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Aberrant: Wild Card - [HW #3] Home Sweet Home [Complete]


z-Matt McShae

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Matty stopped just inside the door, blinking at the darkness within. Frowning, he set down his backpack and fumbled to the left of the door, reaching for the logical place where the light would be. He found it, but it had been taped into the downward position. “What the hell?” he muttered, his thumb digging at the adhesive seal, trying to break it.

“Whoa, dude, stop!” a voice called out of the dark. “Do you know how long it took me to do that?”

“Five minutes?” Matty grumbled, hazarding a safe guess. He peered into the room and took a step forward, kicking something. He stopped, for fear of breaking something. “Can you please turn on a light?”

There was a pause, and then the blue-tinted light clicked on. Matty’s eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, so he wasn’t blinded. The same wasn’t true of the scruffy looking couple on the couch. At first Matty thought they were a gay couple, but he realized that the bald one had breasts and fine features. His eyebrows rose before he could stop them. A second later, they rose even higher when he saw the mess littering the floor.

“You’re Matthew, right?” the guy said, disentangling himself from the couch and turning his back to Matty. He heard the guy zip up his fly, and Matty quickly pretended to take another look around the place.

The white walls and beige carpet were apartment standard, but the punk rock posters definitely weren’t. Matty recognized a few of the names, but it was obvious that his roommate had been here for a while, and had already been decorating. The furnishings were supplied by the apartment company; Matty had seen pictures of them and they were normally an off-white. These had been covered over with fabric, something dark with a dark pattern that obscured it.

“Yeah, I am,” he said, hazarding a glance at his roommate. He was covered and even walking toward Matt, skirting the debris on the floor. The kid was tall and mostly thin, though he was sporting the first hint of a beer gut. Matt was fighting the same condition himself, but generally didn’t let himself be caught in clothes that made that so apparent. “You can call me Matt.”

“I’m Razor, and this is Morbid,” his roommate said. The girl gave him a pretty smile, despite the metal glinting in her lips.

Matty felt his eyebrows pop up higher, somehow. His forehead was starting to ache from the constant wrinkling. He knew that his roommate was named Ron, and he wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. “Ah, nice to meet you,” Matty said, nodding. Unsure what else to do, he picked his way through the detritus and pointed at an unmarked interior door. “This my room?”

“Yeah,” Razor told him, “hang on though. I put some stuff in there.”

Thankfully, some ‘stuff’ was a few boxes, and with Razor’s help, his room was cleared. As Morbid let herself out onto the balcony to smoke, Matty asked softly, “Your real name is Ron, right?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Razor said, smiling. “Thanks man. That was cool of you not to mention it in front of Morbid.”

“No problem,” Matty assured him, looking around his room. The small space was clean; Razor’s aura of junk hadn’t made it into here. It was the color he was expecting; a colorless off-white on the walls was even blander than the short-fiber beige carpet. A small twin bed was in the corner didn’t look comfortable though Matty had brought an egg-shell foam pad to help with that. A small desk and chair sat under the small window while a pressed-board dresser covered with a fake honey veneer stood next to a tiny closet. He closed his door for some privacy, and a moment later, music started to pound in the next room. Matty would have asked them to turn it down, but he knew what sounds it was covering, and he was just as happy to hear the music instead.

“Home sweet home,” he muttered, and started to unpack.

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  • 1 month later...

Three days later, the last of the boxes were in and Matty was unpacked, or as unpacked as she was going to get. This place was so much smaller than any of his other residences, and he finally broke down and set up a ‘give away’ box. Into it went old clothes, books he didn’t want anymore and even some movies. At first, putting each thing in the cardboard container was painful but the process slowly became liberating. Each piece he put inside became representative of a part of himself he didn’t want anymore. The blue shirt he’d gotten from the one time he and Cynthia had done the annual Des Moines “Ride for Trails”. A near-pristine copy of War and Peace he’d gotten in high school; he’d planned to read it over the summer vacation and then never got past the first chapter. His half-hearted coin collection, which was another high school ambition that hadn’t gotten very far before he’d become aware of both girls and cars.

More and more items were placed in the box, until he had to close that one and get another. Like a snake shedding his skin, Matty peeled away pieces of his old life and put it in boxes. When he was done, the former Matty was in four boxes, and the rest of him was spread throughout the room.

The small closet now looked tiny, thanks to the wide array of clothing he’d forced into it. He’d probably have wrinkles in every other shirt, but he’d weeded his clothing down to the bare minimum. His shoes were lined up on the ground; there was more room for them because he had four pair. There were the sneakers encrusted with grime that wouldn’t come loose anymore, the battered and scarred hiking boots, the summer sandals and his pristine black dress shoes.

starry%20night%20vangogh.jpgThe pressboard cabinet had more clothing hidden away, but the top displayed his few books. The set of Stephen R. Lawhead’s Silver Hand trilogy leaned against a range of books on interesting psychological literature. In violation of the rules, he’d hung three pictures on the walls. Starry Night had always drawn him in with its lines and colors; he found it very soothing. The next image was a picture from Letchworth State Park in New York State. The last picture was of his family, back home in Iowa. Letchworth_State_Park.jpg

The built-in shelves over the desk were currently bare, save for a dozen empty binders. They were ready for his class notes, handouts and other errata of schoolwork. He still wasn’t sure what that would be, but they were ready for it. He even had a three-hole punch, brand-new and shiny. The desk was tiny and shoddy. It had a small drawer to the side, as well as a slightly bigger one that could hold file folders. He didn’t have any hanging file folders to hang, but he could hang them now. The top of the desk was cleaner than it would be in a few days. He had a newspaper on it, and his computer monitor, keyboard and mouse.

The bed was the one item in the room that didn’t look crabby or like it would strain to hold him. He’d put his quilt, the one from his room in his parents’ house, over the plain blue store-bought comforter. The red, blue and green diamond pattern had been his grandmother’s favorite to make, and those were his grandfather’s favorite colors. It had been his quilt before his death, left to Matty, his namesake. Its straight pattern was interrupted only by the fall over the edge and the lumps of his pillows.

Between his dresser and his door, he’d set up his guitar stands, designed to hold his prized possessions. The stands were holding up his Taylor 510, its honey-gold tone almost matching his dresser. Its color was richer and fuller, and the dark backside wasn’t at all a match. His pride and joy was his Gibson; the J-200 Standard had been a gift for two years’ worth of Christmas and birthdays. Cyn had never meant to drag it out, but he’d felt so bad about the cost of the beautiful instrument that he’d insisted. When he let himself think about that, he always felt a little sad – she’d been so proud to get it for him. She’d been so sure it would spark a music career. He’d never wanted that, something she’d never understood or wanted to understand.

Matty sat in his hard office chair and peered around the room. It didn’t quite feel like home yet, but with his things around, he hoped it would be soon. With a sigh, he pulled the day’s paper over to him, opened to the front page, and started to read. He might as well get used to it; it was his home for the next few years.

Click to reveal.. (The Guitars)
Taylor510.jpgsj200_(2).jpg
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