The day dawned dirty, like the unspoken fantasies of a TV evangelist. Liggnum rolled over and blinked at the grey light filtering into his closet of an apartment. His eyes burned and his mouth felt like a family of spiders had moved in and were busily stringing their cottony webs between his bicuspids.

With a great effort, he swung his sheet-tangled legs onto the floor and sat for a long moment contemplating the backs of his eyelids. He stood, tried to take a step, and fell to the peeling linoleum. Cursing none too silently, he unwrapped the damp sheet from his legs and tried again. This time, he made it to the once-white sink and spat.

The spiders, momentarily stunned, tried to scrabble up the smooth stained porcelain. Liggnum, trying to grin for the first time in weeks, savagely twisted the hot water handle and watched with grim satisfaction as the beleaguered arachnids spiraled down into the drain.

“Mmrff gdrmmff,” he said. It took him the rest of the day to rid his teeth of the webbing.