Lurkers

A novelist walks into a restaurant. Badumdum. Armed with a laptop, a mobilephone, a pack of cigarettes, a coffeechick, and a state of mind hovering between pure apathy and utter contempt, he spends the hours from dusk until dawn on a summer night trying to write a book about an alien invasion, an actual invasion of his privacy by every selfimportant twerp in the building notwithstanding. Written from his perspective, coloured by his own interpretations, the fictional autobiography remains mired in truth, documenting the unfortunate epidemic of drunks and joiners lamented by lurkers the world over, his reactions and strategies to be left the hell alone ameliorating him as the antihero deigning to counterattack the forces of dimness foolishly appointing themselves entitlement to respect and adoration, all while George—a paranoid schizophrenic in the corner—counts down to the end of the world at dawn: a premise insane, yet, in the strictest sense, not necessarily inaccurate.