Entropy

Entropy, amusingly, creates crystal and chaos. It takes all matter and reduces it slowly to its most stable form. This is often called its "ground state".

Tom was feeling his ground state this morning. He strained to open one eye to survey his surrounds - he knew he was on a carpeted floor, but wasn't entirely sure whose floor it was. The lanky man did his best to push through his half-dream haze to recall what had happened the previous evening. For every certain memory, however, a half dozen false memories had to be flushed out - he was certain, for example, that he hadn't done shots with his ninth-grade biology teacher, but he was certain shots had been involved.

After an aching eon, he firmly planted his right hand on the floor and pushed through his angry fuzz. He managed to flip himself, now acutely aware of the drool pasted to the left side of his face. He drew in a great breath and, lungs suddenly afire, began to convulse in cough.

It was this involuntary action that finally pushed Tom from spread-eagle to fetal, the to kneeling and standing. An iron grip on the nearest object - a leather couch - he took an abbreviated inventory of his person. He had pants on and a wallet and keys seemed to be in the pockets. These important items accounted for, he began a search for the bathroom - he slowly recalled the layout of the place, though the owner's name still eluded him.

Successful in the search, he stripped naked and let loose a watery terror into the toilet from one end and into a trash-can from the other. As flashed of the night worked their way into his mind, he had a thought: I should probably name this particular batch of moonshine "Entropy".