Depressio!

[Typhlosion in Repose]

Ok. I am currently writing a novel. When I am in periods of artistical dryness, I write mini-stories. Some are crappy, some are pretty good. I found this one funny, but then again, I have a strange sense of humor... This is a sort of one-shot thing. It's not my best work, but I think it's pretty good (If I do say so myself). Please tell me what you think if you read this. I give you: DEPRESSIO!!!
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Benjamin Richards sat alone in his gray apartment in the bad part of town. The sky was gray too. October was a gray month. The cold and wind seemed to seek out every crack in his apartment, making it even colder inside. With a shaking hand, Benjamin lifted the spoon to his mouth, the first food he had tasted all day. It tasted like cold alphabet soup. Because that's what it was.

The apartment heater was broken, and he did not dare ask his landlord to fix it. Better to lie low. Three months is a long time to have forgotten to pay the rent… Although you can't really forget when you have no money to pay it with. The landlord was sure to tan his hide… But Benjamin couldn't pay it even though he desperately wanted to. It was hard to get money, when you do not have a job. No one understood… It was hard to get a job, when your past résumé was as bad as his.

Someone began to pound on the door. Benjamin kept as quiet as possible. He did not want his landlord to know he was there. The wind howled outside, and the landlord shouted, banged, and cursed. Then came a particularly loud "BANG!" on the door. A cold, soggy pea went down the wrong way as Benjamin gasped. He began coughing and choking.

"Ah-ha!" he heard his landlord cry. "Richards, let me in! You owe me four months of rent!"

Four? No it's three.

Benjamin pulled on a jacket and opened the back window. His one stroke of luck was that his apartment was on the bottom floor. He was outside in a moment, after scribbling a note on a piece of paper and leaving it on the floor.

And that was that. He would not be able to go back home now. Actually, there was no longer a home to go back to. The landlord would rummage through Benjamin's possessions and sell some of it to try and rebuff the three months of lost rent. Not that there would be anything worth selling. Benjamin had already sold his most valuable possessions.

His feet were carrying him to the park. His shabby coat was torn and patched (he had sold his better one), but it kept the cold out. He could sleep the night at the park… and then… what? He had no idea what to do. What do homeless people do?

He was sitting at the park bench, absent mindedly watching the children run in the grass, and receiving many dirty looks from parents, who mistook his shabby appearance for a criminal rather than a man severely down on his luck.

A police officer approached him.

"What are you doing?" he asked Benjamin.

"Just resting."

"Well, make sure you keep it that way."

"Yes, officer."


Night had come. He had slept the rest of the day away, and now that he woke up, he was starving. He walked downtown. The pizza shop… that would be good. He walked around the back of the shop to the dumpster. He opened it and looked in. He reached out toward a pizza box, but a shout stopped him.

"Whad d'ya think yer do'in!?" shouted a creaky voice. It was an old man who had shouted. He was wearing a brown jacket with brown suspenders over his bare chest. He was filthy and skinny.

"J-just getting food!" said Benjamin, apologetically.

"No yer not!" shouted the old man. "Nobody goes a stealin' from Frosty Ned's dumpster!"

"Are you Frosty Ned?" asked Benjamin, sheepishly.

"Dern right, I'm Frosty Ned." said Frosty Ned. He walked right up and stared into Benjamin's eyes. He stank like whisky and his eyes were rheumy and his left was slightly lazy.

"Well…" said Benjamin, backing away. "I'm sure sorry, and-"

"No!" shrieked Frosty Ned.

"What!?"

"No!" he repeated. "NO! No, no, no, no, no!"

"No about what!?" asked Benjamin, thoroughly bewildered.

"Ye was gonna take me treasure!" he shouted.

"Treasure?"

"Yes!" he shouted. He pulled from behind the dumpster a five-gallon clear plastic container. In the light from the streetlight, Benjamin saw that it was full of a murky liquid with what appeared to be pizza crusts floating in it. As Benjamin watched, Frosty Ned pulled a long straw from his pocket, stuck it in the liquid, and took a deep drink of it.

"I'm leaving now."

"We have to fight!" screamed the old man.

"No!" cried Benjamin.

"Yes!" yelled Frosty Ned, pulling a knife out of his long, matted beard.

Benjamin ran for his life. He soon lost the old man in the residential area of town. After a few minutes of walking, he found himself facing a familiar house. It was an old, one-story house with a huge window in front. Oh, how many times he had crouched behind the low shrubs and looked in there… looked at HER.

Ahh, she was the girl of his dreams. She was so pretty and so nice… but she never noticed him. On the bus to and from school, he would follow her home. She never noticed him. He THOUGHT she never noticed him. That was until that day… One year ago, just six months after graduating from high school, SHE had ruined his life.

It was not his fault! All he had been doing was crouching in the bushes, looking in the big window that night. She was home alone. Her parents were out to dinner. She came outside to let the cat out. He struck up the courage to talk to her. He rose out of the bushes and introduced himself. She screamed. She ran inside and was about to shut the door, but Benjamin forced it open.

"Wait!" he cried, desperately. "I just want to talk!"

She succeeded in slamming the door. He pressed his face to the big window. He saw her grab the phone… He saw her looking at him, fearfully… He saw her dial those numbers…

Funny, isn't it? Three numbers… Three numbers, more than zero, less than ten, three seemingly random numbers ruined his life. He saw the three numbers clearly, he knew them well. Who didn't? But he wasn't dangerous. He just wanted to talk. But now she was the one talking… He saw her mouth the word, he saw it clearly; even the way her perfectly formed mouth said "Stalker" was beautiful. And he watched as she hung up and ran deeper into the house.

The next few days were a blur. He remembered the flashing lights, the long car ride, the questioning, the night in a cold hard room with steel grating over all of the openings. He remembered the high hall, the box seating of the twelve people, the important man in black robes sitting high above them all; he remembered the formal sheet of paper that SHE was handed, he even remembered the biggest words printed on it: RESTRAINING ORDER. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was that he would never see her again.

Little by little over the next year, his family stopped talking to him. He had found it hard to keep jobs, and he was inevitably fired. And now he found himself on the other side of the hedge from the house again.

He was suddenly filled with an insane rage. She had ruined him. He had done nothing to her. Now he was a hobo, and she still had a house and a family. He vaulted over the hedge, and picked up a large rock and smashed the window with it. He jumped into the room, and grabbed a lamp. A door at the end of the hall was ajar, and light was spilling out… He was going to make her pay. He had nothing left to lose.

Not until after leaping into the room, brandishing the lamp like a club, did he realize his mistake. The girl had moved. This was a very different family. And, the father, sitting at the head of the table, was none other than the police officer who had hassled him in the park earlier.

The lamp fell to the floor with a dull clunk.