Sebastian woke up to the noise of glass shattering. He wasn't shocked; too often he was yanked from unconsciousness by the sounds of struggle. But the loss of sleep never failed to bring out the worst of his (rather plentiful) fury. He woke instantly and angrily, frustrated enough to grit his teeth, if they weren't already clenched in his sleep. His eyes blinked open, and he glared daggers at the ceiling, as if blaming it for the disturbance. Ironically, the problem was coming from the exact opposite direction.
With an extravagant flourish of his arm, he threw the quilt off himself, and rolling over, he swung his legs off the bed to meet the carpet. When he stood, he realized with a grimace his bare foot was resting on something cold and mushy. Quickly it became apparent it was a leftover slice of pizza he had failed to see previously in the dark of his apartment. He removed his foot from the molding food and dragged it across the carpet, scraping off the gooey residue.
He heard a clatter from below, followed by an uproarious belly laugh, and remembered the reason for his previous frustration. He made his way carefully across the cluttered one-room apartment, eyes finally adjusting to the dim light the barely risen sun offered. He found his broom, resting against the wall opposite from the bed. He never used it to clean: only to complain.
Gripping the broom with both hands, bristles to the ceiling, he slammed the end of the handle into the floor several times. The resounding bangs interrupted the drunk shouting match occurring one floor below.
"Would you kindly shut up?!" Sebastian shouted, his voice jumping up an octave. He hated that about himself. Whenever he tried to be loud and menacing, his voice betrayed him and escalated to a squeal.
The bartender downstairs gave a hearty laugh. "Quit yer whining, kid!" Other patrons joined in the laughter, feud out of mind.
Sebastian bit his tongue, recognizing a lost cause when it presents itself. He threw the broom to the floor with a clatter and dove back under his quilt. He growled at the display on his alarm clock, informing him that he had only two hours left to sleep. Heaving another sigh, he rolled out of bed, literally, and hit the floor with a thud. The room shook, and the less securely placed items rattled on their shelves. Avoiding the foul slice of pizza, he pushed himself back onto his feet and trudged in the direction of the kitchen area (basically a fridge and a sink). He stripped off his shirt, an event we won’t go into detail about here, and tugged the sink’s lever on. Fitting his head into the small sinkbowl, letting the rusty water soak his hair, he made a mental to-do list for the day.
School, work, pet store… he thought, smiling when the idea of work graced his mind. This may be an uncommon reaction when one’s reminded of their job, but for Sebastian, a broke high-school senior currently taking a mock-shower in his sink, almost no thought could make him happier. He just hoped it went better than usual.
Continuing his mental list, he skimmed over pet store. Petunia was running out of food. Recently he’d been spending more money on guinea pig food than person food. Briefly, he contemplated the idea of just sharing her food, which was cheaper. But no, he wasn’t that desperate. Not yet.
Running out of ideas for the rest of the day, he mentally concluded the list. When he shook his hair out, it re-settled into its usual chin-length tangle of muddy curls. A new button-down dress shirt was chosen from his dresser and he pulled it over his scrawny shoulders. He found a matching sweater vest. It hung loosely over his small frame, as if to remind him of his lanky figure. He pulled on one of his many pair of tan too-big khakis, and glanced at his digital wristwatch.
There were still a few hours left before Sebastian had to make his way to destination #1 on his to-do list. He smiled despite his crappy morning, and flopped almost boneless-ly into his worn bean-bag chair. He made a clucking sound with his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and got a squeak in return. Petunia made her way out of the pile of pillows she was hiding under, and scuttled across the room towards him. This didn’t take long, because even by her tiny standards, Sebastian’s apartment was still dreadfully small.
She crawled up into his lap, using his leg as a guinea pig ramp. His smile grew warmer as he tousled her long, tangled hair. She cooed in approval. Sebastian reached over to his treasured bookshelf and grasped for the novel he was currently re-reading for the third time. He cracked open the ancient hardcover, still in perfect condition, and started to read, still scratching behind Petunia’s ears absentmindedly.
***
Sebastian gnawed on the rubbery end of his pencil. The teacher ranted on about his certainty of the impending zombie takeover, or something dull like that. Sebastian had no concern for the subject, and he most certainly didn’t want to hear rantings on the inevitability of walking reanimations when he had signed up for biology class.
“Mr. Zhivago?” Paul, nobody of significance, said from the front row. “You said our first test is on Friday. It’s, uh, Wednesday. We… haven’t learned anything about biology yet. What are we going to do about the test?” Paul asked his questions like one might address someone with a hostage at gunpoint. “Are we going to skip the test? Or are we all just… gonna fail? Or-”
“Misss-ter Anderson,” Mr. Zhivago cut him off. He laughed at his own reference, which went unnoticed by everyone but Gwen, a girl that didn’t talk much, who stifled a giggle.
“Mister Anderson. Paul Anderson. Paul. Can I call you Paul?” Mr. Zhivago continued, not allowing any time between his sentences for a reply. “So. Paul. You want to learn some biology, do you? You want to get ready for the test?” He jabbed a finger at Paul’s chest.
The annoying boy seated front of Sebastian, Caesar was his name, gestured for Paul to drop it, but Paul wasn’t looking.
“Uhm, I… I guess? Yeah?”
Mr. Zhivago slammed his hands down on his Paul’s desk. “You want a test? A test, Paul, is that what you want?! I can give you a test!” He grabbed Paul’s forearm, and held it in front of his face. “Pop quiz, Paul! I’m a zombie! I just infected you!” He made a big display of pretending to chomp down into Paul’s arm, and Paul screamed a little. “WHOOPS, YOU’RE A ZOMBIE! YOU FAILED THE TEST!”
He dropped his arm like it had done something to disgust him, and Paul drew it back behind his desk defensively.
“What’s the test that really matters?! Do you think, when you’re thirty, you’re going to need to know the difference between a mollusk and an annelid? Do you think, maybe, it’ll be useful to know how many hearts an earthworm has?” He paced back and forth across the front of the room, addressing the entire class now. “There is a MUCH BIGGER PICTURE HERE! Stop wondering about how many sections the brain of a badger is divided into, and start focusing on KEEPING YOUR OWN INSIDE YOUR HEAD!!”
Paul, apparently not having learned his lesson, said tentatively, “Keeping our… badgers in our heads?”
Mr. Zhivago grimaced and straightened his glasses, which had gone askew. “The dead will rise,” he said calmly and with resolve. “And when they do,” he glared daggers at Paul, “…you will be the first to go.”
Paul blinked.
“Moving right along...” he continued as if he hadn’t just pretended to gnaw off a student’s arm, “About the test. Yes, I have been reconsidering the test.”
The students whooped gleefully, apparently also disregarding the recent limb-munching.
“Instead of a test, we’ll have… A partner project!” Mr. Zhivago announced, to the delight of thirty-four young minds, and to the dismay of one.
Sebastian’s groan couldn’t be heard over the rejoicing of his classmates. Kids jumped up and high-fived their friends. Directly in front of him, Caesar and Gwen did that creepy twin-thing they did, and agreed to work together with a glance. All around the room, students were choosing their ally against the undead. Sebastian stared straight down at his biology textbook and ran a hand through his unruly hair, trying unsuccessfully to keep it from falling in his eyes.
Sebastian hated partner projects. He could do the work by himself, and didn’t like relying on other people to match his quality of work. All he really wanted was to take a test about the inevitable rise of the departed by himself. Was that really too much to ask?
That’s when Zhivago started shouting and flailing his arms like his stained cargo shorts had caught fire. “Wait, everyone! Don’t pick partners yet! Stopstopstopstopstop!”
Everyone froze, the joy in their expressions fading.
“I’ll be picking the partners,” he said, and was met by an auditory sea of groans, not unlike Sebastian’s previously.
Said boy didn’t know if assigned partners made things better or worse for him. Probably better, considering that now he didn’t have to sit in his desk like a loser until the final un-grouped person in the room reluctantly surrendered themselves to his company.
Zhivago waved his hands to quiet the protest. “Yeah, yeah, your lives just took a catastrophic downturn. Boo-hoo. Moving on. Let’s keep this simple. Everyone in the front row; turn around and look at the person directly behind you in the second row. See them? That’s your buddy. Keep the introductions brief.”
The students begrudgingly did what they were told, and soon half of the class was partnered up. Predicting the rest of the pattern, Sebastian could see who he was stuck with. Or who was stuck with him. Either way, he wasn’t happy about it.
“Third row, turn around to face fourth row. Fifth to sixth. There! All buddied-up and happy. Talk amongst yourselves.” After he finished proving that it is, in fact, possible to bark orders nonchalantly, Mr. Zhivago hopped into the spinning chair behind his desk and watched over the class, scratching his stubble absently.
The dusty-blonde head of hair in front of him whipped around so Sebastian could see his annoyingly cheerful face. When he made eye contact with Caesar, Caesar’s ever-present broad smile only grew broader. Definitely not the reaction Sebastian was used to.
“Hey there! So, you’re my partner then,” he said, voice carrying to every corner of the classroom. “Awesome!” He managed to smile even wider, which shouldn’t have been possible.
Sebastian didn’t even bother trying to plaster on a fake smile. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Alright, alright, attention back up here!” Zhivago casually commanded, standing up out of his chair and snapping his fingers. “For your project, I want you to…” He stalled and scratched the back of his head, like he was just now thinking of ideas for what the project could be. Actually, Sebastian thought, that conclusion was fairly plausible.
The eccentric teacher’s eyes lit up with his latest psychotic idea, and he promptly spun around toward the blackboard, scooping up a stick of chalk and furiously scrawling. By the time he was done, the word DIORAMA stretched across the front of the classroom in gigantic, messy, yellow letters.
This resulted in more groaning from the students, Sebastian included.
Mockingly, Zhivago lolled his head back and let out a long, guttural bellow of his own. After the class had quieted down for him, he snapped his head back up and snapped, “Save the griping for when you’re forty-nine and lonely, living in a one-room apartment with the girlfriend you don’t have.”
An awkward silence stretched on until, unphased, he continued. “So, for this project you’ll be working with your partner on making the most beauti-riffic diorama in the class. As always, the grading system is rank-based. Best diorama gets an A, runner-up gets an A-, bronze gets a B+, yadda yadda.”
Sebastian personally thought that Zhivago’s grading system was extremely unfair, but because he consistently out-performed his classmates with ease, he wasn’t going to complain about it.
But now, with Caesar working with him to weigh him down, he wasn’t so sure.
“And in this diorama, I want to see…” Zhivago tucked one of his arms under the other while he thought, and lightly bit the end of the chalk. “Your house! Your house, when zombies become a present threat. Show me the ways you’ll protect your house from the undead menace. Both creativity and functionality will be considered in final scoring. You can have the… eight remaining minutes of class to brainstorm with your partners.”
Caesar chuckled quietly (a word rarely associated with Caesar) and nudged Gwen with his elbow. “I still don’t know what this has to do with biology. But I’ll take it.” Gwen quickly checked to make sure Mr. Zhivago didn’t hear her brother’s quip, and then risked a small chuckle of her own. Sebastian sometimes wondered how two people so different could get along so well, not to mention be siblings. Caesar is loud, always talking like he’s trying to have a conversation with someone on the opposite side of town, while Gwen hardly utters a word, or even looks up from her book. He doesn’t have to know them very well to see that they’re polar opposites, and it’s a miracle they can stand to be in the same room as one another, and plain crazy that they actually enjoy each other’s company.
The dusty-blonde boy turned around to face him then. “Okay, so. Whose house should we make a diorama of?” he asked, but didn’t pause to allow an answer. “Probably yours. Would that be okay? My house would be kind of hard to secure. Where do you live? Wow, that sounded really creepy.” He laughed loudly at his own blunder.
After waiting a few moments, allowing Caesar the opportunity to interrupt himself again, Sebastian responded, “Yeah. That’d be fine, I guess.”
“Great!” There was that smile again. “Wanna work on it after school?”
“Today?”
“Yeah. Unless you’re busy. Are you busy?”
Sebastian knew he wasn’t good at fabricating excuses fast, so he just answered truthfully, “No, I’m not busy.”
“Cool! I’ll meet you after school and we can take a bus from there, or something. Awesome! See you then!” Caesar then turned back to his sister, who was done planning with her partner as well, and they began talking casually.
When he was sure that Caesar was looking away, Sebastian grimaced. He may not like very many people very much, but his work-buddy represented a couple of his worst pet peeves. He was loud and overly friendly to strangers, like a dog. Additionally, he used far too many interjections in one conversation. Folding his arms on his desk to create a makeshift pillow, Sebastian laid his forehead on the hard surface and tried to think about dioramas.
***
After a long ride filled with one-sided conversation attempts, the bus pulled over onto the curb in front of a seedy-looking bar on a street full of seedy-looking bars. Sebastian exited onto the sidewalk, and Caesar followed shortly after, both with their backpacks in tow. When Sebastian reached the front door of a particularly familiar bar, donning the logo of a popular beer company in fluorescent blinking letters in the window, Caesar became confused.
“What, do you want to pick up some drinks before we get to work?” His tone was joking, although he sounded fairly puzzled.
“I live here,” Sebastian deadpanned.
At the moment, this only seemed to confuse him more, but he didn’t question any further. Sebastian lead him around the back wall of the bar, avoiding some of the drinkers who liked to get an early start. They discreetly made their way to a musty staircase in the back corner behind a table. Eager to get out of the smell, they took the steps two at a time. The concrete stairs ended on the second floor, and led only to a single brown door.
After fumbling with the keys for an embarrassingly long time, Sebastian finally managed to get into the apartment. He made his way to the plastic picnic table he used as a dining table/desk (or at least he used to; he hadn’t seen the surface in weeks) and frantically began clearing the miscellaneous messes off of it, moving many odds and ends onto the floor, including Petunia.
He was afraid of looking back to see Caesar’s reaction to his living space. Not that he really cared about what anyone thought of him, especially Caesar. But he wasn’t exactly proud of his apartment.
There was something reasonably off about Caesar. Usually, when faced with Sebastian’s sour attitude, argumentative tendencies, and overall negative personality, people give up trying to be nice to him. They see a lost cause when it bites them, and they treat him the same way he treats them. It wasn’t working that way for Caesar. He brushed him off in class, outright refused to talk to him on the bus, and now he’s bringing him to the rat hole he calls home. This boy just doesn’t seem to have a breaking point, Sebastian pondered.
As if on cue to perplex him further, Caesar released a booming laugh that probably frightened the patrons downstairs. It sure frightened Sebastian. The frazzled boy whirled around to see Petunia nuzzled up against Caesar’s armpit, cooing. He was cradling her like a baby, and she looked even tinier than usual. Sebastian realized that this was maybe the first time he’s ever seen anyone else hold her.
“It’s cute,” he said, the fondness obvious in his voice. “What’s its name?”
Sebastian’s voice equipped a razor edge that was every bit as obvious. “Her name is Petunia. And you should put her down. She hates being held.”
Instead of flaring up and arguing with him, Caesar just looked droopy, if not a tiny bit befuddled again. He gently set down Petunia, who squeaked in protest of the lost attention.
One of the items previously stacked on the table, a shoebox, actually seems to have some relevance in this situation, Sebastian figures. He puts the box back on the table, and leaves the rest of his belongings scattered around the floor, which is where most of his belongings seem to end up anyways.
“We can start with this,” he suggested lamely. Caesar saunters over to take a closer look at the box, and nods.
“For planning purposes,” Sebastian continued, “We’ll use this as my house.” He placed a lone bottle cap in the center of the shoebox. “Now how do we zombie-proof it?”
Caesar hummed in contemplation. “Well, the edges of the box could be a huge fence. We could color it white or gray or something.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian agreed, and grabbed a handful of other small objects to represent their ‘defenses against the undead’.
They plan for a solid fifteen minutes or so, but their train of thought is forcefully derailed by a sound that resembles a safe crashing through a floor, followed by hysterical male laughter.
“I swear to…” Sebastian grumbled inaudibly.
“What was that?!” Caesar asked, almost louder than the interruption.
“The rowdy bar-goers downstairs…” Sebastian growled. “It’s amazing they’re already going, I usually have to wait until 7 or 8 in the afternoon for their shenanigans.”
They both listened as two masculine voices started shouting at each other over a sports team.
Caesar’s eyebrows scrunched together the slightest bit, the closest thing to a sign of frustration Sebastian’s seen on him all day.
Caesar took a deep breath. “QUIET DOWN!!” he bellowed.
The overwhelming loud was followed by a stunned silence from both floors. Chatting slowly started back up among the bar folk, but was now kept at conversational volume.
Sebastian almost thanked him when Caesar looked up and spoke first. “Why do you live here?”
“What do you mean?” He was caught off-guard by the bluntness of the question, and the sincerity with which Caesar asked it.
“Like, why do you live in a tiny apartment on top of a bar on Bar Street?” It was obvious that he wasn’t trying to offend; he sounded genuinely curious, or even concerned.
“It’s what I can afford,” Sebastian snapped.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Do you live here all by yourself?”
Sebastian stood up a little taller, but still had to look up noticeably to meet Caesar’s eyes. “Yes. And I manage fine.” It’s not luxurious, but at least he pulled it off by himself, he thought.
The taller boy considered that for a moment. “Actually, my sister and I have a spare room in our house. You could come stay with us if you wanted?”
“Did you not hear what I just said?” Sebastian accused, “How could you even ask me that! You just met me for the first time about five hours ago!”
Caesar shrugged. “You seem decent enough. And this place just seems kinda small, that’s all. I thought I’d be helping out.”
“I don’t need your help!” His voice skipped up an octave, betraying him once again.
“I didn’t think you needed help,” was the calm response, “I just thought you may have wanted help.”
Sebastian didn’t exactly know how to respond to that, so he changed the topic. “Why have you put up with me all day? I’ve been rude and condescending at every opportunity. Why aren’t you mad at me?”
Caesar quirked an eyebrow. “Do you want me to be mad at you?”
Once more, Sebastian was at a loss for a response. Of course he didn’t want people angry with him; it just always seemed to turn out that way. Thinking hard about it, he realized that he actually wouldn’t want Caesar upset with him.
But this realization-in-progress was cut short by another realization, this one more jarring to Sebastian than the first.
“No way. You’re joking,” he said to himself disbelievingly. “Today was the first day of work, and I completely forgot about it.”
He risked a glance at the clock.
“Wow, I’m two hours late. Just. Freaking. Fantastic,” he exhaled to keep his nerves (somewhat) under control.
“You had work today?” Caesar asked, not quite following. “Dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”
“Of course you didn’t know,” Sebastian cut him off. “And you don’t have to apologize. But I’d prefer it if you would leave.” He spoke in a faux-calm voice, which meant he was in worse shape than if he were yelling. There was an undertone of panic in the way his voice shook ever so slightly.
Caesar’s eyes brightened up briefly. “I could help! I could say that I broke my leg, and you were helping me to the hospital so you missed work, and-”
“Just. Get. Out.”
Sebastian watched as the cheer in his expression was flooded out by something like regret or grief. Nobody ever looked upset to get away from him. He turned his back on Caesar and waited to hear him pick up his backpack, close the door, and retreat down the stairs.
When he was sure he allowed enough time for him to get on a bus and go back home, Sebastian frantically grabbed his thick coat that made him resemble the Michelin Man, if the Michelin Man had an allergic reaction and puffed up to twice his regular size. He bolted out the door and down the steps, through the bar and down the sidewalk towards Ricky’s Pizza Eatery Extravaganza.
***
He didn’t have the energy to walk back home after the brutal questioning-then-scolding-then-firing from his ex-boss, so Sebastian payed to ride the bus three blocks back to the bar he called home.
Upon entering his apartment, he noticed three things that he thought were unusual.
One, Petunia didn’t rush up to his feet immediately to greet him with friendly chirps and squeaks.
Two, the whole room was mostly clean, like it had been reset while he was gone.
And three, a tall blonde boy was sitting at his plastic dining table, his grey-blue eyes focused unshakably on turning the edges of a shoebox into something resembling a tall picket fence.
When Caesar finished on the current section he was working on, he turned his focus to Sebastian.
“You should really keep your door locked,” he said. “Any guy from the bar could just stumble up here and fall asleep on your couch.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Sebastian said with a fleeting grimace. He couldn’t even bring himself to be angry. Caesar’s stubborn kindness was stronger than his own stubborn grouch-ness.
“What happened at work?” he asked conversationally. “You’re back here already, so I’m not assuming good things…”
Sebastian gave a short laugh. “Rick fired me. I can’t really blame him, who misses their first day of work?” He laughed again. Caesar was easy to talk to.
He twirled the bottle of glue in his hand and tossed it gently to Sebastian, who panicked and dropped it. This caused Caesar to smile widely, and Sebastian responded with a glare. Not a furious glare, but a teasing glare.
“What?” Caesar asked, gesturing wildly to the diorama with his newly freed hands. “Are you going to make me do all of this myself?”
Sebastian made his way over to the table, almost smiling, and picked up a gluestick.
THE END
(I had to cut out a bunch of points in the story, but I think it worked out fine. It was getting kind of long anyway.)
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