Hot Town. Summer in the City.

I've spent the last 3 days moving into a new apartment.

It's a wonder I've had the energy to do anything creative tonight. The heat is ridiculous right now. Midway through the third day of moving, I realized that I wasn't sweating. My skin was just crying.

Have you ever been in the middle of doing something that required both hands and, without warning, one of your sweat beads just decides to -BOOM- fly maverick and forge a new path right into your eye?

But even before it makes contact with your eye, there's an entire series of split-second events that have to take place. Immediately, there's the realization that you're dealing with rogue sweat, because you can physically feel - on your forehead - where it's jumped out of its preordained lane and started dive bombing towards your eyelid. So you go into this defense mode with what tools you have available. And there in the middle of the second flight of stairs, with your father's 1964 antique dresser hanging in the balance, you begin doing that upward-blow-from-the-lower-lip thing that 14-year old girls do to fix their bangs. And you don't just puff a few breaths out with the half-hearted hope that you can deviate the sweat's warpath. You exhale as if you're trying to start a hurricane in the stairwell. You're blowing so hard, you wouldn't be surprised if you saw your soul fly out of your mouth. But since you're lips seem to be sweating too, you just start spraying your own cheek with spit in hopes that some saliva-shrapnel will counter-attack the sweat bead.

Doesn't matter though. Because you can't get the trajectory of the exhale right. So you launch into Plan B, and start shaking your head back and forth like a child who doesn't want to eat their carrots. And while you're exorcising yourself, the guy helping you move offers up the astute observation, "Sweat in your eye?" But he really doesn't care. He's just enjoying watching you. Absolutely. Lose. Your. Mind.

Plan B is a failure by all rights, so you stop, because the blood rushing to your head is an affirmation that you failed to hydrate properly this morning. So, still gripping the furniture with what strength you have left, you offer up some gut-wrenching groan of helplessness to the heavens as you take it right in the eye...like a chump. And since your dad's dresser was fashioned from a petrified tree that was actually planted in 1864, the option to lay it down and wipe your eye is out of the question...unless you want to watch your entire back literally pop off your body like, "It's been real. But I'm out." So, you end up cyclopsing it all the way to the Uhaul; one eye clamped shut, rocking that stupid facial contortion that resembles a painful half-grin. You look like the Penguin. And your eye is actually dissolving inside the socket. And you really didn't even want this dresser in the first place, but your mom said that "it matches the other furniture" and it just wasn't worth the debate.

So, rounding out the theme of villainous heat, I present to you Aiden Flint - the essential baddy of our story. Yes, he's a match in a business suit.