McDonald's in Levy

 Rock needed help understanding the managerial strategy he worked under at McDonald's in Levy. He and his cohorts were asked to work from morning until closing. As they progressed through their shifts, each would become the restaurant's manager whenever an area of their expertise was required. All the employees were longtime members of the Little Rock Hash House Harriers, a group Rock had run with for over forty years. Hashers understood Rock's mastery of quarter-pounders with cheese.

East of Blackwell

 Work underway on U.S. Interstate 40 between Russellville, Arkansas, and Levy was not supposed to impair traffic. Rock, therefore, began his drive home to suburban North Little Rock from a football game at Arkansas Tech without concern. However, a handful of miles from Morrilton, just east of Blackwell on his eastward journey, Rock followed traffic into a seemingly impossible tunnel. It ran under the entire breadth of the interstate with about ten feet of clearance. He and everyone else were required to drive on broad wooden planks. Arkansas Highway Department workers were everywhere in the dim light. Clearly, something was wrong, and Rock and the other drivers began to turn their vehicles around.

Underwater

 Everyone knew how long and hard the rain had fallen, but Rock didn't expect this. He was at his big brother Jim's house in suburban St. Louis, and Jim had just called from downtown to say the city was underwater. "I mean, this is bad," Jim said. Rock could feel a rumble. He looked through the living room window to see an endless line of eighteen-wheel trucks rolling north from downtown along Central Parkway. "Jim, you might want to talk to Karen," Rock said. "It looks like every truck driver in the midwest knows the way to your house."

Little air

 Rock thought he had a million dollars, but he awoke to find he was broke. It seemed odd how little air accompanied poverty and how hard it was to breathe in his house.

Hopeful

 There was no way for Rock to feel sure. Still, he had established enough to indicate he lived somewhere in the past, present, or future along the endless corridors of time. Furthermore, Rock was confident the authority in charge would lean his way after he examined the evidence. At any rate,  Rock was hopeful.

A mess

 Rock was dead. This time he knew for sure. A diety of some sort had begun introducing him to post-life options, all of which seemed undesirable. The final was a disconcerted version of the den where he died, far messier than the mere clutter of his everyday experience. Some of the furniture looked as if it had been knocked out of place. Shelved books were scattered across the floor and rug, and Rock knew it was no worthwhile place to spend eternity. Furthermore, he was also prone to the hardwood near his front door and found it hard to breathe.

Medieval Europe

 Rock and Elizabeth Kimble watched through the snack-bar window as a theatre group practiced on UALR's grounds outside the campus student center. They saw perhaps twenty young men and women dressed in the burlap and leather of characters from medieval Europe. "Where would you put the over-under on the number of them who have had sex with each other?" Rock asked. Elizabeth smiled, shook her head in a pretense of disdain, and said, "Do you mean today?"

Ford Fairlane

 The bill would arrive soon for some rudimentary front-end work auto mechanics had performed for Rock, who imagined it would come to no more than two or three hundred dollars. One of the mechanics wiped his hands with a rag and told Rock his effort had been a snap. As the man spoke, Rock became aware for the first time the front of his car—a navy-blue 1968 Ford Fairlane—was crushed and buckled to within perhaps three feet of its windshield. He could not remember an accident, and it occurred instantly that he had been taken advantage of for these men to have done any work. This damage would cost far more than the car was worth.

On top of that

 This panicked Rock most. It was well past the paper's deadline, and his story was unsent. He wasn't even sure he had written it. On top of that, his blood glucose level was so low it caused him to stumble as he looked for his laptop and the notebook with his game notes. He fought against his walk's wobble as he staggered to his car at dawn, self-conscious and aware enough to fear embarrassment if a neighbor or neighbors were to witness his hypoglycemic struggle.

Rancidness

 Rock had successfully induced each Little Rock Hash House Harrier to drink rancid motor oil drilled by the former U.S. president Donald Trump. He was concerned but not quite sure what rancidness meant.

A wooden twig

 As Rock stood in line at an apparently immensely popular buffet, a pleasant but not particularly pretty nurse struck up a conversation. Shortly after it began, she said, "Hold still for a minute. You have something in your left ear." Rock paused as the nurse extracted the thing she had noticed. When she showed it to him, he was stunned. It was a wooden twig, perhaps three inches long with multiple tiny branches. Before he said anything to the nurse, the twig quickly blossomed into an ornate white flower. Moments later, with no further thought, Rock swam back to his car in an uphill swimming pool, twenty feet wide and a quarter-mile long. Gravity did not affect the water, which did not seem odd to Rock.

Longshot

 There was an intense fear among the hundreds of people that there was no escape from the unrelenting roar of television infomercials in Rock's house. Furthermore, it had become difficult for anyone to breathe. Rock also experienced balance issues. None of this seemed survivable to anyone, until Rock found a lubricated funnel he thought might provide a route out. It was an extreme longshot, certainly, but he slid through it until it deposited him into his silent living room/den.

Francis Ouimet

 Rock was surprised to learn sports teams in the U.S. and worldwide had begun to adopt the pattern from the golf shirt he slept in Monday night and Tuesday morning as the standard for their game jerseys. He, by the way, ordered the shirt from the USGA after he watched a U.S. Open contender dressed in one for the third round. It is white, speckled with tiny blue silhouettes of Francis Ouimet and his twelve-year-old caddy from the 1913 national championship. 

Adrift

 Life on earth was done. Rock had begun to accept it as he wandered around his house on a hot afternoon in July. There was an abyss gathered around. He knew his presence was an anomaly for mankind, the remainder of which was gone, adrift in the ether of oblivion.