Mortality and the common Brick or what not to think about on one's birthday... "Someone take these dreams away, That point me to another day, A duel of personalities, That stretch all true realities."

And so on a random summer's day, Brick reported sick from work and stayed home. Home was what he called a claustrophobic crawlspace that is disdainfully referred to as a 'Studio Apartment'. A lonely crimson guitar hung above the broken futon that Brick used to slip into temporary oblivion between dusk and dawn.

He hadn't slept that night. The air was oppressive with its mixture of humidity, heat and haughty disregard for one's ability to breathe. Stripped down to just a sweat-drenched pair of slacks, Brick stared at the bare wall across from his hopeless body. Exposed red bricks stretching from floor to ceiling played tricks on the vulnerable Brick's mind.

Beside him sat the omnipresent specter of G Mod. Brick no longer remembered who he was or what he had done to him in his former life as the troubled leader of the world's worst band, MFUJ. G Mod was just the darkest shade in a room desperate for illumination.

"What is a man?" asked the incorporeal one.

"I don't know anymore," relied the recumbent Brick.

"A man is a vessel for change. He is a sentient being capable of making decisions that affect not only himself but the lives of those around him."

"..."

"What is a brick?"

"Useless..."

"It is a tool used by men to build something. Or it can be a weapon. It all depends on the man's intentions."

"Huh..."

"What is mortality?"

"Mortality?"

"Did I stutter?"

"No..."

"Mortality is the measure of a man's limits. Health, endurance, luck... A man's time comes when he has depleted these three."

On the walls appeared the faint outlines of MFUJ band members Shadow, Tigerman and Slate.

"I know these faces.. from somewhere."

"I'm sure you do. The question I have to ask you, Brick: how long is the life-cycle of a brick under duress?"

"I don't know..."

"Okay, fair enough," declared the ego-stroking G Mod,"What is depression?"

"It is drowning without the water...without the hope of coming back for oxygen. It is the constant feeling that one's life is devoid of purpose or fulfillment. It is cancer of the soul, hell on earth."

"So what's holding you to this world Brick? What is preventing you from finding peace?"

"These dreams filled with the dead souls from my past and present. My spirit swerves out of their way, but  they prove overwhelming. They make me crave my own demise, a demise I will never achieve on my own..."