Desperation

Martin had always felt a little desperate.

At this very moment he was hoping desperately for a break, which, if he had been counting (which he had not been) would make it the the 2,876th time he had desperately hoped for a break since he had turned 8 years old.

Martin had no way of knowing this, but as luck would have it, he was the single most desperate human who had ever lived.

He had no way of knowing it simply because he had never stopped to think about it, but it was true.

Being desperate for friendship, being desperate for something to do, being desperate for a job, being desperate for money, being desperate for, well, for everything, was how Martin thought everybody felt.

Always felt, every minute of every day.

Martin was not able to entertain the thought that people, most people, the vast majority of people, did not spend their days in desperation.

That thought had literally never entered his head.

The desperation that Martin was feeling was not common to most people. In fact, it was so rare to feel this sort of desperation that medical science still had not encountered it.

The particularly rare desperation that Martin was feeling was almost unexplainable.

It was the desperation that came to only those that lived in desperation, those that took in desperate breaths and spent their waking hours making constant desperate glances.

It was the desperate feeling that the desperate feeling one was feeling was not going to be desperate enough...not this time.