The ship had just docked at Vermillion.
Vermillion is a place like no other. It has the casual class of Brisbane, the zest for life in its many different ways of Byron Bay and the international oddysey of Sydney. In certain parts you could find the loneliness of Perth, and the bitter heart and colonial debauchery of Darwin. In the areas of the thickest secrets, you'd find the transcient wonder of New Zealand bundled with the dark and bullet-riddled confession of Tasmania.

For the most part I only thought the ship had docked, I didn't truly know.
However, I knew that it was safe in the harbour because it had blown its ship-horn and woken me up from my www.rainymood.com induced slumber. I remember rolling over, groaning in harsh Goblin-like tones as the sun-rays floated down into my cranium - causing my poor, over-worked neurons to crash and tumble into each other, trying to make a picture of this big light-filled mess that was my world.

Today was the day when the ship would dock into Vermillion and my life would change forever.
But not because I had planned my life to change, no. My life would change because that is what lives do - at the oddest and most bizaare times, they change. And we can try and get smart about this, we can try and predict it, but the moment a future appears in our mind, your true future has already changed - you can never truly know your future, you can only poke at it, play with it, torture it a little as it puurs, growls and perhaps slashes at you from afar. The moment you think you have truly known the future, is the moment you set yourself up to hurt. And the moment you truly do know the future, is when you have passed through this temporal plain.

Today was the day when my life changed because my-life-changing was the first of the last things on my mind. This day had been coming since time began - and if I knew that then perhaps I would have really enjoyed the sun in the morning, rather than groaning, rolling over, and sleeping until early afternoon.

When I woke up I stumbled, with my dry mouth and shady, lingering nightmares, into the shower. Washing away my darkness with cold water I then dried off and let the sun do it's thing.
The birds were singing away the day and I had only just releived myself of the night-time-ghosts.
But this was nothing new... For I am an avid insomniac - and I always sleep in just that little bit too long so I remain tired for the rest of the day. I don't do this on purpose, atleast I think I don't. I truly do try to go to sleep at a decent hour - but I always seem to have too much energy. And really, the only time I feel like sleeping at all is immediately after I wake up, during school, or at dinner time. And none of these times are suitable. I've started using this website that I mentioned before, it plays a continuous loop of the sound of rain. I don't really know if it is having any effect yet... but my bed is constantly wet, again. And I can't blame it on the alcohol any more...

Oh yeah, I do love alcohol. That's one sure fire way to get to bed early. But it's not a good way. It leads you down a dark place, and your stomach in the morning feels like a trash compactor that was fed the burning hot remains of a burnt down house. You feel awful like you've ingested the smuldering toys that a child will never see again. You just want to vomit it all up and go back in time, before you drank so much, before you cared about the future, before you realised reality does exist.

And so I went out into the kitchen, in fresh clothes, with a stomach full of acid.

goes down town, to the RSL, meets these people, gets into their stories. Finishes the day with them, the free food, they hop back on the boat, and the kid finally gets home to sleep soundly.