DAY 1:

The part of the novel where your character and their equally grief-stricken and famished cousin sit with your character’s dying mother in a hospital room while eating chicken wings and watching an episode of Friends, the mother’s beleaguered breathing and death rattles co-existing with the show’s laugh track and the witty banter of its principal characters.

 

DAY 2:

The part of the novel where your character takes hallucinogenic mushrooms at their friends’ baby shower, perhaps while nursing grief, heartbreak, a dislocated shoulder, and a double well tequila and soda—with lime.

 

DAY 3:

The part of the novel where your character disassociates at a weekly trivia night.

 

DAY 4:

The part of the novel where your character can’t sleep because they’re too busy thinking about all the loss they’ve endured, maybe counting the many damaged things in their life, the broken portions of themselves.

 

DAY 5:

The part of the novel where your character’s coworker tells a story about his dad walking out on him and his family when he was eight, leaving a ten-dollar bill stuffed into the seat of a wooden toy car and a Friday the 13th NES video game cartridge vs. the part of the novel where your character’s roommate, after getting lit off of seven Michelob Ultras, tells a story about the time he smoked a bowl on top of a mountain with a chipmunk.

 

DAY 6:

The part of the novel where your character momentarily runs out of wet food for their cat and they tearfully apologize to the cat like she’s a child whose needs have ultimately been neglected and it’s all very sad.

 

DAY 7:

The part of the novel where your character has a head-in-their-hands moment, perhaps trying to stifle the fear that putting effort into things that aren’t worth it has somehow defined them.

 

DAY 8:

The part of the novel where your character politely asks their depression if it might want to finally shower and maybe walk with them to the library, you know, as a treat vs. the part of the novel where your character politely asks a window to switch its pane for their pain.

 

DAY 9:

The part of the novel where your character receives a phone call from the mortuary informing them that their mother’s cremation has been completed and that her death certificates are, like a Chinese takeout order, ready for pick-up.

 

DAY 10:

The part of the novel where your character goes to Applebee’s to forget.

 

DAY 11:

The part of the novel where the hill your character chooses to die on is the one Kate Bush was running up to make that deal with God.

 

DAY 12:

The part of the novel where your character goes to different bars and, instead of going inside the different bars, they just stand outside talking to all the door people they know, which feels like a bunch of deleted scenes from Waking Life, but whatever.

 

DAY 13:

The part of the novel where your character wakes up from a stressful dream about being at work and then immediately has to go to work vs. the part of the novel where your character dreams about singing along with a naked Dave Bautista to Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” at a house party, which culminates in either a fist bump or a “Batista Bomb” through a coffee table vs. the part of the novel where your character dreams about tweeting “Stars Wars doesn’t deserve Adam Driver,” based solely on them having watched, in said dream, a new Star Wars movie where Kylo Ren is now a debauched rock star who drunkenly makes a fool of himself in front of an audience and then cries on stage vs. the part of the novel where your character is shaken from this dream they had where Henry Rollins was getting increasingly frustrated while showing them how to use a Fisher-Price® turntable.

 

DAY 14:

The part of the novel where your character attempts to escape the haunted house that’s been built within themselves, like it’s a magic trick being performed by Criss Angel or David Blaine.

 

DAY 15:

The part of the novel where your character philosophizes about how The Goonies opens with a presumably dead guy hanging in a jail cell, followed by a child getting body-shamed, a penis being broken off of a mini David statue, and a Hispanic maid threatened to be tortured in a supposed hidden sex dungeon, all in the first fifteen minutes.

 

DAY 16:

The part of the novel where your character tries kicking a door in while “You Gotta Be,” the 1994 hit by Des’ree, plays from behind the door vs. the part of the novel where your character’s “thing” is to look flummoxed while asking, “Is this the Pussycat Dolls?” whenever entering a room where music is being played.

 

DAY 17:

The part of the novel where your character asks, “Why are you like this!?”—but to existence.

 

DAY 18:

The part of the novel where your character purchases a bath bomb made into the likeness of their screaming, fearful face.

 

DAY 19:

The part of the novel where your character wonders why TikTok, which just seems like a social media platform for people who enjoy lip syncing random dialogue in a cute and/or sexy manner, isn’t just called SyncKink.

 

DAY 20:

The part of the novel where your character approaches someone who also has a Yosemite Sam tattoo and is like, “Yosemite Same!”

 

DAY 21:

The part of the novel where your character’s cat gets stolen.

 

DAY 22:

The part of the novel where your character can’t decide if their most cherished childhood memory was when their mother took them to the 1991 WWF Royal Rumble at the Miami Arena, age nine, or when they vomited grape soda all over the kitchen floor, age five, while racing into the house to catch the premiere of Teen Wolf on HBO.

 

DAY 23:

The part of the novel where your character can’t believe someone actually thought Alabama was a sweet home and then wrote a song about it.

 

DAY 24:

The part of the novel where your character offers a fist bump to a hermit crab and says, “Yo, I too reside in an empty shell of myself.”

 

DAY 25:

The part of the novel where your character attempts to make room in their busy schedule to reunite with old friends, maybe squeezing them in somewhere between the misery and terror vs. the part of the novel where your character considers making new friends, since most of the ones they already have are either too broken or too fixed.

 

DAY 26:

The part of the novel where your character gets a booster vaccination shot because they can’t say no to free drugs of any kind.

 

DAY 27:

The part of the novel where your character contemplates whether they actually believe in a thing called love and if the rhythm of their heart is even worth listening to.

 

DAY 28:

The part of the novel where your character walks in on their roommate intensely watching a Rugrats in Paris video game play-through on a UHD Smart TV vs. the part of the novel where your character realizes their roommate has been spending hours watching a channel that just shows footage of a train traveling through Norway.

 

DAY 29:

The part of the novel where your character finally realizes that existence is the awful apartment they pay too much for, society is the shitty roommates they’re forced to share it with, and death is their final eviction notice.

 

DAY 30:

The part of the novel where your character gets their stolen cat back.