Chapter Two
“John? I’m home.” There was no response. I was used to it, though. If the damn hippie wasn’t working in his garden, cooking a vegan meal, or complaining about society, he was sleeping. Only one of these scenarios involved him keeping his mouth shut.
I placed my keys on the plate in the entryway and slipped off my shoes. Getting any outside dirt on the carpet would have him ripping it out at the seams and bleaching every inch of this place.
He called himself a hermit, I called him agoraphobic.
I walked the plush carpet in my blue and green Christmas socks that, before now, had been successfully hidden inside my sneakers, and head towards my room. It was the smallest room in the house, but I couldn’t complain. In all honesty, I owed John a lot more than society believed I owed it. He let me stay in his apartment, things that were exceptionally hard to find. Almost all of my graduating class still stayed with their parents, only because the apartment complexes had been filled. His only request was that I don’t become a major sellout, pay only one third of the rent, and keep the grime of the world outside his abode. We lived in a nice form of symbiosis and coexistence. There was the occasional intercourse, but that was purely a primal instinct between the two of us. If one of us found a partner, the other wouldn’t feel a single shred of sadness. That wasn’t how our relationship worked. Hell, as far as I knew, John hated putting up with me, and I hated putting up with him.
Inside my room, it was impossible to tell a twenty-three year old lived there. Old wrinkled posters from the 2010s lingered around the walls in no particular fashion or order, and the bed didn’t seem nearly long enough for anyone past the age of twelve. The truth was, it wasn’t. I had to curl myself into a ball in order to fit on it, but any bed that fit my size wouldn’t fit inside this shoe box of a room. I groaned and threw myself onto the bed, the old springs creaking under my lightweight. If I’d had it my way, I’d have holo-frames with pristine posters flickering their static imaged beautifully across my room. I’d have pillows with chemical scents that induce a sleep state and a bed filled with geese feathers, a bird long extinct. But it was not my way, it was John’s way, and it would be until I got an actual job, or he died. And seeing has almost every available job in this damn city (or country for that matter) was taken, I guess I had to sit around and wait for the health-freak to die. Dammit, he wouldn’t die of health issues, and he didn’t go outside enough to get hit by a car. He was practically invincible
With a groan, I rolled myself face down on the bed, shoving my face into an old Power Rangers pillowcase. Had John actually watched Power Rangers when he was younger? Where the hell did they play reruns? I felt a twitch in my brain reminding that reruns of anything hadn’t been played since 2045. If he’d managed to watch it as a kid somewhere, he was a lucky bastard.
“Avey, are you in?” his voice radiated through the apartment, and he seemed a bit tired. Had I woken him up? How long had he been sleeping? I didn’t answer his call for a while, just laid and stared at my unpainted walls.
“Avey?!” His voice was louder, a bit more aggravated.
“Yeah, yeah I’m here!” I sighed and rolled myself off the bed as half assed as I could manage. My legs guided themselves outside the door and towards the master bedroom that John resided in. On my way, though, he appeared from the kitchen, holding a knife and some…was that kale. God, not more kale.
“Take a bite, yeah?” He asked, smiling proudly.
Who the hell grew their own kale? I couldn’t decline though, not really. John had a kind demeanor and was the largest believer in pacifism I had ever met, but he was easily angered about the smallest things. If I didn’t appreciate “the Earth’s ingredients” he’d start to preach (more like yell), and it almost always ended with an empty threat to kick me out. Except nothing is ever completely empty. So I took a small bit of the green leaf between my thumb and forefinger and nibbled on it.
