Anthony sat at his workbench polishing his staff. Giggling to himself as he stroked the wood with an oiled cloth. Knowing how ridiculous the explanation would sound if he explained what he was doing to anyone who happened to walk into his shop.

"Yes, great start," the man said as he took a sip of his water before turning his attention back to the words on the screen. He returned to hunting and pecking away at his keyboard, heedless of the approaching night.

A chubby man, though not overly so, but he had definitely let himself go. He suffered from Gynecomastia, a genetic variation that was untreatable. This meant that he had man boobs, and in fact, had had them since he was twelve. It was inherited from his mother’s father, and it was the only thing he inherited from the man. Which, absent his grandfather's stellar attitude and winning personality, caused the man countless issues throughout his life.

His face was covered in a long full beard. His neck hair long enough to get tangled in with the rest of the greasy, unkempt mess. Not bothering with the hassle of shaving after his last girlfriend left him, she had been insistent about him keeping a clean-shaven face. Still, the man was handsome with brown eyes and a full head of hair, which made it one of the best things going for him, being on the wrong side of forty. The smell of week-old clothes and unwashed man permeated the room, yet went unnoticed by him, an outcome of him being alone, and yet part of the reason for said aloneness.

The place was a dump. Not a mess, mind you, just a rundown beat-up old rental property that was the best he could afford on the money brought in hustling. It didn't help that he hadn't had a "real" job in over fifteen years.

Of course, hustling had all kinds of negative connotations, affecting how people treated him, which, along with his condition’s stigma, made him an outcast of outcasts. Everyone always thought he had connections to crime, sold drugs, or a combination of the two. In truth, he just hated working for anyone but himself. He never, well rarely ever, he wasn't a saint, did anything illegal to make his money. Still, this didn't stop people from assuming the worst.

This was why Tony "Quake" Porter was trying his hand at becoming a writer. Well, that and the fact that his neighbor changed the wifi password again. Making it so that only a few programs were available to him on his laptop. The only form of electronic entertainment Tony had. For the first hour, everything he typed led him straight to having wild, unfiltered all holes included sex with whatever woman he wrote onto the screen in front of him. This stemmed from the fact that he hadn't gotten laid in ten of these last fifteen jobless years.

So finally, seeing a paragraph written that only referenced his junk without actually having it out in the scene made him quite pleased. Eager to have something to take his mind off the hunger pains, being broke had gotten him. He fell into a writing zone losing all track of time.

A sudden shout pulled Tony away from the screen. The glow of street lights lit the floor in front of his window. Tony had been so caught up in writing that he had forgotten to close them before nightfall. The neighborhood, being what it was, a ghetto to put it indelicately, made this a hazardous situation. Taking care to stay out of view of the window, Tony made his way over to investigate the shouts and hopefully close the blinds without being spotted.

Peeking around the edge of the window, he saw two of the neighborhood "tough-guys" engaged in a pushing contest. He didn't know either of them, and they were too far away to get many details, but he could easily hear the two shouting—the paper-thin walls of the dilapidated house doing nothing to drown it out. The bigger one managed to take the struggle out of Tony’s sight as he stayed hidden by the window, too nervous about being seen to close the blinds.

More screams suddenly joined the two shouts. Suddenly Tony saw people running down the street, as he heard, "he's got a gun." Immediately Tony hit the floor. This reaction saved his life. The sounds of rapid-fire explosions filled his ears as the auto pistol discharged. Three rounds had come through his wall, right where he had been standing. The first at thigh level would probably not have been fatal. However, the one lung height, followed by the last at temple height, most certainly was.

Tony heard sirens wailing in the distance, rapidly approaching. He kept his head down for another minute or so before risking a glance out the window. A lesson learned from his first poor bystander stranded in the middle of a gun battle experience. In which he had had to drop to the ground several times, standing after brakes in the shooting, only to have them fall back down again. This cycle had repeated until after a little over a minute had passed since he first heard sirens. At that point, all parties, Tony included, ran from the scene as if it was ground zero of a nuclear blast. Ten people had died in that shootout. Tony hadn't known anyone had died. Too concerned with not getting shot and or arrested to even think about it. In his defense, they were valid concerns at the time.

Nobody was out on the street that he could see, from the limited view out his window, that is, allowing Tony to let out a breath he had been holding. A part of him, well, all of him truthfully, had been expecting to see a murder scene outside his window. So the lack of any unmoving bodies was a huge relief. For Tony, it meant one less nightmare added to the already long list he already had.

He could see the police car’s flashing lights strobing around his room. His attention was drawn away from the scene outside the window. A weird smell in the air gave him a sudden unexplainable fear that made him want to get out. Tony made the fateful choice not to go out the window.

He left his room going down the hallway that led to the combo kitchen/living room. In his one bedroom, one bath "house,” the combo room makes up most of the place's square footage. As he passed the old thermostat, he noticed the smell had gotten much more potent. At that moment, the thermostat in question raised a degree. Tipping the mercury and causing a spark to occur as the thermostat let the A/C system know to kick on. The natural gas that had been flooding his home after one of the bullets ruptured the house's gas line combusted. Causing Tony and his home to cease to exist. On this plane of reality, at least.