Awesome Opossums

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.