"I cannot believe you actually talked us into this!" Percy hissed over his shoulder as he carefully approached the door to his step-father's apartment.
Annabeth looked amused but her eyes told him that she was nervous too and for once in their friendship he saw a spark of doubt gleaming in them.
It was just right to doubt this idea, even Percy saw the number of flaws in her plan and he wasn't sure of the most important fact of it: Gabe's mental absence. They hoped, not knew, that Gabe had passed out from the alcohol last evening and was now not even ten inches away in a deep sleep from which he hopefully wasn't easy to be pulled out.
Percy fished after his key. It has been three weeks since he used them the last time and the cold metal had something dark on it, like an omen for his suffering.
He unlocked the door and tried to open it but it needed some strength to push away the rubbish piling up in the hall. Everywhere the otherwise gleaming parquet was now covered in empty wrappings and beer cans which left little puddles of liquid on the floor.
The smell was now almost overwhelming and he could feel Annabeth boring her fingernails into his arms as they stepped in the apartment and Thalia closed the door behind them.
The apartment could be confused with a dump, he thought as the smell seemed to press all the air out his lungs.
Percy turned around and saw that Nico was looking slightly sick and Thalia's face has taken an ugly shade of green. "Okay," he whispered, "I gonna check if he's really sleeping."
"Check if you can open a window too," Thalia grumbled as Percy tip-toed to the living room.
Here too, the floor wasn't recognizable; it was just a sea full of rubbish.
In the middle of the sea dangled a couch and on it the biggest and ugliest walrus which Percy has ever seen. Its clothes were dirty with thousands little spots, so many that it almost looked like the shirt has always been yellow. Its three single hairs were greasy what you could see from the pinkish baldness which gleamed like a polished bowling bowl in the morning sun.
For a moment he sighed in relief and though about closing the door but he decided against it.
He walked back without making too much noised and told the others about Gabe sleeping on the couch without moving an inch.
It seemed like Annabeth got a push from that new information and she explained her plan to them for another time. Each of them would go in another room and search for photos, letters or something else from a man who is not Gabe and which of course is addressed to Sally. She had the theory that Percy's mother didn't tell her husband about her former partner but that he found something which belonged to Sally and showed him who Percy dad is and that he does live here in New York.
Percy sent Thalia in the kitchen, Nico in an old store room and told him for later where the bathroom is, before he showed Annabeth his parents' bedroom and walked then with light steps into his own old room.
"Dear gods," he muttered as he saw the mess Gabe has left in it.
Probably he expected Percy to come back or maybe he was just frustrated that he didn't and that he now needed to buy cigarettes on his own.
The whole furniture was history, it was shattered and broken in little wooden and plastic splitter which covered the carpet-floor, which was not blue anymore but black since it was just merely more than ashes. The walls, once white mixed with blue strips, were now also black.
His whole childhood burned away. Everything he had left was now dust under the leftovers of his former bed, closet and desk.
He stumbled backwards and slipped down the wall, before he ran his fingers through the ashes of his former life, of his lucky memory with his mom, they were now all gone. Nothing was in this apartment now, what remembered him of good times, like as his mom was still healthy and baked cookies for him as snack while they played with his toys here on his floor.
Hate, was now too weak to describe the emotion towards his step-father.
Shaking, he rose again and just for a moment he played with the thought of going in the living room and using Gabe's unconsciousness to punch him senseless until he would need to go in hospital or even better until he dies, but he knew he couldn't risk it, he couldn't risk his friends to suffer under his lose of temper.
He shoved his hands in his pocket and clenched fist so tight that his fingernails bored in his flesh and he could feel on some spots blood running.
He kicked some rests of his cupboard without making noises and thought how he could make Gabe pay for this but his thoughts were disturbed as voice, he knew too well, let out a scream and he could hear the same laugh he heard three weeks ago as a vodka bottle bored in his flesh, "ANNABETH!"
Yay more than 100 reviews! Thanks a bunch guys! And the 100th reviewer even gets something but I thank this is something for later on, isn't it?
Well, gonna update later this day, so see ya and don't forget to review!