Hold on, he's trying to find a place to hide.

(A few miles outside of Denver, Colorado)

The hot summer sun hung directly overhead the interstate road between the I-70 and Mile 36, as the occasional car either leaving or just now entering Denver whizzed by without a care or concern in the world. There was a gentle gust blowing through the semi-wilderness, making the blazing mid-June day a bit more bearable.

As more vehicles passed through the area with nothing but their destination in mind, a slightly sunburned, sweaty head of a young man poked out from behind a roadside sign, looking around frantically to be sure that the coast was clear. He checked once, then twice, and thrice for good measure, before a deep inhale and the inevitable sprint through the rough sand to its next hiding spot.

This individual, a man in his mid-20s, was clearly in some kind of a hurry. It's not exactly hard to understand why, given his, well... less than desirable circumstances. The man cursed out loud at the heat coming from the ground beneath his bare feet, the shade of his most recent hidey-hole long gone as the man's desire for some sort of shelter outgrew his desperation to remain unseen.

After an excruciating sprint, he finally made it to the relative safety that was more shade of a sliggtly larger roadside sign. This, unfortunately, meant that he was exposed from the other side, which meant that there was nothing preventing a passerby to honk their horn at the sight of this man's bare buttocks.

This is Quentin Merlin McEdwards, though he preferred being called by his middle name. He had always felt that the name Quentin was too ordinary. Merlin was in self-appointed exile from his hometown in Oregon, after having a very public freakout at a rather rude customer at his old job. Coupons expired after three years at that location, no exceptions, he had argued. But terrible customers being terrible customers, they and Merlin had gotten into a very heated argument at the point of nearly screaming, and they had to be pried apart before one of them started throwing fists.

Merlin hadn't made matters any better when he called the customer a "fascist prick", but he digresses. After the incident, he was fired from his job and decided that he needed to get out of town while he still could and figure himself out. He left very early one late spring morning, not telling anyone where he was going, and set off for the open road, bringing everything that he could fit into the back his old-school hippie van with him. If he was going to travel around and figure out what he wanted out of life, he might as well make the most of it!

...fast forward two weeks later, and Merlin was left stranded on the side of a highway in the middle of the road, his van gone, all of his worldly possessions along with it, his pride and dignity in shambles, and without a stitch of clothing on him. And that was incredibly unlikely to change anytime soon.

Merlin continued to hide behind the relative safety of the roadside sign, his naked butt on display for anyone coming in behind him to see, with the knowledge that his van and everything he formerly owned was driving in the opposite direction, further and further away from it, never to be seen by him again. It was there that Merlin stopped to wonder just how he got himself into this mess...