Ten more steps. If he could take ten more steps it would be over, but his legs wouldn't move.

He tried to
will them to work, but they wouldn't listen to his brain. Ten more steps and it would be over but it didn't
appear he would be able to do it.

Dave found joy in the daily routine of life. He awoke at the same time, ate the same breakfast and drove
the same commute. He worked at a job that never seemed to change and he got home at 6 pm sharp
every night. It was who he had been for the last ten years and he had no idea that was all about to
change.

It had been a late night. To be more correct, it had been an early morning. It was now 3:00 AM and
George was just getting home. He wasn't sure if it had been worth it. He was supposed to have been
finished by 10:00 PM, but his boss had implored him to stay and help when it was clear they weren't
going to meet the 10:00 PM target time. So, he had stayed an extra 5 hours and lost a good night's sleep
for something he didn't really believe in, but he did anyway because he was afraid if he refused he might
lose his job.

"Can I get you anything else?" David asked. It was a question he asked a hundred times a day and he
always received the same answer. It had become such an ingrained part of his daily routine that he had
to step back and actively think when he heard the little girl's reply. Nobody had before answered the
question the way that she did, and David didn't know how he should respond.

He heard the loud impact before he ever saw the result. It had been so loud that it had actually made
him jump back in his seat. As soon as he recovered from the surprise, he saw the crack in the windshield.
It seemed to be an analogy of the current condition of his life.

It went through such rapid contortions that the little bear was forced to change his hold on it so many
times he became confused in the darkness, and could not, for the life of him, tell whether he held the
sheep right side up, or upside down. But that point was decided for him a moment later by the animal
itself, who, with a sudden twist, jabbed its horns so hard into his lowest ribs that he gave a grunt of
anger and disgust.

The irony of the situation hadn't escaped her. She had taken years to sculpt the perfect persona with the
perfect look that she shared on Instagram. She knew her hundreds of thousands of followers envied that
life she showed and stayed engaged with her because they wanted that life too. The truth was that she
wanted the perfect life she portrayed more than any of her fans. The fact was that despite all the
perfection she shared on social media, her life was actually more of a mess than most.

There were a variety of ways to win the game. James had played it long enough to know most of them
and he could see what his opponent was trying to do. There was a simple counterattack that James could
use and the game should be his. He began deploying it with the confidence of a veteran player who had
been in this situation a thousand times in the past. So, it was with great surprise when his opponent
used a move he had never before seen or anticipated to easily defeat him in the game.

Eating raw fish didn't sound like a good idea. "It's a delicacy in Japan," didn't seem to make it any more
appetizing. Raw fish is raw fish, delicacy or not.

Dave wasn't exactly sure how he had ended up in this predicament. He ran through all the events that
had lead to this current situation and it still didn't make sense. He wanted to spend some time to try and
make sense of it all, but he had higher priorities at the moment. The first was how to get out of his
current situation of being naked in a tree with snow falling all around and no way for him to get down.