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Gary worked the nightshift and was accustomed to being woken up during his daily battles for a full eight hours of the restful and refreshing.
Gary was not accustomed to being woken up by the sound of breaking glass (at least not so close to his bedroom). He was not accustomed to being woken up by broken glass falling on his pillow and pricking like hard, angry rain on his face and hair.
And he was not accustomed to waking up with the smell of smoke filling his nostrils.
Especially not because his bed was on fire.
Screaming, Gary bolted from the bed, patting frantically all over his body in case an errant spark jumped to his clothing or hair from the bed. Glass continued to drop in irregular, staggering shifts of sharpness from the broken window above his bed, mostly landing in the tangled curtains that were also on fire thanks to what Gary would have thought was a Molotov cocktail if he lived in a videogame and not suburban Miami.
In the distance there was the sound of sirens, still faint, but aside from that and the sporadic sound of falling glass, it was silent. Gary looked guiltily up at the smoke detector over his bedroom door, its unlit light seeming to stare back at him in accusing, pointed silence even though Gary knew and it knew that a smoke detector (especially one that went off whenever he had a too-hot shower) was no goddamn line of defense against a Molotov cocktail.
Letting the Molotov cocktail continue to splutter sparks on the carpet and curtains would be no great asset when he was defending his right to get his damage deposit back from the landlord, though. Gary shook the remaining sleep from his brain and splashed the remains of a cup of chamomile tea he'd left on his bedside table over the broken bottle on the floor. The fire fizzled out, slow and smoky, leaving the smell of wet grandmothers in the air. As he nudged the remains with his foot, a sound, far closer than the sirens, came through the broken window.
"DOES THAT CHANGE YOUR MIND, BITCH?"
Gary looked around his bedroom uncertainly, but there was no one else there. That, at least, hadn't changed since he'd collapsed in bed around 8 AM.
"I'VE GOT MORE IN HERE."
Instead of calling the police or going to a room without windows, morbid curiosity drew Gary out of his room and onto the front steps of his normally peaceful little rented bungalow. The source of the shouting, the disturbance, and the Molotov cocktail was immediately evident. A man stood on the sidewalk, naked except for a pair of swimming trunks adorned with fluorescent-coloured octopi. He needed a shave and had a bleached blonde faux-hawk.
Gary had never seen him before in his life.
"What are you doing, man?"
The question startled the stranger, making him aware of Gary's presence. The two men started at each other in awkward silence for a moment, with the background noise of the sirens (surely police or firefighters, Gary thought) slowly growing closer.
The house next door, Gary suddenly realized, was properly on fire.
The stranger wavered in place for a moment, like his entire existence was a shimmering mirage, but when he flicked a lighter -- on, off -- he seemed to snap back into focus. In his other hand he held the handle of a wagon full of (mostly) glass bottles, each with a damp looking sock (except for the one that was a jockstrap) shoved through the top.
The wagon was bubble gum pink with a decal of glamorously coiffed and somewhat deformed horse on the side.
"I'm trying," the strange man said at last, speaking with the calm and even cadence of a public radio host, "to get to the liquor store. But her mother won't let me talk to her when I call."
"The liquor store?"
"Are you crazy? The liquor store is a building," the man said. It sounded like a PSA intended for particularly slow aliens. "My niece. But my bitch sister says she's at daycare and I can talk to her tonight, but I need to do a run before shit gets all crazy with end of the week party shoppers, you know? And she's got the best wheels."
"Your niece does," Gary said carefully, resting his hand on the doorknob.
"Absolutely!" The man blinked and looked at the wagon he was holding. "I probably shouldn't have borrowed it without asking, huh?"
"Probably not," Gary agreed pleasantly, before stepping back into his house and dialing 911.