Part 1

The State of Things I

New York had been his home for the last ten years. It was a nice city, but nowhere near the world changing city that various sitcoms would like you to believe. It was over crowded and everything was well beyond the expense that it should be, but it was his home for the part of his life that he didn't want to forget.

His home these days was a small but cozy studio on the 32nd floor of some passably affluent New York apartment building. The space was meager, but never felt crowded as he rarely had guest. He kept it clean to make it homely, and the only messes he ever had were the scattered printouts of his writings and a pile of clothes that he was never sure was clean or dirty. As in any studio he could see his kitchen from his living room, and his living room also served as his bedroom. The only additional room in the house was a bathroom, and he enjoyed the occasional adventure down the hall to wash his clothes in a communal laundry room.

It was not quite home, but it served its owner well for its intended use as a place to sleep and work – which was mostly work these days as he didn't sleep much, if at all. He spent most nights as he was doing now: writing. So much writing as his finger typed furiously on the laptop that rested precariously on his knees, typing faster than his drug addled mind could form thoughts.

His head was a fog as he wrote. It wasn't a surprise really as he was rather high, and the alcohol coursing through his veins didn't help either. He was used to it though; being high out of his mind wasn't unusual when he was starting a new book.

Miles Hollingsworth III was a messed up individual, and he was very aware that all his problems stemmed back to around the time that he was eight years old. Not a day went by where he wasn't reminded about his bad home life despite growing up with his family's considerable wealth.

He hadn't seen his family since he left for boarding school in New York just under ten years ago; he could never convince himself that he had any reason to return. His family had betrayed him by inviting his father back into their home after they had finally gotten out from under his grasp. That's the line he always told himself, but the true pain was that he had committed a betrayal of his own towards his family. It may have been a betrayal even worse than the one against him, or at least that was the thought that so often kept him up at night.

He had left his family with his father. Before, Miles had always protected them in a way – if one could consider rebellion to be protection. And perhaps it was, as his father's wrath was always on him. Perhaps redirecting his father's attention to him didn't help his siblings get the love that they deserved, but at least it didn't leave them living the life of an eternal disappointment. He had always been the one to speak out and stand up to their father, but in his act of fleeing he had let his father win with his silence. And with that, Miles was wiped from existence.

Miles lived in New York now, had ever since boarding school, but he was close enough to Toronto to pick up the news on occasion. His name popped up in the internet tabloid often enough over the last ten years, but only ever as an absence. "Where is the eldest Hollingsworth child?" the headlines would read throughout his father's eight years as mayor of Toronto. It pleased Miles in a way that even in leaving he had left his father with a grand scandal, but it also hurt. None of his family had cared enough to visit him in the last ten years; although, perhaps he had only himself to blame as he had forcefully cut contact long ago. The last time that he had willingly spoken to his mother was when she agreed to pay for his college during his last semester of boarding school. Now he only spoke to her on the occasional holiday when he figured he owed it to her to pick up the phone at her incessant calls in honor of the special day – not as if he ever had anyone to spend them with. Their calls came to a swift end as she suggested passing the phone off to a family member. He was never willing to face the guilt.

But that guilt powered his thoughts – guilt at avoiding his mother and his siblings, but also for leaving them in the first place. His guilt was always turned to good use when he wrote. What they said was true. The dark emotions drove creativity: depression, guilt, anxiety, fear. Pseudo-psychobabble, true, but these emotions had driven his writing for as long as he could remember. It started back in Toronto, early in grade 11 during his short time at Degrassi. Through a few misplaced spurts of anger, his English Lit teacher had found an untapped source of creative energy. His teacher had faith in him in a way his father never had, and for a moment, Miles believed he had a future. His life went to hell and back immediately after that, and the rest was a blur, but writing did turn out to be his calling.

He graduated from college four years ago with a basic degree in Journalism. His day job was writing blogs about whatever nonsense he was asked to write about. He wasn't overly invested in it, but it paid the bills. His true love was creative writing. Fiction. Creating his own world to live in. And, with a pang of sadness, it always reminded him of Hunter and how he got lost in his gaming worlds.

His writing served him well enough, as he had published a few science fiction novels by tapping into his childhood fascination with Star Wars. Regret and longing for a time long past shot through him as he recalled his time with his friend Chewy – Winston really, though Chewy was the name imposed on him – where they would run around playing Star Wars at recess. It was one of his few good memories before he became his father's disappointing son. He squashed down memories of him and his siblings running through sprinklers or blowing out candles on a birthday cake; those always sent him on a downward spiral he was never sure he could recover from.

His phone buzzed, and he ignored it. It was 7 o'clock at night. It was his mother. It was always his mother. He had no close friends in town, and he did his best to let his hook-ups know that they were one time things (or, at the very least, that he would be the one to contact them). He preferred to be alone anyway, and hadn't felt like making friends or clubbing since an incident during his last year at college. His eyes crossed over the scars on his inner forearm at the memories.

The most social he got was hanging out with some coworkers or finding a hook-up on grindr – or, perhaps, OkCupid if he were looking for some semblance of conversation before fucking. It was a slow process, but he found himself increasingly less interested in women as he got older. Not for lack of sexual interest in them, but his sex drive had taken a nose dive in recent years. Drugs or age, who can tell? The main reason, though, was that only men could remind him of the one person that had made him truly happy. He once punched a 'friend' for calling it daddy issues; that friendship was now long over.

The phone rang again five minutes later, and he ignored it as he tried to put some semblance of meaning onto the first page of his new book. The first words were always the hardest part. But the phone rang again. And again, and again. He ignored it as he wracked his brain for the contents of the opening paragraph. Despite the struggle, writing really was a joy for him. He didn't need the money from his books as he made more than enough with his day job for a single man, but writing these sci-fi novels was his way of forgetting life. Exploring a different world in his head and putting it on paper was therapeutic. Perhaps that was why he loved Star Wars so much as a kid; he had wanted so much at one point to redeem his father and make him love him for who he was. But even Darth Vader was a better father than his.

And again, that line of thought reminded him of Hunter, and he felt sick to his stomach with guilt. Guilt. Always guilt for leaving his little brother alone to face his demons. Some nights the drugs and alcohol dulled the guilt, and others it took away his ability to hide from it. Tonight was one of the latter, and the phone kept ringing and wouldn't go away.

Miles huffed and closed his laptop as the words just weren't coming to him. There would be no avoiding his past this night. He picked up his phone to see that it was now 8 o'clock, and that he had missed 17 calls from his mother. A small spike of terror tore through him at what that meant. Something was wrong. His mother never called more than once. Years with his father made her accustomed to being sidelined by the men in her life.

His phone rang again, and he sighed as he answered it. Little things. Littles things made him better than his father.

"Mom?" he queried as the beeping stopped.

"Miles! Thank God you answered!" his mother cried,

Concern tugged at him as he heard her frantic voice, but he replied as close to monotone as he could manage. "Mom?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"You need to come home right now," his mother pleaded.

"Mom… I'm not coming home. Not now, not ever. I'm… happy here," he said. It was as true a statement as he could make. If not happy, at least as happy as he was ever going to be.

"It's your father, he's…"

"Don't care," Miles stated dismissively, but something stopped him from hanging up the phone for once.

"He's in the hospital. He might not make it. Please come home, just once, for me," she begged. "I need you right now, Miles."

Miles heard the desperation in her voice, and fought the urge to yell at her. Where was she when he needed her all those years that his father had used him as a punching bag? He resisted the urge, if only barley. She had paid for him to get away. He owed her this much.

"I'll call work tomorrow and let you know when I can come," he agreed reluctantly, and then hung up. He couldn't deal with this right now. He fought the urge to down the whole bottle of pills on the armrest of his chair. But he was better than that these days. He had nearly overdosed three times now, and he wasn't going to repeat it. He popped open his laptop, and began to type, turning his despair into creativity.

Writing really was the only good thing he had ever done.

This story is primarily posted on a03. You can see chapter in advance there.