Old Man Wispy lived alone in the woods, because all of his friends had died. He had long gray hair, a wispy white beard, and hated himself. Old Man Wispy hated routines, but because he also hated himself, he forced himself to adhere to one every day. Right now, he was making himself his nightly cup of tea— green tea, his least favorite.

Old Man Wispy sipped his tea and winced from the heat. His expression turned sour. "Fucking shit," he choked out in a raspy voice, setting it down. Old Man Wispy dug through his fridge, retrieving a plate of leftover spaghetti sloppily covered in saran wrap, a dirty fork buried among the noodles. With a wrinkly, liver-spotted hand, he yanked the thin plastic off of the cold noodles and began eating them. "Ugh, disgusting," he exclaimed. "Yuck." He couldn't stand cold leftovers, and no longer cared for spaghetti in his old age. In fact, he hated it.

He especially hated the brand of marinara sauce he always bought, which included large tomato chunks, and gagged as he chomped down on each one. He slurped up every noodle before letting the plate fall to the floor, hoping it would shatter. It hit the floor with a "pang" and remained intact, splashing droplets of red sauce onto his pale ankles. "Mother fuck," he croaked.

In his living room, Old Man Wispy loaded up a video of gay porn on his Smart TV. He was extremely homophobic, and retched as the title and thumbnail loaded. He hit the play button and began screaming in disgust. Afterwards, he got on his laptop, created an account on the porn site and left a positive comment, reloading every few minutes and becoming infuriated whenever it received upvotes. "No!" he shouted. "Stop agreeing with me, I'm wrong!"

Old Man Wispy made his way into the bathroom to take a shit. He didn't need to, but he had nothing else going on. He sat on the toilet for 30 minutes, staring at the wall and waiting until he was finally able to force out a turd. He peered down into the toilet, and became angry that the poop wasn't large enough. After flushing, he wiped his ass until it bled slightly, leaving the wads of dirty toilet paper on the bathroom floor.

Back in the living room, Old Man Wispy banged on his own front door from the inside, becoming angry that the outside world wouldn't answer. Afterwards, he swung the door open and checked his mail, becoming offended that people had had the audacity to send him letters. He threw them in the garbage without reading them.

In his bed, Old Man Wispy drifted off to a restless sleep. He dreamt that he was at a restaurant, and the waitress was his mother. He ordered a coffee and flung it in her face. "Fuck you, bitch!" he screamed, "I didn't ask to be born!" As the coffee dripped from her face, he realized that it had morphed into his own. His wrinkled, joyless face stared back at him as coffee dribbled down the frilly waitress uniform.

He jolted awake in bed, screaming at the top of his lungs. He realized he had pissed all over himself in his sleep. Getting up, he removed the soaked pants and began beating them against the wall repeatedly. He then shook them out a few times and put them back on.

Old Man Wispy decided to go to the store. He climbed into a wagon pulled by rats, the bones in his ankles creaking so loud that distant birds became spooked and flew away. "Mush," he croaked out, coughing. The rats began meandering slowly, pulling the wagon forward at a crawl. Old Man Wispy became angry that it was going too fast, and bitched at them to slow down.

Five hours later, Old Man's Wispy arrived at the store. "Hey!" he shouted at a young mother. "It's illegal for you to park there!" It wasn't, because Old Man Wispy was a pathological liar. The woman ignored him as she continued loading up her baby's car seat. "Fucking creep," she muttered under her breath.

Once inside, Old Man Wispy meandered near the front until he could find an employee. He demanded to speak to their manager, and refused to tell them why. As the manager took time out of their day to speak to him, he muttered incoherently about a piece of fruit he'd purchased weeks prior, and they shrugged their shoulders, apologizing half-heartedly as they returned to their duties. Old Man Wispy stood alone, giving dirty looks to other shoppers as they walked by.

Back in the parking lot, Old Man Wispy yelled at his rats. They had done nothing wrong, but he was compulsively abusive. He shambled into his wagon, pointing and screaming in random directions as if there was an emergency. Bystanders ignored him, because the world had moved on without him. His rats began pulling the cart, and somehow managed to contort their rodent faces into visible expressions of contempt.

An hour later, Old Man Wispy's wagon moseyed slowly through the woods. "Get out of the way," he croaked at twigs and pebbles. As the wagon approached a clearing, Old Man Wispy's bloodshot eyes spotted a group of young hikers traipsing happily along. One of them pointed to a mushroom, and the others laughed.

Old Man Wispy screamed profanities as his wagon lurched over the horizon. After a few moments, the hikers noticed him, and their expressions of authentic joy faded into looks of concern— Old Man Wispy was clearly a bad person. "Ribble rabble scrabble fuck mushroom's endangered!" he seemed to snarl. The group looked at each other and sighed. "Uhh, sorry. No worries," one of them shot back.

"No, it IS a worry! Garble barble fuck," Old Man Wispy replied. "Let's just go," one of the hikers suggested. One of the young women looked down at Old Man Wispy's rats and frowned sympathetically.

Hours later, Old Man Wispy's rat cart arrived back at his festering shack. A large tree branch had fallen onto his roof years prior, and still sat there. Squirrels scurried across it. As he walked inside, Old Man Wispy realized that he had squandered 18 hours harassing others and accomplished absolutely nothing. "Good," he thought to himself, spitting on the floor.

Sitting on his couch, Old Man Wispy reflected on how he had managed to become offended by every single person that he had encountered that day. "Pieces of shit," he said aloud to the empty room. Old Man Wispy dozed off slightly on the couch, then woke up and became angry at himself for falling asleep. He walked to the kitchen, digging his fingers deep into his butt to scratch an itch.

Old Man Wispy rifled through the contents of his pantry, fondling his groceries with the same fingers that had just been in his butt. He settled on a near-empty bag of chips, fishing his dirty fingers around the bottom to gather up the crumbs and then shoveling them into his mouth. He coughed. "Why does anyone like salt and vinegar flavor," he said.

Old Man Wispy put the kettle on for the tea that he hated. While he waited, he imagined a version of himself that had made better decisions and gone on to live a happy life. He became offended at the hypothetical version of himself, and ended up fuming at how their happy decisions were selfish and irresponsible.

After forcing himself to drink the entire cup of tea, Old Man Wispy returned to his bedroom, fumbling around in the drawer of the nightstand next to his dirty bed and pulling out his crusty pistol. He fumbled with the ammunition, ensuring that it was fully loaded, and began his nightly ritual of holding the loaded gun to his head. His hand trembled, and he whimpered as he hyperventilated. After adequately upsetting himself, he crammed the gun back into the drawer and muttered curse words.

As Old Man Wispy drifted off to sleep, he thought to himself that no one else who had ever lived was as smart and as talented as him, even though he had squandered his entire life doing nothing. Outside, his rats stirred and nibbled their ropes, settling into a peaceful slumber after defecating on themselves. They were happier than he was, and contributed more to society.