A man takes an accidental journey.

Ed Cavendish had few aspirations. He was a non-descript man living in a non-descript city. Interstates overpassed old throughfares lined with struggling businesses, leading to areas with bland and familiar food in bland and familiar concrete expanses, all alight with the bland glow of safety and common good. Beauty was inconsequential to both Ed and his city.

Ed was a young man, out of school, hovering somewhere around thirty. He was not happy, and he was not sad. He occupied his time with the distractions of modern living, taking an interest in things like fine dining and interior decoration. Much like his life, the decor of his one bedroom development apartment could be described as modern, inoffensive, and lacking cohesion.

One night a week Ed prepared a meal based on a recipe he gathered from a website devoted to such things. Sometimes these meals were exotic, sometimes simple but time consuming. His friends from school who still lived in the area would come bearing beers and dvds, and they would share the meal. Every other night of the week, Ed ate two microwaved hot dogs and half a can of Green Giant yellow corn on his dark brown sofa which did not quite match his dark purple rug. Some nights, Ed would fall asleep on the couch during Conan O'Brien and wake up with a stiff neck. His couch was dark brown, but it was not very comfortable.

Ed worked a series of jobs that required him to sit in slightly uncomfortable chairs under the stale glow of flourescent lighting and computer monitors. He had a passing aquaintance with a few of his fellow employees. He dated a nice girl from accounting for a while, but it didn't work out because it was too long of a drive from her development apartment across town.

Ed had cried the night the nice girl from accounting had decided to end their relationship. He microwaved his hot dogs in furious silence, his eyes feeling puffy and pinched, watching the hot dogs spin as they desiccated and split lengthwise, mangled. Ed did not sleep well that night, tossing and turning, half-awake, legs tangled in sheets, interstate cars droning in distant and aimless pursuit, hot dogs congealing uneaten in the darkened kitchen. He awoke with a stiff neck.

Ed went to work that day and quit his job.

One warm morning a few weeks later, Ed went out to the small balcony to have a cigarette. He had stopped smoking after college, but since quitting his job he had found revisiting the habit to be occasionally irresistable. The interstate just over the hill roared with lunchhour traffic as he enjoyed his view of the dumpster behind his building, pulling deep and coughing. He was pondering what to do with his spent butt when he noticed something odd.

Today's newspaper was sitting folded beneath a flower pot on his balcony. This was odd because Ed lived on the fourth floor, and he did not have a subscription to the newspaper.

"I, um...hm." Ed said to himself.

Ed bent over and stubbed his cigarette out in the flower pot. He lifted the pot, slid the paper out and shook off the dirt. He stood up and held the paper out before him like it was a child with a dirty diaper. Somewhere over the hill, in the afternoon sun, the lunchhour traffic droned like a billion bees.