Cramped Quarters - Love Under Lockdown

Most of the profiles didn’t have pics. I’d noticed that some girls had become somewhat camera shy, their Friend counts similarly vacant, despite the ‘pictures or it didn’t happen’ ethos stalking our beleaguered generation like a specter.

Within minutes, I was clicking to open the public profile of the mysterious cutie sequestered in the room beside me, who was locked away as though she were in protective custody. At least whomever had hurt her couldn’t get to her anymore.

There wasn’t anything too unusual. Or there at all really, much of the page having been left blank, at least in terms of text. There were photos, though. Albums of them. Most of them included the same two people, who I took to be her parents.

Then I had a shock of sick recognition. Those eyes, smiling but vacant. That smile, stilted and humorless except in the most macabre way.

Yes, I knew the bastard. The one Rachel probably still called ‘daddy’ because he had her in such a fucking age regression. Mentally if not physically.

I had seen it so many times, my family having made it a habit of taking in kids rejected from ‘civil society.’ Sometimes just for dinner, others for the night until their pious parents had a chance to sober up.

I didn’t laugh when Amelia once asked me how many brothers and sisters we had. Honestly, I had lost track myself for a while.

I could feel the rage rising inside me. The feeling I had been taught to repress. Certain people had the philosophy that others were going to hate us anyway. No need to give them more ammunition or reason to think that they were right.

If we did, what would be the point? Our opposition became gang rivalry and ‘fuck that stupid bullshit.’

It wasn’t what they did to me that I minded. O’Flanagan and his flock of Jesus stalkers, that is. That, I could take it. It was when they went after the younger kids, calling them ‘vile spawns of Satan’ that really got my hackles up.

They were kids and names like that could really mess them up mentally. Though not nearly as much as the rocks the bullies would routinely huck at us, Old Testament style.

The computer lost power so hard the desk rattled. Taking a moment for several long, deep breaths, I tried to calm down.

The chair rolled back so hard it bounced off the opposing wall. Dropping to my knees before the shire of vinyl I made my selection, and put on some of the most brutal Black Metal known to humanity.

I’d long considered starting a band called All Gods Are Bastards, or AGAB. Our first and likely last, record would be called Songs for Exorcisms.

“The power of Satan compels you!” I bellowed, surprising even myself.

The first song came to an end, along with my gusto.

Then I collapsed onto the carpet, exhausted and shocked by what I had found out my actual connection to Rachel was.

No wonder she had looked so pale and scared.Chapter Nine - RachelAs the rooster crows. It wasn’t actually a saying, but it should have been. Though indeed that wouldn’t express how early I woke up the next morning after I had decided to lock myself away from Augustus in our shared dorm. Even nature's alarm clock was still fast asleep in its coop when my eyes eased open to the dim blue dawn.

I had to get up this early, to be able to make my way around the kitchen and bathroom without running into Augustus.

I listened for a moment, but there were no sounds forthcoming. Not even the low rumble of fresh morning traffic. I checked the clock. Five in the morning. Late enough to be morning but early enough that most of the world would still be deep in slumber. Perfect.

Tossing my blankets aside, I touched down as light as you please. My bare feet made not a sound. I all but tip-toed through the early morning light to the ghostly looking door, taking customary stops to look under the bed and check in the closet, just in case.

The chair was still in place under the doorknob, so it didn’t seem likely that anything would be amiss. Though my dad had well and true put the fear of God into me.

It was odd, seeing the apartment that early in the morning. It looked the same as it did in the daylight, only with a slightly surreal edge. Empty and slightly other-worldly. Like the furniture hadn’t quite woken up yet.

Keeping things on the downlow, I whipped up a hearty but low-cal breakfast, using only the stove, since the toaster or the blender were a bit too noisy to risk trying.

I couldn’t believe I was roomed with him. Let alone that we were in lockdown. Forced to share a space in a form of imposed house arrest unseen since the Russian Revolution.