Failure pt 3

    Rat dressed in one of his better suits and tried not to be nervous. He couldn’t turn down the girls dinner invitation no matter how nervous he was. He combed his messy hair back into a professional style and considered shaving the sides for a moment but knew now wasn’t the time to try a new hair style. He slipped on his dress shoes and moved towards the door. Upon opening it he saw Soc standing in another big tank top, green this time but what was a skirt was now a pair of knee length shorts and knee high stockings.

    “Hi Rat, I thought I’d come escort you to dinner!” She looped her arm around his and pulled him towards the door that led to the stairway. “I made you some stuff to decorate your door with. Also I didn’t want to say anything last time but I will now, you need some furniture, I can see if Wings has any in storage we can lend you or give you,” she was a talker, that’s for sure. But Rat concluded she was nice and didn’t mean to mock him by calling him Rat. As they climbed up into the upstairs Rat realized there was only one apartment up there. While it was the smallest floor it was the size of a house as compared to the closet sized single room apartments on the floors below.

    “Soc, is Wings that big guy with black hair I see in the morning sometimes?” Rat asked since talking to her getting the invitation he and her have talked at the mailbox a couple times and she’d even brought over cookies.

    “Yeah, that’s my big brother,” Rat gulped. This sweet seeming girl mixed in with the wrong crowd. More than just that, Rat would have to be around the large man and spend a dinner with him. He held his breath in hopes that the giant wasn’t home.

    “Brother! Come meet Rat! He’s the new guy I invited for dinner!” she shouted leading him over to comfy looking furniture. Rat stood.

    The hulking man came around the wall in the kitchen to see the smaller man before him. Rat took this up close chance to realize the man was even scarier than previously thought. He had a sharp dark piercing gaze and thick shoulder length black hair. He was wearing a black tank top and not smiling. His sister ran to him and hugged him. Against his darker complexion she looked like a snow.

    “Have a seat Ratty!” she said laughing. She looked at the stranger from downstairs and could tell he was a good looking man. He was older than her but still she could appreciate from a distance, how nice he looked. She wondered how someone with such looks could be single and not have at least one person trying to get his attention. Rat stiffly sat down on the couch.

    Wings stood watching the man fidget. Soc got carried away and wanted to help everyone which brought in one or two robbers that would try to steal their stuff or hurt them, he decided this would be the last one. His gun sat in the kitchen waiting for the moment this went sour. The man still hadn’t spoken.

    “It was nice of-” he spoke softly before getting cut off by the annoyed hulk of a man.

    “Why are you so quiet? You move in here and don’t introduce yourself to the neighbors, then my sister goes outta her way to invite you over for dinner and you barely said a damn thing since you got here,” Wings snapped. He stepped back towards the kitchen. The man sunk into the couch he was sitting on. He’d never been very good at socializing but he figured this wasn’t the proper way to introduce yourself. He started to panic a bit but kept all his nervous fidgeting to his hands, where he played with the fraying parts of the seam on his pants.

    “I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to offend you. I j-just got fired from my job, I’m just... just trying to get back on my feet,” Wings started laughing at the frantic man, he was funny in his nervousness, “I want to get away from this city, away from everything. I’ll leave if you like, I told her this was too much. I’m... I’m sorry.”

    Wings laughed hard, this man was nothing but an unlucky Untainted living in this apartment complex until he got back on his feet. Not like Wings and Soc. They used this as a cover to hide what they really were. This man wasn’t a thief, wasn’t even a good liar no doubt.

    “I like you Rat, you’re honest, I’m Wings, Spaghetti’s on the menu for dinner,” Wings liked him because of his honesty.

    Rat sat running his hand through his hair pushing the grey hair back, he was nervous but doubted the huge man wanted to hurt him.

    Wings walked back into the kitchen and tucked his gun away in his room glad he didn’t have to use it. He stirred the noodles and his homemade sauce. Mrs. James said the man hadn’t brought in anything but take out once every two or three days since arriving and a homemade meal would probably be better than anything he’d had in awhile.

    Once dinner was done Wings fixed each of them a plate of food and sat it all on the table in the kitchen. They were going to have a nice meal, he even threw in some homemade garlic toast and got out a bottle or red wine. The man was going to appreciate dinner and hopefully learn to fit in here at the complex.

    “Come on, dinner,” Wings said. Soc grabbed Rat’s hand and pulled him along after her. He walked through the doorway into the kitchen and sat down at the empty chair next to Soc. She smiled.

    “Looks like my brother really likes you,” she said, taking a bite out of the garlic toast, “he got out the wine for you!” She laughed and ate some of the spaghetti on her garlic toast. Wings sat not looking at the man who he’d spent some time and thought on.

    “I’m glad to hear that,” Rat relaxed in his chair and sipped his wine. He sampled the drink and realized that he would have to be careful or he’d drink the whole bottle.

    Rat thought back to the first time he’d met his wife, she was celebrating the holidays the way any college girl would coming from the strictly religious home. He was chugging liquor and trying to forget that his parents were coming up to see him for Christmas. As much as he tried he didn’t remember much of the night on his own but she’d told him time and time again he’d asked for her number and even went out of the way to make sure she got back to her dorm unharmed. She said he told her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen over and over again. Every time she retold that story she would play with her wedding ring that always complimented her dark skin.

    Tears threatened to leak from his eyes and everyone at the table noticed yet said nothing. They all had their fair share of memories that brought them to tears, the siblings ate allowing the strange man a moment to regain himself.

Failure pt. 2

The man with the greying brown hair stood staring at his abused new apartment. Holes lined the walls and nails stuck out of the standard white drywall. On one nail hung the picture of his family and on the counter sat a small microwave. He looked down at the dented worn hardwood floor and to his sleeping bag before sighing and reaching for one of the suits hanging on the cheap wooden bathroom door. While the place was beat up he did appreciate it. This building was on the better side of the bad part of town and he wasn’t sleeping in a tent at the park anymore.

He ran his fingers over the fraying hem of the pants, it had been a month since losing his job. Besides the day he lost his job and the two days he took off to apartment hunt and rent he had been searching for a replacement everyday since. This was the suit he’d worn the day he’d been fired. He felt extra unlucky in it but the others were in desperate need of being cleaned.

He heard a woman outside the door speaking Spanish. He could tell by the one sided conversation and the pauses she was on the phone with someone arguing. The man holding the suit shied away from the door. None of the people in the building had tried to talk to him but there was two in particular that made him think they were Tainted. A man who lived upstairs and only came down during the early morning and late at night and a man on the first floor who often left and came around at about the same time as the other guy. The man ventured into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He was thin, even in his face, he had a sharp looking nose and dull green eyes, his skin was pasty from the constant cloud cover and while he was tall he was thin and lanky without any noticeable muscles. He knew they were there, he used to pick his son up and dance around their old apartment for hours and carry his wife when she was sick during pregnancy.

He was about to open his mouth to speak when a knock at the door hushed him. He waited hoping the knocking would stop but couldn’t help consider the landlord. He looked down at his clothes and sighed, he was in shorts and a tank top but that would have to do.

The knocking continued causing him to quickly cross the room to the door. He leaned against the wooden door and peered out through the cracked peak hole only to see a bright red head of hair and a pale smiling face.

He cracked the door open and stared at the small girl in front of him. She had unnaturally red hair, deep brown eyes and pale white skin. Her hair was styled really short in the front and on top but long off the back and in a pony tail. She was wearing a giant red tank top that looked more like a man’s and a mid thigh length ruffled black skirt with mismatching thigh high socks and no shoes. She pushed the door open wider and took him in for a moment.

“Hi, I’m Soc, nice to meet you!” The girl named Soc had a Middle Eastern accent that was just barely noticeable. The man scoffed. Soc? What kind of name was that? He took in her appearance again before laughing a little more. The little girl could never get a job looking like that, schools wouldn’t even let her go there looking the way she did. Something in her eyes though seemed to make him curious though.

“My big brother and I’ve been meaning to come meet you,” she stared at him, he was handsome, and she could tell if he had some decent food he might even look better. Her eyes stopped on his pointed nose and the flecks of grey in his hair.

The man went to speak but she cut him off before he could even open his mouth.

“You look like a rat I used to have, loved the little beast, that’s what your name can be! Rat! I like it,” the man’s mouth hung open a little. The girl hadn’t bothered to ask his name she simply gave him one of her own. “Look Ratty, I don’t want you to give out your real name to the people here, it’s for your own protection,” she said then she pulled a piece of paper out of the waist of her skirt.

“Dinner invite for Friday, Ratty! I’d come dressed but if those are what you like to wear all the time it’s no problem either,” she giggled.

“I-I couldn’t,” the man stammered. No one had ever been so direct with him. No one had even given him a nickname before, let alone renamed him, no one was quite like the girl in front of him. She reached up with her thin pale arms and pulled his head down to her level. Once he was down there she planted a kiss on his right cheek and skipped off towards the stairs.

He shut the door slowly, not quite sure what just happened. He held the invitation and sat down on his sleeping bag.

That girl couldn’t have been more than twenty and here she was knocking on his door, the poor thing. He couldn’t help but feel like his life was meant to bring other people to their untimely tragic deaths. He sat blaming himself for the loss of his son and wife yet he knew he couldn’t really be blamed. While he could reason with himself and say there was no way he caused either death he still took responsibility for not protecting them from the terrible fates they were given. He looked down at his hands and while he knew it wasn’t even possible he felt like he’d cause the death of anyone who came too close to him.

Today he’d take the day off.