If there were ever a time for a hamburger it would be now. Joe needed a hamburger. Joe couldn’t think anymore if he didn’t get a hamburger. He hadn’t left his house in weeks and his family was getting so under his skin it was attacking his lymphatic system. Four generations under one house meant that he had no time to himself unless he locked himself away in his room. His grandmother and his sisters kids watching Cats for the fiftieth time this week could be heard through the walls. Magical Mr. Mistoffelees lost his wonderous appeal months ago.

His desire to leave the house grew with every passing moment. His duel monitors’ blue glow gave his skin a special kind of pale. After putting on his shoes he finally walked outside into the sun like a little hermit crab crawling out from its shell, scared, and horrified at the vastness of the world. To his left and right the suburban sprawl seemed to go on endlessly. Rows upon rows of houses all a modification of roughly four different designs. Lush green yards filled every other house and for sale signs littered the others. SUVs piled together in the driveways, all some varying shade of grey. Small plants hugged themselves near the windows of the homes as the paint slowly chipped away from the weather.

Joe popped the button on his keys to unlock the car and got in. It took a few times to fire up the engine because, in all likelihood, his car’s starter was among the living dead, it just didn’t know it. Joe’s Honda civic worked, but only in the way a fat small child participates in gym class by getting changed and sitting there.

He twisted his head and put his hand over the passenger’s seat as he pulled out the driveway. Making sure to not run over any children or small animals. The one time he accidentally ran over a bird and made the mistake of telling his friends, they called him ‘birb popper’ for about six months. Joe had since donated multiple times to wildlife ranches across the state that take in abandoned pet birds. It had become a complex, and his friends got tired of calling him birb popper once Joe self actualized into the role. It’s difficult to find joy in torturing other people when they finally have come to acceptance with the very thing used to torture them.

The car puttered along as Joe attempted to leave the neighborhood. He saw a child down the road trying to make shots into a basket ball hoop attached over the garage of their home. The three foot tall child repeatedly missed and spent most of their time chasing after the ball than actually shooting it. He slowed down when the child and the ball inevitably ran in front of him. The two made eye contact and the child quickly ran off back to make another shot.

Slowly he continued driving until deciding to take a left down St. Stevens road. Joe thought this might be the way to the exit. His memory had been a little hazy with not having left the house in so long, but he knew that there were a few exits to the neighborhood. He was going to get that borgor soon. Stevens wasn’t a beautiful street, but it also didn’t really look much different than the street he was just on. The rows of homes all varied only slightly, and all the yards were half dead and half lush. The one slightly unique quality about Stevens was that the houses on his right were slightly elevated on a hill, meaning that all the cars parked there most likely had their emergency breaks active. He saw in the distance a man in his front driveway working on large pieces of wood and he could hear the screeching of different saws eating away into wood, much like the fat child in gym class eating into a chocolate bar he suck in his shorts while his classmates weren’t looking. The road continued going and Joe continued cruising at a nice fifteen to twenty miles per hour. Taking in the nice weather and the fluffy little white clouds. It had rained the night before so most of the plants and sparce trees really gave it their all today and Joe thought about thanking them for such a wonderful little show.

Joe made it to the end of the street where it turned into a semi cul-de-sac right turn. The drainage way splitting the homes in the middle, full of branches and leaves from the night before. Joe saw a mother attempting to teach her small son how to ride a bicycle. It did not seem it was going well. The kid was covered from head to toe in protective gear. Pads for every joint of the body. Constricting long form clothing to shield his skin from the inevitable falls. The mother attempting some sort of motivational speech when you could see in the eyes of the child that he just wanted to go back inside and play video games and that this whole riding a bicycle thing wasn’t really an effective use of his time, seeing as both he and the mother knew they didn’t live in a more populated area where engineers had designed right of ways for bicyclists and the ability to actively travel around on bike was a tenable alternative to cars. The child also seemed to understand that the mother was doing this out of some time-honored tradition. As if it was one of the few cultural artifacts left for her to share with her child that wasn’t watching television for six hours a day. The son understood and let her try her best. Joe was impressed with how adult he thought the child was.

As Joe turned right he went onto Mulch Drive. Joe always wondered about all the different names of roads and streets and park ways and driveways. He wondered if they actually had any use beyond designating that there’s some pathway meant for a car. There must have been a good use for them a long time ago. Maybe when cars first were invented, and people used driving as an activity in and of itself. His stomach was killing him. The chemical aptitudes of his bodies regularity for eating surged to his mind as his insides began to gurgle. He took a sip from a bottled water as he looked upon the houses of Mulch Drive.

He was going uphill now, and Joe wasn’t sure that he remembered going up hill to leave the neighborhood before. The incline was rather steep and Joe’s civic was working hard to get him up that slope. He floored it slightly to maintain his cool twenty miles an hour. One house on the block had four semi-antique cars. Ones that weren’t old enough to be authentically impressive, but impressive in the fact that the person that lived there owned four cars from a particular time period and apparently thought them so important as to keep them. One was on blocks, another had a cover on it. But it seemed like two of them probably worked. The house next to it had little pink plastic flamingos along the walkway to the front door. Joe thought they were adorable and out of place. He’d want to make lemonade with whomever lived there, but what he really wanted was to take them to go eat a bhargur. Joe was really jonesing now.

By the time Joe had turned onto Coffee Cup Lane, he was getting confused. Every house on this block was a dark shade of brown with creamy glazed ceramic tan accents. He had never seen this street before and he was getting a little anxious. He finally decided to turn on his GPS system, but the system froze with an eternal loading screen. He turned on the radio only to hear talking heads discussing what the best way to stuff a low fat free range turkey was for the upcoming Thanksgiving Extravaganza Holiday sponsored by Da Burger. Their lips smacked and trilled at the end of words. He changed it to something more pleasant, which sounded something like jazz and elevator music combined.

Tapping a few times on his GPS system without any luck he continued driving down Coffee Cup Lane as it slowly turned into what was called Porcupine Place. Many of the houses here had replaced their green yard to a more eco friendly desert themed spikey plant motif. Joe was getting concerned about the thematics of these streets and that whoever had been planning the neighborhood really must have had a hell of a time setting up the covenants and deeds to keep people in line.

He continued driving until he saw something strange. His street. He had never known that his street connected to Porcupine Place. And to make matters worse, he could see his house from the stop sign intersection. He slowly crept upon what looked like his house to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Sure enough, his family members’ vehicles were all lined up in the driveway. Joe was confused and hungry.

Had he gone in a big circle? He wasn’t sure, but he’d look up a map after he made himself some lunch. He knew he must have gone in a big circle. Right?