Title: Beta Test 01
Author: Harper Kingsley
Rating: mature
POV: First person
Summary: In which there is a stinky couch. We meet the ubiquitous “Curtis.” And nothing really happens.
.This couch smells like cat pee.
I’m not the nicest person around, I know that. It makes having friends really difficult, but I have at least two that I know of.
Curtis is a guy with a crazy amount of acne and this weird hunched shoulder thing. You can tell that something is going on beneath his shirt and you kind of want to see it, but you really kind of don’t either. Still, my eyes are always drawn to the cloth covering his shoulder and I have to wonder how everything’s put together there under his skin.
He’s caught me looking several times, but he’s never said anything. Which makes him cool people in my book.
I know I have some serious issues, mental shit and whatever. Who cares, right?
“You can stay here for as long as you want.” Curtis has a really skinny chest, so it’s always a surprise to hear that deep voice come out of it. He could give the Chocolate Rain guy a run for the money.
“Thanks,” I said, sitting on the edge of the couch. He’d made it up into a pseudo-bed with a sheet, pillow and blanket, but I still couldn’t help missing my bed. My nice, comfortable bed that had followed me around all the times I’d moved and that I’d slept in since I was ten years old.
I felt like I wanted to cry again, but I swallowed it back down. What good would crying do? My stuff would still be all burned up and I would still be homeless and I would still be poor and it just was what it was. Get over it, move on. You’re a homeless vagabond now.
I looked up at him. “Do you think I could borrow something to wear from you and maybe use your shower? I stink like fire.” And sweat and despair, but we don’t have to go into that.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” he said, heading back down the short hallway to his room. I heard the sound of drawers opening and things clattering around, then he was back with a bundle of cloth in his hands. “Here you go. Sorry they’re not much, but they’re about the only thing I’ve got that will fit you.”
So I’m short, fuck you very much. “Thank you.”
He gestured toward the bathroom. “Towels are on the shelf. Help yourself to whatever you need. I’m going to bed.”
“Thanks,” I said again, then couldn’t help feeling stupidly forlorn when he went into his room and closed the door.
It’s dumb that I didn’t want to be alone. Just because everything in my life was falling apart and there was nothing I could do to fix it. Fuck that noise.
I went into the bathroom and fumbled around for a while brushing my teeth and turning on the shower, then I was under the spray and it was probably the nicest thing that had happened to me all day. I hadn’t even gotten to eat my Subway sandwich, since someone had managed to step on it during the whole “Watching my life go up in smoke” thing. And it had looked like a really good sub too, all chicken and spinach and cheese with just enough tomato and cucumber.
I threw my head back and let the water run down my face, and maybe I cried a little, but who knows. Sometimes I think I’m doing one thing when I’m really doing something completely different. Hitting when I should be comforting, crying when I should be laughing, or smiling when I really wanted to kill people.
I am an enigma wrapped up in a puzzle and there were some days — most days — when I couldn’t even figure my own self out.
Curtis had this really stinky shampoo, so I only used a little bit before quickly rinsing it out of my short hair. At least my scalp was clean.
When I’d gotten out and dried off with one of his threadbare towels, I found that he’d given me a large black tee shirt and a pair of black and red plaid shorts. I looked like I was a heavy metal golfer or something, which might have been kind of funny if I wasn’t currently losing my mind.
I glanced at myself in the steamy mirror and was mildly shocked by my own wide-eyed stare. My brown hair was standing up in crazy tufts around my head and my skin looked really pale and kind of grayish. I looked like I’d just gotten a really huge shock or something, or like I was about to go on a murderous rampage. I definitely didn’t look like I was on the right side of sane. Not that I ever do.
“It’s going to be all right,” I told my reflection, who in turn gave me a “Who are you trying to fool look?” that made me want to punch him in the face. But I don’t do that kind of thing anymore, not since that one time.
Getting glass out of your knuckles is a misery, one I don’t want to have to go through again. Because even after all the glass is gone, it still feels like there’s broken shards shoved in under the surface of the skin and that feeling just lingers and lingers and lingers.
I clicked off the light behind me as I left the bathroom and padded back into Curtis’ rather dilapidated living room. I’m sorry, but the place looks like a drug den or something, and knowing Curtis, it probably doubled up as one whenever I’m not around.
I turned off the living room light and settled on the couch, trying to ignore all the sounds of a strange apartment.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I tried to keep my breathing gentle and deep, but having my face so close to the couch I couldn’t help noticing the distracting stink of what might have been cat pee. Faint at first, then stronger and stronger until it was the only thing I could smell.
My whole world was filled with the smell of stinky cat urine.
It must have been a metaphor for something.
Groaning quietly, I brought my arm up over my face and forced myself to sleep.
I tried to focus on the smell of my own clean skin, but all night long and even in my dreams I kept getting a whiff of cat pee. God, but I hated it.
I especially hated the thought that Curtis was about as anti-cat as a man could be. He’d never even owned one. Which made me have to wonder how a cat could have pissed all over his couch.
/CHAPTER
[table “19” not found /]