Roxas by Night

Chapter 1: I'm Dropping this F-Bomb.

Ask me to make a list of all the things I hate. Go on, do it. I dare you.

Number one: solicitors. Stop coming to my fucking house, stop calling my fucking phone, stop bugging me all the fucking time! I don't want to buy your product. If I did, I would already have it. Thank you.

Number two: milk. Ok, I like to think that society is pretty spot on about identifying craziness when they see it, but the first dude who saw a nursing cow and thought it was a good idea to exploit it was clearly insane. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those crazy-ass hippies who thinks we should 'free the cows' and let them run wild or something, but milk is gross. I mean, come on, I stopped drinking from my mom a long time ago, folks.

Number three: paying taxes. Yeah, yeah, I know. My taxes help the vitality of the country, yadda yadda. Whatever. I'd like to see some of those taxes actually help me out every once in a while, rather than just suckle on my pocketbook. And no, I do not have some sort of oral complex. The cow reference and the suckling reference were in no way related to each other.

Number four: working. I'm not even talking about the nine-to-five shit, because you will never find me sitting behind a desk—I'm talking about working period. I don't need some psychologist to tell me the deep-seated issue I had with regularly attending school. It's pretty damn simple. Don't tell me what to do, don't tell me when to do it. The first legit job I had was as a construction worker, and it seemed like a good fit. I could do manual labor, I could work under the sun, I liked the heat. I really thought it was going to work out. Until, that is, the overseer told me I couldn't eat on the clock. Fuck him. I'll eat whenever the hell I want.

Number five: being poor, something which I unfortunately hate a lot more than number four. Let me tell you something, alright? I'm not one of those assholes who looks in his bank account and complains because that BMW he just bought took his balance down from three million to slightly less than three million. No fucking way. You'll never find me paying more than twenty bucks to go out to eat, and if I want a steak, I'm damn well going to cook it myself. I don't own a car, and I'll give you a little hint. It's not that I don't want one.

The first time I figured out that you couldn't make a living without working, I blew one hell of a gasket. Because nothing is shittier than being so god-damned dirt-poor that you aren't sure you'll be able to eat. If you don't know that first-hand, pat yourself on the back; you are one lucky fucker.

So, when I got fired from my job at The Creamery for cussing out a bratty-ass five-year-old, I suspected I might be screwed. And you may not predict this about me, because of my handsome, laid-back exterior, but I tend to freak out about shit. Really freak out. I'm talking hyperventilating, panic-attack inducing, industrial strength freak outs that leave me a bit incapacitated for longer than they probably should.

I'd stopped counting how many times I'd gotten fired after the tenth, but it never got any easier. Knowing that you're living paycheck to paycheck and then suddenly getting that paycheck ripped away from you is one of the worst feelings ever. Butterflies in your stomach in the worst possible way. Like someone reached in and ripped out some things you're pretty sure are really important if you want to, you know, keep on living.

And it's not like I went into each new job thinking 'Ok, how can I fuck this one up in the quickest way possible?' I just...have a temper. I'd pull the 'rotten upbringing' card if it weren't so damn overused, but it's sort of true. Chalk it up to years and years of unrealized frustration, or whatever the hell else you want to chalk it up to. Whatever. I just get pissed off. I'm not a bad guy. I don't get off on bitching at little children. I was not raised to be an asshole (even though I kind of was) and I really do go into every new job thinking that maybe I might be able to make it a few months without being close to homeless again.

But I was running out of options. I'd only gotten the job at The Creamery by dumb luck and a few well placed contacts, and the number of places who would consider me after seeing my shitty resume was dwindling fast. To get all metaphorical on you, the handful of sandy opportunity that I'd been given at birth was now a few pitiful grains. It fucking sucked. There'd been times before when my options had seemed pretty damn few and far between, but this was really the first time when I didn't have anything to turn to. At the end of the month, when the landlord came knocking for the rent which was a bit past due already, I didn't know where I'd get it. Or even if I'd be able to get it at all, and how shitty would that be? Somehow, flying by the ass of my pants, I'd been able to avoid falling into the category of 'homeless loser', but I wasn't sure how much longer that would work out.

So, I guess you could kind of say that I went a teeny tiny bit insane. Temporarily, of course. And I think it was pretty justified, right? I mean, I couldn't look backward without asking myself when I started to fuck up so badly, and I couldn't really look forward without seeing that eviction notice lurking in my future. It was like being trapped between a rock and a hard place—between shit and more shit. Except it was really starting to look like something I couldn't get away from.

Mr. McDuck, the old man who owned The Creamery, was nice about letting me go. Well, as nice as an employer can be when trying to fire someone who's kind of an asshole. It hadn't been a bad gig, really, doling out overly-expensive ice cream to kids whose parents could afford to dish out the dough without batting an eyelash. The free ice cream was good (my loathing of milk doesn't extend to delicious ice cream, by the way), and none of my co-workers were jerks. But, fuck it all, I was bored out of my fucking mind. That kid was sort of in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he was also undeniably a total brat. Listen, I'm sorry we were out of banana ice cream that day. You like banana ice cream? Well, kid, here's a news flash for you. So does the rest of the world. Banana ice cream is fucking amazing, and you aren't the only person on the planet who has figured that out. So, suck it up and buy a double scoop of vanilla to drown your sorrows. The kid might have caught me at a bad time, but really, something like that was bound to happen sooner or later.

I got the "You're a good kid, deep down, Axel" speech. Let's ignore the fact that I'm twenty-two years old—hence, not really a kid anymore, thank you very much—and the fact that I've heard that line so many times I could paper my walls with it. What really got me was that you could tell he believed it. That half-senile old man believed that he was somehow selling me short by firing me. As if I didn't already feel guilty enough for making a five-year-old cry, now I felt like a total dick for letting down Mr. McDuck. Way to go Axel. Let's just say that it wasn't my most triumphant moment, and leave it at that.

I'm just going to come right out and say this—my apartment was a piece of shit. A pigsty, if you will. It wasn't just my fault, though. I mean, yeah, I have some sort of pathological desire to avoid cleaning things whenever possible, but the place was already trashed when I moved in. Peeling paint, rusting bathtub, dripping kitchen faucet, the whole deal. Bugs? Of course. Water drippage from the roof? Fuck yes. Greenish-brown shag carpet that looks like something my sick cat vomited up? Need you even ask? The place hadn't been remodeled since...well, ever probably. But the rent was cheap, and the landlord didn't ask a lot of questions as long as you paid it on time.

I know what you fuckers are probably thinking. It's the same damn thing everyone thinks when they get a good look at me. Druggie. Alcoholic. Addicted to something, whatever it might be. Take your pick. No one is that much of a fuck up without a catalyst and some useful substances. At least, that's certainly what the prostitute from upstairs would tell you, and she probably knows better than anyone. But, congratulations to me—I managed it. Not that I didn't have the opportunity to get hooked on something. Where I grew up, a single block held a choice selection of fifty goddamn different poisons. The rest of the populace wasn't nearly as skilled as I was at screwing themselves over, and they all needed a bit of help.

But seriously, I never touched any of that shit. I don't care who tells you otherwise. I am one sober-ass fuck-up, and proud of it. No matter how shitty my life got, nothing could have made me turn to that. Again, if you feel like pulling out the 'bad childhood' card, go ahead. I don't really care. I mean, sure, neither of my parents had the same hang-ups about drugs that I did, and both of them had quite the taste for cheap booze, but I'd really rather just forget about it. I don't do it because I don't want to do it. End of story, moving on.

As I unlocked my apartment door and pushed it open, a really rancid smell hit my nose. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but it never got much more bearable. I could hear the desperate meowing of Francisco, my bitchy cat, from somewhere in the living room, but I couldn't do much about it. The first thing on the agenda was to open some windows, then we'd see where life took us from there.

Even when I did manage to make it to class in high school, I didn't pay much attention to what the teachers were telling me. Still, I was pretty fucking sure that an apartment shouldn't smell like yogurt if you hadn't bought any in over a year. I could have been wrong—it happens often enough—but I didn't think so. It kind of sounded like one of those common sense things people were always talking about. I looked at my sink, which had dishes piled as high as the fucking Eiffel Tower and so haphazardly that they would probably fall to their deaths any second. If the smell came from anywhere in my apartment, that stack of dishes was probably the culprit.

Well, I'd always lived by the saying 'no time like tomorrow'. That's right, isn't it? Whatever.

Francisco had pulled up the carpet in the living room. Little fucker. Probably trying to get back at me for leaving him alone all day. I'd tried to train him to sit on my neck so I could carry him around with me, but he wasn't having any of that shit. He just sat on the ground and gave me that look. You know. The look. The one that says I've got five seconds to shut the fuck up or he'll do it for me. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. So, anyway, he really can't complain about being lonely—it's his own damn fault.

"You're kind of an asshole, you know that?" He didn't reply. I'd stopped expecting him to humor me a long time ago. As much as I bitched about the little guy, I don't know what I'd do if I got kicked out of that apartment. He wouldn't be able to live on the streets with me, and I'm not sure I could have handled giving him away. Losing my job was bearable, losing my cat was not. He was the only thing that hadn't abandoned me. I tried not to think about the fact that he didn't have much of a choice in the matter, since he couldn't open the front door. Lack of opposable thumbs, and all that. Sucks for him.

He walked over to his cat dish and sent me the most pitiful meow I'd ever heard. We were on the last bag of cat food, and I didn't really have the funds to buy another one. If he wasn't such a fat-ass, we wouldn't have this problem. He was like some sort of furry trash disposal that only accepted dried up brown pellets. If I were ever honest with myself (which I was not, in case you were pissing yourself to know) I would have been able to figure out that I wasn't the only one who'd been getting skinnier.

No, Sir. Avoidance is the name of my game. I compete like a pro and win every fucking time.

It started with an advertisement in the paper. Cliché, much? A leaf from the classifieds. A page of job ads floating around in the middle of the street like some fucking gift delivered straight from the hands of God. Not that I'm religious, or anything, but that's sure as hell what it seemed like. The first few ads were for a neighborhood canvassing position, and there was no way in hell I'd even think about it. If your memory is so shitty that you can't figure out why, refer back to item number one on my list.

Maybe it was some sort of divine intervention. On any normal day, there's no way I would have been walking down that street when I was. But I'd recently been fired from my job, in case you missed that earlier, and I wasn't really thinking about where I probably shouldn't be walking in the middle of the night. I had bigger fucking fish to fry, really. So, again, I know what you're thinking. Amazing, isn't it? I've got quite a nice talent for ESP, if I do say so myself. 'Axel,' you're thinking to yourself, 'if you lost your job, why were you out wandering the streets instead of looking for another one?'

You know what? Fuck you. I'd like to see you think clearly when your life seems like it's pretty much fucking over. I'd already looked, ok? Everywhere I'd gone, they'd taken one look at my resume and chucked it into the scrap bin. I was out wandering the streets because I didn't know what else to do. Like how sometimes you lie on your bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder why the hell you're so fucking bored, but you don't bother getting up to find something to do. Like someone taking away your pencil and telling you to write an essay. What the fuck are you supposed to write it with? Blood? No thank you.

The funny thing is that I never could figure out why getting fired from The Creamery made me so damn depressed. It wasn't like it hadn't happened a million times before, and in the exact same way. But somehow, I knew that this was it. That ice cream shop had been my last chance, and I'd blown it. Do you know how sucky that feels? It's like getting back that final exam that you actually forced yourself to study for this time, and seeing a big fat F splashed across the front. Pretty damn sucky. I don't know why it felt like that, but it did. So, shoot me if I was wandering aimlessly instead of looking for gainful employment.

Traverse Town has three districts, if you've never been there. Don't ask me why; I don't fucking know. Something about being able to isolate parts of the town in case of a terrorist attack I think. Anyway, the First District is the shopping district. Whatever you want, you can find it there—restaurants, fancy boutiques, shitty second-hand stores, dance clubs. Take your pick. It also happens to be the home of a certain ice cream shop run by a certain old man, but that's neither here nor there. The Second District is the fancy district. High end houses, ritzy hotels, that kind of shit. It's where the money is, and most people really never have any reason to go there. Too much cash for my taste. You remember that BMW jerk I was talking about earlier? Yeah, if he existed, he'd live in the Second District.

So, I guess you could probably figure out that the Third District is kind of the shitty one. You were either rich enough to afford real estate in the the Second, or you were lame enough to live in the Third. There's really nowhere in this town that's as bad as where I grew up—a rotten place called Hollow Bastion, not that you really needed to know that—but the Third District is as close as it gets. It just so happened that I was wandering around one of the more skeezy back alleys that the Third had to offer that night, and I just so happened to see that stupid piece of paper that would change my life.

Under the ad begging for canvassers (yeah, right) there was an ad looking for cash-register drones to work at a pizza place. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it would have to do. Now, you might be asking yourself 'what the fuck is wrong with a pizza place?' Technically nothing, other than the fact that it's always hot and smelling like sweaty man-meat, or that everyone buys pizza, even bitchy little five-year-olds. Pizza is delicious. It's everything I'm not looking for in a man—fatty, crusty, and slightly droopy. But, see, employers don't usually take very well to their employees sampling the wares, so to speak. Getting fired for stealing would really not look so good on my previously glorious resume. But, it didn't take moreme more than a few seconds to decide that the risk was worth it. To be brutally fucking honest with myself, I didn't have much of a choice.

"So, why should I hire you?"

Three and a half days after me coming across the ad, I was sitting in one of the way-too-fucking-comfortable booths at 3.14 (the pizza place), and wondering why the hell this blond-haired, blue-eyed shrimp was the one interviewing me. He wasn't bad looking, but he didn't look much more than eighteen years old, and certainly not old enough to be using the first person tense as though he might actually be the one deciding whether I got hired or not.

"Look, I'm not telling you this so you'll pity me and hire me out of the goodness of your heart. But if I don't get a job in the next week, I'm going to find myself homeless pretty fucking fast. I know my resume is pretty bad. And I can't really blame anyone else, that one's on me. But I have to find something."

He looked at me appraisingly over the top of his folded hands perched in front of his mouth. I know what he saw. Ridiculously red hair (which is totally natural by the way, and I'd happily show you some proof if you weren't a complete stranger), a tattooed face, long, skinny arms that looked a bit skinnier than they used to since I hadn't been eating too much. I fucking know what he saw. Who he saw. What I don't know is how felt about it. His eyes—did I mention they were blue?—didn't give anything away.

"Usually people just tell me it's because they like pizza."

I think that fucker was laughing at me. Deep inside his shriveled, eighteen-year-old heart.

"Who doesn't like pizza? If you hired people just because they like pizza, you'd have more employees than fucking customers."

Now, you might not have noticed, but I have a tendency to cuss a whole fucking lot. (I wasn't trying to be funny right there, by the way, that f-bomb just sort of slipped in). Blame those R rated action flicks I watched when I was a kid and didn't have cable, or blame parents who didn't give a shit how I talked as long as I never bothered talking to them. I don't care. But I usually try to tone it down during interviews—seriously. I don't know what it was about this guy that made it seem like I could cuss as much as I wanted without changing his opinion of me, but something did. I felt like he'd hate me because he wanted to, not because I had a dirty mouth left over from those rebellious teenage years.

"Alright," he said, glancing quickly down at my application again, "Axel. Let me lay it out for you. I run a family establishment. People come in here for their anniversaries, for their graduation parties, for their first dates, for their grandparents' eightieth birthdays—you name it. If a kid needs change for the arcade, he can't be afraid to come up to the register and ask for quarters. Your application says that you've been fired from every job you've ever had. So, take a moment to look at it from my point of view, and tell me again why on Earth I would hire you."

I know it was stupid, but I never told you I wasn't. I'm a fucking idiot—always have been, always will be. Proud of it. But sassing off to the guy who was going to decide my immediate employment future was probably a bit more stupid than I usually shoot for.

"Because I like pizza?"

"Lord, save me from people who think they're comedians," he muttered, unfolding his hands so he could rub tiredly at his eye. "You know what? Fine. You can have the job. I need someone to reach all the tall stuff in the kitchen anyway. But only on two conditions."

He stood up from the booth, grabbing my application on his way. Halfway back to the register, he turned around and looked at me expectantly, so I got up to follow him.

"You have to clean up the way you talk. Like I said, this is a family place. We've got little kids in here all the time, and even if you think they aren't listening, they are. Trust me. They hear every single word that comes out of your mouth, and they see every single thing you do. Other than that, you have to try looking a little bit happier. I don't really care if your life isn't going the way you want it to, and neither do the customers. They want to be served by someone whose face says he likes his job, even though they couldn't care less whether or not he actually does. Is that clear?"

I nodded, waiting outside the office door as he disappeared inside. I didn't know whether the 'Managers Only' sign technically applied right now, but it seemed like a good idea to pay attention to it anyway. My mind was still reeling from the idea that I might actually be getting a job for absolutely no fucking reason.

"Yes, Sir."

It didn't matter that the guy was a good foot and a half shorter than me, or that he looked like he shouldn't even have a fucking high school diploma yet. When he handed me the employment agreement form and told me to fill it out, I shut the hell up, and did what he said. That kid was scary, damn it.

Later that night, as I dished out a cup of that nasty-ass kibble into Francisco's bowl, I couldn't help the feeling of relief that sort of raped me. I had a job. I could make money. I could feed my cat.

Thank God.