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AVOTW: Chapter 2
By AlanGrant5
Seven hours later, Ryan found himself in bed, blinking away the morning light. As he rubbed his eyes into focus, he realized that his plans to run away had failed.
"Rise and shine... you pussy," he greeted himself as he threw the blanket off of his legs.
Stuffing his feet into his sandals, Ryan noticed that the house had gotten even more empty since the last time he'd seen it. Each of his footsteps managed to project an echo of Godzilla-like significance, causing his English Bulldog, Johnny Quest, to bark aimlessly about the house.
"Shut up dog," Ryan moaned.
The albino mutt failed to oblige his masters request, as it often did, and continued its concert of barks.
"Ryan! Will you please shut that dog of yours up" a shrill voice echoed throughout the house. "I'm trying to talk to the contractor."
And there it was-- the sound that stopped both the footsteps and the barking. The expression on Ryan's face soured and so did Johnny Quest's, though to be fair, his expression was more or less permanent.
"Fuck," Ryan mouthed down at his dog. Johnny Quest moaned. "Attack, attack, attack," he silently ordered the four-legged hobbit.
Peering from behind a tower of boxes labeled "Ryan's Stuff," Ryan and his height-challenged sidekick watched an older woman spew words into the telephone like a machine gun relieved of its constipation.
"Yeah! Well you tell Steve that if he doesn't come over and fix this thing today, I'm gonna break something of his that he's not gonna be able to fix. Huh? No, that's a promise. No, no, absolutely not-"
"God, you go first," Ryan whispered to his dog, nudging it out into the living room with his foot. After a few trots into the living area, Johnny Quest collapsed to the ground in a surrender to laziness.
"Damn you," Ryan scolded the animated sack of fur.
With carefully disguised hesitation, Ryan stepped out into the living room and made himself vulnerable to the eyes of Meredith Khan; undoubtedly a descendent of the slaughtering warrior Ghengis, and unfortunately his father's newest girlfriend. Once in her field of vision, Meredith held her finger up-- one minute-- and continued to castrate the incompetent contractor over the phone.
Ryan stood uncomfortably before her in his boxers, self-consciously disciplining himself for having worn the ones without the special button. Fortunately for him, every second he spent looking at her had brought an axe to his morning wood until finally, at the forty-fifth second-- TIMMMBER! Nice job Paul Bunyan.
Meredith wasn't exactly unattractive either. For her age, 49, she was actually pretty decent, but her voice was like sandpaper and she used it enough to shave anyone listening to her into tiny little, barely human particles. It was as if silence was her sworn enemy and was compelled to fight it off with painfully grating noise. Ryan figured she hated the quiet because she couldn't stand listening to herself. Vocally, she was loud enough to drown out even the sound of her own conscience.
Ending her phone call, Meredith unleashed a frustrated roar and tossed the cordless phone onto the kitchen counter.
"Asshole," she yelled, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Concluding her skitzophrenic tantrum, she suddenly became aware of Ryan's existence.
"You," she pointed to the bewildered young man.
"Me," Ryan confirmed mockingly.
"I need you for a second," she said, disappearing into the kitchen.
Ryan grudgingly followed.
"Help me measure the window."
"Aye-aye captain."
Meredith handed one end of the tape measure to Ryan and pulled it to the edge of an elongated rectangular window.
"So," she began, thwarting the five-second infiltration of silence. "How's the apartment hunting going?"
Waking up, Ryan ignored her question to address some of his own curiosities," When did you get here?"
"Eighty-seven inches," she noted, then let go of the tape, causing it to violently retract back into its shell. The impact had caused Ryan to fumble the device.
"About a half-hour ago. Kitchen wall," she ordered, having Ryan follow her around like a child unaware of his environment.
They repeated the process.
"You still didn't answer my question," she deduced.
"Yeah, well... slow. It's going pretty slow," Ryan answered.
"One- One hundred and... thirty-two inches."
"Most of the places I can afford don't allow pets and the places that do allow pets I can't afford."
"Yeah, well, that's what you get for being a dishwasher."
Ryan wanted to take the measuring tape and strangle her on the spot.
"Your father said he would help you out anyway, didn't he?"
"For a little while, yeah," Ryan added. "Couldn't you guys just keep Johnny, I mean-"
"No, are you kidding me? That little shit is a nightmare."
Ryan looked over at Johnny Quest to find him knocked out and snoring.
"He sleeps all day," Ryan protested.
"No, he makes noise all day. He can't sleep without being loud. I'm not having it," she decided, relocating to the living room.
"He can't help it," Ryan defended.
"Whatever, it's not happening and you..."
Ryan waited for Meredith to continue. "Yes?"
"You need to be out of here by the fifth," Meredith said, attempting to measure a book shelf on her own.
"What?"
"You heard me. Your dad's too much of a pussy to tell you himself."
"Yeah? Well maybe you should try giving him his cock back," Ryan snapped.
Meredith smiled as if pleased to have pushed Ryan's buttons, "Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I'm doing you a favor. By the time he had gotten around to telling you, you still wouldn't have found a place, and you'd be homeless."
"What happened to the 20th?" Ryan asked.
"They're remodeling both bathrooms. You're not gonna have any plumbing for a week."
"The bathroom-- what's wrong with the bathrooms? They're perfectly-"
"Disgusting? Yes, I know," Meredith uttered beneath her breath.
Ryan stared at her, hoping that in doing so hard enough, her head would pop like a pimple.
"This is bullshit," he said, retreating to his room.
"Aren't you a little too old to be pouting?" she retaliated.
"Aren't you a little too old for the skirt?" he returned.
Meredith's jaw dropped in offense.
"Twenty-three my ass! Take your shit out to the garage!" she ordered.
Ryan slammed his door and figured the moment he did, he'd explode into a million pieces and not have to deal with any of it anymore. To his dismay, he was still in tact, and she was still in his house. Well, her house now.
God, Ryan thought, how did it get to this? The guy has been dating her for five months and she'd already managed to drive both representatives of the house out of office. And what better timing than now for all of this to have happened. Just when he was starting to pick himself up from the last cheap shot life had dealt him.
With a sigh, Ryan opened up an empty cardboard box and gave his room a quick scan. There wasn't much else left for him to pack, spare a drawer full of pictures and a few Little League trophies. All the memories he had of his room and the times spent in it were becoming more difficult to recall as it got more empty and unfamiliar.
Ryan removed a drawer from his dresser and dumped the contents into the box. Photographs spilled into the box like the coins of a jack-pot struck slot machine-- his entire life flashing before his eyes. They damn near filled up the entire box.
Turning the drawer over, Ryan noticed one last photograph with its white back faced towards him-- its corners wedged into the corners of the drawer. He picked at it, unsuccessfully a few times until he finally got ahold of it and peeled it off the board.
When he flipped the picture over, Ryan's eyes widened, then resumed their normal state. The image had shocked and settled him-- he hadn't seen it in so long. It was a picture taken back when he was a junior in high school-- of him, his best friends Chase, Eddy, and Houston. At the time, all four had been best friends, but at the time wasn't now. Now they had all stopped talking to Ryan, with the exception of Chase, who was the only one of the bunch to not exile him from the posse. After what he'd done, Ryan was surprised that even one of them had managed to survive the collateral damage.
Making sure he laid the photograph in the box face down, Ryan closed the open flaps and carried it out of his room. He wanted nothing more than to put that box in the garage... in the dark where it belonged.
7/10/2007 4:11:07 AM
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