Heartbeats
Ch-3 Nothing and Everything, All at Once
Previous ChapterI stare at the small screen, my bloodshot eyes focused upon it to the exclusion of all else. My roommate had come in sometime around 1 or 2, stared me down as I completed yet another round of zombie conquest, grumbled something about how he was going to be the first victim of the trotting dead and then promptly collapsed into his bed. His body was stinking of alcohol and vomit and thankfully not marecum. I hated when he came back smelling like that. It smelled pretty bad after a few hours of sitting around and it only furthered his stereotypical nature. I might have believed I had little chance finding a mate but I still wasn’t going to abuse something as intimate as sex. I’d find someone eventually and if I didn’t, I’d die a virgin. So what? I wasn’t going to be a dirty slut that would sleep with anyone. I had standards and right now, those standards told me to get back to shooting zombies as I had finally achieved the power of the pack-a-buck.
After about 4AM, I had managed to have a 40+ minute game on every major map, which I found as a nice accomplishment. I had also perfected the out of map glitches on the sanitarium, the testing facility, and on Lunaris. Even though I hated it, I had managed to survive the death box for ten minutes.
Finally, I succumbed to sleep. I shut off the system, frustrated at my last round only lasting a measly few minutes, and collapsed onto my bed, whereupon I started sleeping almost immediately.
I woke up at around 10AM to the sun’s ethereal beauty shoving its divine light deep into my eyelids. Yep, I hated windows. I lay in bed for a few hours, rolling every so often as to face away from the window. My eyes hurt, my head hurt, and most importantly, I felt an intense ache of emptiness. I again thought, I need a fillyfriend. And yet again, there was no angelic choir singing as some divine beauty appeared, one that would help me conquer a raging morning wood or devour my aching need for companionship, and I was again left unsatisfied.
Whatever, I decided. I cracked my eyes open slowly and joyfully noted that Hoops was not, in fact, still in the room. My euphoria was quickly shattered when I noticed the shower running.Shit, no hot water for me. I’d have to wait forever for the hot water heater to fill back up. I groaned, got up, and made my way to the mini fridge I had set off to one side. I had no worry of Hoops taking anything. He had long ago been convinced that it had nothing but water in it and had also agreed to buy it when I moved out as he still had another few semesters before he was out of here.
I didn’t think he was a bad kid, just… overly normal. I didn’t get along with normal people and I had learned to accept that, play nice, and try not to upset their morals too much.
After fetching and then downing a water bottle and grabbing a second for continued sipping, I sat on my bed, dumped out my saddle bags and went through them. As I had been up for a few minutes already and I was already aware that today was going to be a boring day filled with mundane, trivial tasks, I decided that I needed another tea cafe to haunt. Having just one was plebish and I also needed to go back through the apartments and see if one of them had something that the others didn’t.
I went through my inventory of items. Mainly just useful things I had collected, bought, and ‘acquired’ over the years. For the most part, it was just baubles, pens, markers, a few pencils, an art pad, and a few guitar picks. Nothing special. I had a neat collection of knives and a few throwing knives I had created slitted slots for in the front of my saddlebags in quick reach of my wings. The cheap, sentimental knife that was perpetually hooked in the left side front pocket of the bags in a pocket meant for cups. Opposite of it sat a ‘boot knife’ style blade that I could use with my mouth. I had a larger tanto in the area between my left side and my saddlebags. I kept it in a sheath I had sewn into the bag and then covered in the same material as the inside of the bag to prevent the wearing down of my coat. A small, mouth-wielded pistol sat in a holster opposite it, the shag of my coat doing well to hide both of those armaments. Carrying all that made me feel safe in a way nothing else could. I felt ready for anything. I didn’t take the gun to school, obviously. That would get me thrown in jail and especially because gun ownership was frowned upon and heavily restricted in this area. I was just barely of age and wasn’t ‘supposed’ to take the thing out of my house but pish-posh. I was going to be safe, screw rules.
Anything, in this case, happened to be a trek back out to the city, wherein I intended to have another look at those apartments. As I hadn’t had a look at any of their interiors just the more technical information, I had little concern as to something so mundane as aesthetics. I was much more worried about the utilitarian aspects of life or again in this situation, apartments. I cleared out the miscellaneous items I had found in my bag; some chocolate peanuts that had disappeared into the depths, dirt, some used notes, trash, and the usual scattered items one found in their bags. I reorganize my essentials and then the non-essentials. After a total of about ten minutes, I had achieved organization.
My mind had achieved a measure of calm which was refreshing. I kept a steady pace towards the city, following the now familiar path through some rural version of suburbia. I don’t pass much of anything interesting on the trip but I do notice that there’s a ‘cards & games’ shop on the same strip as the tea cafe I frequent. I’d have to check that out later but for now, I simply continued on my way. Ignoring both that and the tea cafe, who’s name as I should mention, was ‘Tranquil Tinctures and Calming Concoctions.’ A name I must say I liked a great deal. I passed the tea shop though. Today I simply didn’t have the motivation or desire to stop at that place, perhaps on my return trip, as the drink did wonders for my thought process. At least until the tea was gone. My goal today was to make a return to the apartments I had scouted out earlier and decided which one I felt would fit my needs most adequately.
I had a realization, at that moment, that I already didn’t mind the longer walk from the college to the city. The pricier apartments that were closer to the heart of the city could be crossed off the list.
That left only two. Two apartment buildings to choose from, two potential homes. I shook my head and tried to comprehend the meaning of it. Alone, on my own, paying my own rent, in my own house, all by myself.
Yeah, there would be moments where it sucked. Like in the middle of the night, when my inner demons confronted me. Or like last night, after I shut everything off and all I could see where the endless hordes still chasing me. There’s a certain time of night, somewhere between 3 and 5 AM, where I start to lose it, no matter if I’m up early or late. If I’m tired or wide awake. I get paranoid, really paranoid. I start having really weak hallucinations that felt like prophetic premonitions. They usually involve some horror that I’d exposed myself lately. I was browsing through a photo store once and chanced upon a picture something that looked like a pony that had lost all their legs and had them replaced with metal stilts, it was wearing some sort of black vest thing, with a lot of straps. It looked like a containment suit or something and it had a gas mask on, looking directly at the camera. That still haunts me to this very day. Where is my mummy? Are you my mummy? Yep, no fun.
Being alone wasn’t fun either. I liked having life around. It reminded me that I wasn’t the sole survivor of the nuclear fallout. Not that I had proof of such things but I tended to lose grasp of reality while alone. Well, that and scratching one’s own itch got pretty monotonous after a while.
Back to the story, I wasn’t as tired as one properly should have been after six hours of sleep and I blame nothing but experience. I was used to being sleep deprived and as long as it wasn’t habitual, it was only a small pull from my resources. I scouted the both of the apartments and here is what I concluded.
The first apartment block was rather nice. It was set in a moderate part of town, there were a few higher end apartments within vicinity of it and there was everything one needed within about a mile of it but it was in the city. The pricing, well, I suck at describing the process or worth of bits but a cheap, one room hotel room was worth about forty five. A candy bar was worth one and an entry level guitar was a hundred. The apartments were in the eleven to thirteen hundred bit a month range. Being on the lower end, but still in the city proper. This one was about twelve hundred and it’s tenants, or what I had seen of them, were decent enough folk. I didn’t see anyone that struck me as being too low class not that I had anything against poor ponies, I just didn’t trust them as a whole. Too many thieves, criminals and other muck like that amongst them. For that reasoning though, I didn’t trust rich ponies either, too many arrogant bastards with no humility that would do anything to add even a marginal amount of cash to their paycheck. There really wasn’t anything too good or bad about this one. I guess the biggest drawback was going to be in the rooms which, after talking to a manager, I managed to have a look at. They were, as you’d expect, bare average, a bedroom, a living room,kitchen, and a bathroom. All bare. The paint wasn’t in too bad condition, the drywall was still in one piece, the mud hadn’t cracked a ton, the baseboards were in good repair. Afew of the doors creaked and there was a hole behind one of them where the handle had been smashed repeatedly through the wall. The bathroom had obviously seen some use and wasn’t exactly a designer’s daydream but it was serviceable. I told the manager I would have to think about it and I’d have a response to him in the next few days if I would take it.
I made my way to the remaining apartment block whose rent was thirteen hundred a month and was in a remarkably similar area. The big difference, as I assumed while making the trek between them, would be the conditions and size of the apartment itself. The first one, as I should mention, was somewhere in the 500 square hoof range. I didn’t have much care. I was used to a life of compactness and didn’t mind having to stuff my… stuff.
The second apartment, although one hundred bits more expensive, the tenants reflected that. As most seemed to be about where I was not doing awesome but definitely not outspending themselves; your typical lower middle class ponies I guess. After speaking with the manager, and getting access to a room, I had myself a look around and noted pretty much the same. However as predicted, those bits went somewhere. The doors had stoppers and there weren’t any holes behind them, which was nice. Everything else was in your generally predictable average apartment state of repair; the bathroom was just a shower, a toilet, a small sink with a mirror and a medicine cabinet. All in all, I wasn’t sure what the big difference between the two apartments was but I didn’t think it was going to make too much a difference. I guessed the most notable differences would be the showerheads, the internet speed, the water heater, and the large kitchen appliances. But that was fine. I’d live with it for the extra spending money.
I thanked the manager for his time and began the long trek home. I felt like I had something else I needed to do but I couldn’t put my mind on what it would be. Instead, I stopped by the tea shop out of habit and learned, to my pleasant surprise, that they served coffee too. Which was awesome because I needed coffee right then and right there. After getting my coffee and sharing an awkward moment with the waitress I previously described as she happened to notice me watching her when she brought me my drink. Mild, nervous blushing all around. What fun. I did however, take the opportunity to note that she didn’t have any necklace or or horn ring or brace. I did mention she was a unicorn right? No? I just did. And she was a sleek one at that but anyways, nothing of that sort.I now had coffee which left me in a bubbly mood as I made my trip home. Perhaps it was time for me to try and get to know her beyond just frequently having her as my waitress.
On pure chance, the tea shop didn’t have a lot of wait-staff.
I walked home with a bit of a bounce in my step, I had a good feeling about things, I felt hopeful for my future, I was taking my life into my own control, and now, nothing could stop me.