It's late at night. Mal is taking a late night shower.The steam fills up the room and stays settled throughout. Serenity needs to fix up on it's filtration systems. He'll let Kaylee know about it in the morning.

Right now he's so tired, he couldn't give a shit if Purple Haze was coming out from the air vents. Which reminded him of the ancient archives of Jimi hendrix music he found during one of his raids on the Alliance. When he read on the history of LSD, he wondered if River had been exposed to any of that?

Just as he was drifting into thought, (despite it being useless info and random thought.) He hears a noise, a loud bump. It wasn't the normal sounds of the ship as he had been accustomed to. No, this was something totally different. Something that creeped the hell out of him. He turned off the shower and stepped out.

Mal looks in the mirror, looks around. He appears to be dazed and confused. This story could very well take place after a grueling mission in which he faces pure exhaustion. (Pretty much after any Firefly episode, or after any comic book convention)

"Damn that noise, everyone's asleep as I recall?"

He looks around more, but cannot find any towels or clothes. Or anything to cover with for that matter. He's on his own, to say the least.

"Shoot, I'll have to sneak in my quarters...so tired though..."

While he's taken the path to the starboard quarters many times, he seems to drift from this path in his state of exhaustion.

In the darkness he bumps the walls a few times, but doesn't make much noise to wake anyone. (Only Mal, he's a light sleeper. Why he's lived as long as he has.)

He thinks, "Crap, right about now I want to strangle the douche who designed this piece of shit vessel. No wonder I need a 24/7 mechanic, this piece of crap is breaking down all the time."

He enters the common area, then into

the passenger quarters. He looks around in bewilderment, but then sees something familiar.

"Ah...this should be it