutes. I sipped my coffee and take exactly four minutes to moan. If I had waited any longer I would be late and any earlier I would be early it had to be exactly four minutes. I head upstairs and take my normal ten-minute shower, two-minutes brushing my teeth and five minutes figuring out what to wear. That leaves me with exactly 21 minutes on the dot to finish reading the New York Times before I have to drive 2o damn minutes to a job that I despise. Once I arrive it takes about 2.23 minutes to hear about Joe and Tom brag about their athletic children. Then it takes 4.5 minutes to hear my boss complain that I never do anything right. What a joke right? Wrong. 

I spend 9.43 hours at this job and it takes me 27.2 minutes to get home, damn traffic. Then I have to take two more minutes out of my time to let Koda out, two more minutes to feed him. By the time I am done that and cooking dinner I only have 34.2 minutes to myself beforing laying on my rock solid bed. I don’t fall asleep for another 5.6 minutes trying to find the correct position. That can drive a person mad! Not being able to find the correct position to sleep. God damn I just want some sleep.

But that’s not the only thing that will drive you crazy, what really makes you crazy is when something goes wrong. Something that has been happening every single day or your life for the last 25.67 years. When the one thing you hoped would never go wrong and it did. What if you wake up 46.7 minutes late because there was no damn dog barking for you to take him out. This causes you to be late for work, you know have a 20 minute drive in god awful traffic with only 3.21 minutes to get there on time. You are screwed. So then you think your just waste time trying to get there. In exactly 10 seconds you will call into work and say you came down with something. The phone

rings for exactly 6.3 seconds and a monitored voices comes on and says there is no work today because something bad has happened. You hang up and wonder what could have happened and head home. Once home you head upstairs to take a shower. 

This time your shower is much longer than your normal ten-minutes. It takes you about three more minutes to wonder what the red goo is that is dripping from your body. Then it takes about two more minutes for you to just assume you cut yourself while shaving your legs or something.

You go downstairs and put on your favorite show and after watching for about 55.3 minutes, you start to wonder where Koda is and what was the bad thing that happened at work today. While thinking about this for 16.2 minutes, you bite your nails and the taste of iron hits your tongue, you realize you have red goop under your fingernails. Ugh. You think to yourself, that is just disgusting. So you head upstairs to your bathroom which takes about 24.3 seconds , got to wash your hands, for 3.5 minutes, in the bathroom that you never ever use. So you decided to look around for 5.6 minutes before leaving the room. While looking you notice there is also red goop all over the walls, the same goop that was under your nails. without leaving any time to count you pull back the shower curtain. 

You stare in awe for about 8.6 minutes and realize you have to clean up. Suddenly there is a knock at the door… no one ever comes over so who could it be. The knock keeps knocking and knocking for about 7.8 seconds. But there is no time, there’s no time to answer the door, you have to clean. Everything has to be cleaned in seven minutes,  exactly seven minutes no more no less. But no it cant be seven minutes no no no thats too long it has to be ummmm about 5 minutes. Wait no no no five minutes is too short. The knocking starts again and this time getting louder and faster, every 4.3 seconds, and it wont stop it keeps going. But I can’t stop I just cant I have to clean, I have to clean up this mess. But then the knocking…