failure pt 8&9

Mrs. James sat in her chair next to her old beagle. She was a widow with enough money to live on but not enough to travel so she spent most of her time alone. She’d grown to care for the strange man next door who reminded her of the son she couldn’t see. She noticed how he would forget to feed himself, often forget to comb his hair, and on the days he wasn’t job hunting, if Soc and Wings weren’t keeping him busy he wouldn’t even put pants on when going to get the mail. She chuckled at the last run in she had with him when he was up getting the mail in his boxers. He turned bright red realizing he’d forgotten pants.

“Mrs. James, I can make dinner for myself, you don’t have to worry so much,” Rat said watching the old woman as she carefully stood to head to the stove. She just smiled at him and walked past him.

“Don’t be silly, you’re not going to cook for yourself. The only home cooked you get besides my food is Wings,” she started cooking and he wanted to jump to his own defense but she was right.

He watched he before settling down into her couch. He agreed to have dinner with her and that’s exactly what he would do.

“Good, I’m glad it’s settled. I know you have plans with Wings and Soc when they get back from their trip but before and any other time, don’t be afraid to come over,” she mixed noodles into boiling water and began to work her magic on them. He loved when she made pasta. Any kind of pasta that Mrs. James made was fantastic. She said her grandmother taught her how to make the sauce right. Rat was happy to sit on the comfortable piece of furniture and loved the smell of her cooking. This was the closest thing to happiness he’d come across since the last time his family had been altogether.

He thought back to when he and his wife first found out they were having a son. They both found themselves in a state of shock. Everyone said they would be having a girl and they believed them but the doctor came back saying it was a boy and their whole world changed. A little girl meant standardized testing for all kinds of things. The city wanted to make sure no women carried the genes they were trying to weed out of the population. Having a boy meant there wouldn’t be any of the standardized tests and they would have the freedom and the income to support their family comfortably in their apartment. His wife looked him in the eyes and a weight she’d been carrying lifted. There was no money issues to deal with, there was no monthly testing to schedule around. A son granted them freedom.

Mrs. James brought Rat out of his daze. He imagined his small sons face. The bright white smile, the big brown eyes and soft brown skin, his dark curly hair bouncing with every step he took and stood up in all directions. He looked so much like his mother yet had a hint of Rat. She sat a plate down in front of him and returned to her chair not bringing Rats attention to the food. He soon found it on his own, still remembering the family he lost.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Soc stood with her brother waiting on Rat. Today he had a job interview and they were excited to know if he got the job or not. They leaned over the roof and watched to road in front of the apartment building.

    “Soc, don’t ask him, just let it go,” Wings was referring to the framed picture hanging on Rat’s wall.

    “Wings, I just want to know why he spaces out, and why he avoids them like the plague. I need to know what's wrong with him.” Wings sighed. His sister was impossible sometimes. When she wanted to know something she was relentless even if it meant bringing up something someone didn’t want brought up.

    “You could be hurting him, would you really like that?” Wings wasn’t usually one to get in the way of his sister but he could tell this was a sensitive subject for Rat.

    “Holding it in is hurting him just as much as telling me would. He needs to let it out somewhere or else he’s going to explode.” Wings sighed again, heavier this time. Soc was a child. She was used to people telling her what she wanted to know and doing what she told them to do. Rat not telling her was baiting her. He knew the minute she learned it was just a boring family photo she would lose all interest and not deal with the mess she created.

    “Soc, remember, other people have reasons to keep secrets just like we do. Let him be,” Soc said nothing but knew she couldn’t drop this. She needed to know and what’s more she knew he needed to tell someone and let out all the bad he kept stored up.

Failure part 7

Days after the trip through town Rat was sitting on the roof with Billy watching people come home from work. Wings and Soc were out on a job and everyone else was busy so the two of them sat watching. It would be dark soon, they knew the Tainted who battled at night would be out robbing high end people who braved the streets and fighting the silent gang wars that were going on. Rat had always been careful to be inside before dark but Billy had once lived in the dark and fought the war.

“What’s it like?” Rat asked. Billy glanced over at the man next to him then back to the pothole covered street below.

“What?” he asked knowing what Rat was asking but unsure of how to answer.

“Night, what’s it like to be out in the night?” He hadn’t been out in the dark since he’d been in college and had no plans  to venture out in it.

“Scary, exciting, the most freeing yet terrifying part of my life so far. I know I seem like an all around good guy but at night, then in that time I was a different person. I didn’t do it cause someone made me either,” he looked remembering the nights he went out, the guards he shot, the Tainted he killed to save himself. “The only thing about it is, if you look like you got something someone wants you’re bound to either get bothered by the guards or killed by the Tainted who live there.”

Rat thought about that for a moment. He hadn’t thought about the Tainted that lived during the day. The ones that seem respectable on the surface but in reality were just as Tainted or more so than the people who ran around killing people and robbing people at night. These were the truly Tainted. The corrupt business owners, the gangsters that ran large operations behind the guise of a normal business. The loan sharks that would then send their men at night to kill or take the money a person couldn’t pay back. Rat had seen a couple of his old neighbors get visits from them in the middle of the night. He said nothing knowing the guard wouldn’t bother protecting him and just use his tip to stir up trouble and get him killed. There was a lot of problems in the city but the people at night were only a small portion of the real sickness.

Billy checked his watch and stood up.

“Well Rat it’s time I head off to work. You don’t get in any trouble while I’m gone,” Billy felt responsible for him just like everyone else in the building. Rat smiled and nodded and Billy ran off to work leaving Rat alone with his thoughts.

failure pt 5&6

Rat stood waiting on the girl and her brother to finish getting ready. Today they were going out for something fun and the poor man had been bullied into tagging along. He pulled on a t-shirt that Wings gave him and one of his three pairs of jeans that he’d acquired at a thrift store. He pulled on his old boots that he used to wear out with his family and decided to comb his hair.

Looking in the mirror he could see how much he’d thinned out since losing his son. But the weight was slowly starting to come back thanks to Wings and Mrs. James. He walked out of his bathroom and threw the shirt he’d worn to bed in the dirty clothes. He wasn’t really confident in showing off his torso and the scar he’d gained in college made it all the more uncomfortable. He hated telling the story.

Walking by the family photo he stopped and stared at his beautiful family.

“I miss you,” he muttered touching the chipped glass. A knock at the door startled him causing him to knock the picture off the wall. He caught it and held on tightly. Soc threw open the door and walked in followed by Wings.

“Hey Ratty, who’s in the pictur-” Soc began to ask but Rat cut her off.

“Do you two have a nail that isn’t bent? The ones in my walls keep letting the frame fall,” Rat didn’t want to answer her. This wasn’t the first time asking but it was hopefully enough to figure out he didn’t want to talk about it.

Wings eyed him for a moment then shook his head yes.

“Of course we do, when we get back you can borrow a hammer and take one of our nails and handle that. Can’t even begin to imagine where you’re gonna hang it though,” Wings chuckled looking at the empty apartment. Rat set the frame down on the counter determined to keep it from breaking.

“Thanks, anyway where are we going?” He wasn’t usually this chatty but it left no room for the questions he didn’t want to answer.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Walking through the city Wings, Soc, and Rat found themselves distracted by the people around them. They were all off on a mission. Some were just running errands that would seem small but had their entire jobs riding on them and others rushed off to clock in on time. Very few people strolled leisurely through the crowded streets, yet here the three of them were. They caught the eye of a couple guards who were suspicious and started to follow them.

“Billy’s a real cool guy,” Soc said. She looked casually at the guards, realizing they were following but choosing to say nothing about it.

“Yeah, I’m glad he’s a neighbor, else Rat here’d be going broke on his addiction,” Wings chuckled noticing but deciding it didn’t matter. The three of them weren’t doing anything wrong.

Rat was clueless to the guards following, “I don’t smoke that much, honestly you make me sound like a chimney, I only smoke when I get stressed,” he nudged Wings. Soc and Wings laughed and he rolled his eyes.

The guards followed them in the direction of Billy’s convenience store. One eyed the three realizing they were nothing but jobless bums who were no threat to anyone while the other was offset by the group. All the other jobless people search tirelessly for work while these three casually accepted it and were content with it. He figured their ease came from some reassurance that they would be fine. He narrowed down they were out to rob something or someone. The big guy looked like he had it in him to really hurt someone while the little guy looked like the brain of the whole situation. He’d seen plenty of screen shows where the groups used girls to lure men in and two guys would jump him.

A small convenience store on the corner of Chester and High came into view and the guard prepared for the worst. Robbing a convenience store in broad daylight wasn’t the strangest thing he’d seen and if he figured it right, it was the smartest time of the day to do it since most of the guard didn’t work until night fall.

The group passed through the door and walked straight to the counter. The guard decided they were very direct but it didn’t change his view of the three until they walked up and started laughing with the tall bald clerk. The other guard sighed bored and turned to walk away but his partner stared on for a moment bored since being sentenced to Untainted hours of the day. He missed watching the violence and getting a chance to be part of the action but knew the more trusting man next to him was not made for the night shifts anymore.

Inside Rat bought a pack of cigarettes.

“Rat ma man you’re gonna kill yourself with these,” Billy laughed. He was always teasing Rat about his unhealthy habit but Rat didn’t mind.

“Well I have to die somehow,” Rat muttered. Soc smacked him on the arm and Wings chuckled.

“Rat, why don’t you come over later, I got somethin for ya,” Billy asked. Rat looked at the intimidating yet friendly man for a moment then smiled. He’d never seen the inside of Billy’s apartment before.

“Okay, yeah that sounds good, you don’t have to give me anything though,” Rat was overwhelmed by the support his neighbors gave him. He thought back to his old apartment and realized none of the neighbors even said hi to one another in that building yet here they went out of the way for each other. Rat smiled sadly thinking about how his wife would have loved Mrs. James and how her and Ms. Martinez would no doubt get into arguments about cleaning and whose parents were more strict.

Wings watched the thin man go into a daze. He noticed that from time to time Rat would almost step out of reality for a couple minutes but didn’t want to say anything. Soc nudged him but Wings said nothing, not sure if Rat even realized he did this.

Billy cleared his throat and behind them a customer stood tapping his foot impatiently. Wings grabbed Rat’s arm and pulled him out of the way and away from the day dream he was stuck in.

Soc eyed the now awakened man more determined to get the truth out of him.   

Failure pt 4

The building was buzzing. Little by little, they learned about the new tenant; his strangely nervous personality and his habits.  Mostly they learned from the bubbly Soc, the man being a quiet, timid person. Mrs. James, the lady next door on the right side dropped food off at his door every night. She was happy to be taking care of the man she saw as too thin, too uncertain, and certainly too unhappy.

Ms. Martinez, the lady to the left of his apartment made sure to get his mail every day. While the man would go out job hunting she would charm the mailman into giving her his mail too and she would slide it under the door.

Billy, the man who lived on the first floor next to the laundry room, showed him to the roof and offered a lawn chair for Rat to sit in and relax when he wasn’t out job hunting. He noticed the man would sneak out once a night to smoke and seemed to always be running low on his cigarettes.

Wings and Soc made sure to slip dinner invitations under his door while he was away and would always update Mrs. James but she still left food, caring little when he would eat it, just that it would be available whenever he was hungry.

The five of them met in the laundry room to discuss what to do with the new tenant. He was still quiet and still hard to approach but there was no malice in him.

“I noticed him stumbling with his keys the other day. When he saw me staring he started searching faster and ended up dropping his keys,” Billy said laughing as he talked to Mrs. James. She touched the man’s large light brown arm.

    “Don’t tease him dear, he’s just nervous,” she said firmly. He snorted and pushed his basket full of shirts into the washing machine. He hadn’t had a full conversation with Rat yet but he was sure the man was someone he could get along with, even if he seemed a little immature. Wings chuckled and gripped his bag full of work supplies. He had a job that night and it would be just Soc and Rat for dinner but he was happily certain nothing would happen. He couldn’t believe the man was the same age as him. While Wings looked in his early twenties, Rat looked closer to thirty yet they’re the same age. Twenty eight, not a family man yet he was a businessman. Wings and Soc were thinking the photo on the wall in his apartment was his adopted mom and sibling but they weren’t sure.

    Soc ran through the room, “he’s coming! He looks so tired. I shouted to him from the roof but he just slumped forward, I bet it was a rough day so let’s all say hi and ask him about his day!” Soc was energetic. She wanted to brighten his day but everyone else kindly agreed to help. They all stood waiting for him to come through the door into the laundry room so he could take the stairs but started doing things to make it look less awkward.

    He walked through the door holding his bag loosely on his shoulder.

    “Hey Rat!” Soc said running up to him. He gave her a half hearted smile thinking about how happy his son used to be when he’d come home.

    “Hello dear, how was your day?” Mrs. James asked. Billy walked up slowly to not startle the man.

    “Hey bro, s’up?” he asked ruffling the man’s nicely combed hair. Wings gave a nod and went towards the door. Rat looked confused. Ms. Martinez, who’d been quietly been doing her laundry until now smiled.

    “Welcome home Rat, I bought you a pack a cigs from Billy’s place, we get a discount. Stop by my place and I’ll give em to you,” Ms. Martinez hadn’t said anything prior to now but the others took comfort in her interaction. Rat nodded shyly and went to the stairs.