

As he woke, he heard a distinct ringing sound, the sound of a million drummers tapping on cue, the sound of a million dancers tapping their feet on the floor. His breath quickened, his heart started to wake from its dormant state. His eyes flickered to life, those hazel-hued eyes staring with the shape of two bright, glistening marbles. He shivered as the sheets fell from his frigid frame. Cold, lifeless, freezing. Almost as if he were buried six feet in the ground.
As he sat up on the bed, he stared at his emotionless figure in the mirror. Cold, rigid, frontal. His lip barely moved an inch as he slipped his feet into the polyester slippers lying on the floor. He was but another lifeless soul, another man waking up out of millions who had dared grace the face of God's earth. A yawn as he stands up. The sunlight, its penetrating rays reflecting against his bare, naked back. His shadow graces the ground, his outline not more than an amorphous substance coiled in fear against his pale complexion.
He walked, with the gait of a bear, down the stairs that led into the kitchen. The house was bare, devoid of any emotion, lacking of love, missing in any connection to the human world. He sat at the stool. Stared out the window. The placid lake, waveless and unmoving, stared back with the reflection of the bleak, gray sky. A bowl appeared in front of the man. A spoon in his right hand. He poured milk into the bowl, and he dropped cereal, which bounced across the white milk like stones skipping across a lake. He appeared quite like Frankenstein as he forced the cereal into his mouth, forced himself to masticate upon the material, and forced the food down his throat.
A ring. The doorbell.
Two knocks.
The man looked lazily at the door, his face still cold and lifeless, his body no warmer than that of a corpse.
Brother, yelled the voice at the door. Brother.
The man had no response. Father. The man sat still, chewing his breakfast cereal. Slowly, he placed the spoon down, its gleaming metal surface staring back at him like the obelisk of Mecca. He slowly stepped forth from his chair as he carefully replaced the cardboard box back into its proper place in the cupboard. He stared out the window again. Nothing had changed, except for the presence of a man dressed in red, who stood at the door, patiently waiting like a figure cut into stone, standing still for the rest of time.
Brother, yelled the voice once more. The man's voice was full of thoughts as he began the perilous journey to the door. He quietly shuffled his feet as he mumbled under his breath, half-asleep without his morning coffee ration. He opened the stately red portal, the knob twisting underneath his grip. The man at the door stepped through the gateway and removed his coat, placing it on the solitary metal hook.

