Like every good story, mine begins with a dream. In this case, it was a nightmare I had two weeks ago on a humid summer night after eating too much overpriced county fair kielbasa. I should have seen it coming.

I’ve had the chasing dream before. Who hasn’t? Usually it’s a wild animal or a psychopath or some inexplicable amorphous shadow doing the chasing. On this particular night, however, it was a stack of paperwork ten feet high.

Confession time. I can’t stand paperwork. I mean, I really really hate it.

I became an artist in the hopes of avoiding it.

Some people have natural artistic talent, an eye for detail, a sense of color balance, a certain proclivity for drawing the human form. Not me. I just don’t like paperwork.

After high school I decided to deny the existence of numbers. No adding. No subtracting. Ones became Washingtons and fives became Lincolns and that’s as far as I’d take it.

It would seem the IRS wasn’t too keen on that idea.

The nightmare began the moment I woke up, two weeks ago.