It was the middle of September and the day had an air of misery about it. The sky was gray and cloudy, threatening to rain, and the weather was starting to turn from the heat of Summer into the briskness of Fall. The children of LA were back in school, and it was starting to sink in that this would be their lives for the next nine months.

Devon Kouri’s feelings matched the gloomy weather. It had been a bad day. She hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before, because she was too cold. At work, she had to touch a candy bar covered in some kid’s snot and nearly vomited, which very nearly gave her a panic attack. Upon coming back home, she realized she had locked her keys inside her apartment and her landlady was nowhere to be seen.

Back in the lobby of Salty Dog Apartments, she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror on the wall. Still weirdly skinny, ears still too big for her head, still hairless. It seemed like the bags under her eyes were bigger than usual. Looking at herself, she almost started reconsidering her film project, because who would want to watch a movie starring that face? She shook her head and pulled her beanie down lower. Stop it. You’re being overdramatic.

Devon was tired, as she always was after work, and now she couldn’t get to her bed (more like mattress with a blanket and pillow on it), so she would have to make do. Her stomach turned a little when she glanced at the ratty, stained couch on the far side of the room. Fatigue won out over disgust, though, as she dropped her body onto the soft cushions.

Sprawled out on a couch too small for her, Devon silently dared anyone who may pass through to judge her.

Load. Youtube.



Twitter. 10 Notifications. You have been tagged in a post.

@AdamSandhill

Ebert’s latest review just doesn’t get my sense of humor. He should go back to make shitty art house films no one watches. Because they are a bore.

@FelixEbert_DarkFilmStudios

Cute. Ran out of man children films to write. So you decide to pick a fight about my latest review. Don’t get your humor? How about you lack actual humor that translates to today's audience. The 90s called they want you to retire.

@AdamSandhill

Were you just bored that you actually responded? Sad.

@FelixEbert_DarkFilmStudios

You must be very sad too then.

@Iluvhomoluv_MaxWag

Bets on Adam winning.

@UrMumsCock_ShellyShellfish

No way. Adam doesn’t have the intelligence to hold up to Ebert.

@ChockingonCuck

Fan war. You guys are such cucks. Both Adam and Ebert are fucking idiots. They both suck cuck sperm.



Refresh.



Back out.

@AdamSandhill - 2 mins ago

Had to delete my post. So much spam. :D

X out of tab. Typical. They never responded with something actually challenging. So they thought that deleting the post or blocking the individual or even removing them from their friend list solved anything. People who ran away from conflict could never handle conflict when they were the ones who started it. Their prideful narcissism blinded them.

Sometimes it was the simple fact their ego couldn’t handle it. He understood that the Little Lost Kitten didn’t do so well. But he rather figure out on what to fix about it, rather than think he was the greatest mind there ever existed.

He was not. He just didn’t spout dribble. Unless it was something he knew. Babbling idiots always believed they had something intelligent to say and all they looked to him was a retard with drool coming out of their mouth. And even that was an insult to retards. Some of these people were more retarded then retards.

He sighed sitting back from the computer desk. He didn’t make a whole lot of money, but he made it all seem like he did. It wasn’t to impress anyone. He just wanted to respect himself. He could dress his apartment like trash and live like trash just because he didn’t make enough money. Or he could put a sensible amount of work into his apartment and himself and look a little decent.

Placing a digit on one of the purple rose petals on his hand, he didn’t get people. They always wanted the easier way out of things. They always wanted things to be simple. Fame and praise. Fame and praise. Instant gratification. They never wanted to put any work into it.

Didn’t it seem ironic that the US had a hold yourself up by your own bootstraps mentality, but then all the heroes they idolizes were do nothing, lazy bums getting out of work. Or that all the famous celebrities were born into wealth without working for it. All that glitter and glam not earned, just given. And people immortalized that.

Anyone that even put a mentionable amount of worth and value and hard work into their passions were belittled and dragged down. They will tell you, you’ll never make it, you’ll never make enough money, you’ll never be famous. They’ll tell you that if you’re trying to become a filmmaker or writer or actor with the actual hard work and effort into your work, that you’re lazy and that you need to find a real job.

But then praise people who were just given it.

It seemed like a cognitive disconnect, didn’t it? Cognitive dissonance at its finest. He wondered if Devon was home.

People always looking for his opinion, but when he told them the honest truth they hated him. Devon wasn’t like that. She listened and they had some good conversations. Plus he was tired of sitting at his computer all day dealing with mind numbing verbal drool.

Getting up from his office chair he decided to dip out for a little while. Stretch his legs. Relax. Find a way to rid himself of this migraine. He felt like every time he dealt with people he killed just a little bit more of his brain cells.

His apartment really wasn’t that expensive all the magazines and interviews would have you think he was living middle class. But most of his furniture and most of his material goods were bought from Greatwill. You could always rely on getting a good discount at a Greatwill. A 30 dollar coffeepot at a retail store, 15 dollars at Greatwill.
He didn’t want expensive things. He wanted challenging things. He wanted a world that challenged the quota. Challenged creativity. Challenged thought. Challenged words. But you weren’t going to get it here. You saw ads that told you that the only thing you need to be happy is what you buy. A soda here. A pair of pants there. And if those didn’t make you happy then here are some pills.

He needed to get out of this surreal stucco prison for a little while. Fixing the collar of his button down shirt and grabbing his keys from this fetch ashtray he saw at Greatwill, it was this odd oval shape, with a wrinkled rim, with spirals of blue that wove around black ceramic. He didn’t smoke, but he found it so cool that he had to place it on his coffee table.

Stepping out of his apartment he locked the door behind him. Hopefully no one tried to talk to him. They always wanted to stop him in the hallway to talk to him about trivial bullshit. Well technically the culprit was the little old lady a few doors down.

He didn’t care about what she bought at the store or the great discount she on purses she found at the latest department store. Managing to sneak out without being seen. He walked to Devon’s door and knocked on it.

@knifeman

“If you’re feeling sorry for yourself, I provide a great distraction,” he says through the door.

Yeah, there was no way Devon could take a nap on the gross-ass couch. Especially not in a public place. She just ended up browsing Twitter on her phone, amused by a war igniting between the fans of Felix Ebert and Adam Sandhill. She would never get in the middle of any fan rivalries, but they were always funny to watch. She was a little disappointed when the whole thread was deleted.

To entertain herself some more, she snapped a picture of her legs splayed over the far arm of the couch (she figured it made an interesting image) and tweeted it to her very small number of followers.

@sewer.wave
I wish Ronald McDonald would French kiss my melon.

The only things she ever tweeted were random lines of surrealist nonsense. It’s not like she had anything important to say. She got excited for a second when she saw a notification for a PM, but rolled her eyes when she actually saw it.

@xXSEXY-BABESXx
Meet HOT SINGLES in your area!!

She heard footsteps coming down the hall and a knock at a door, then Felix’s voice.

She called to him from the lobby (perks of having a first-floor apartment).

“I’m over here! Hello.”

“Keys.” Marcus muttered to himself, and continued, “Keys, keys, keys, keys.”

He patted his pockets, back pockets, coat pockets and then finally his back pockets again just to make sure. He’d been at a friend’s after work, feathers ruffled and out of place, and hadn’t quite had enough time to completely sober up and swayed gently from side to side.

Marcus stared up at the sky, the clouds rolling with a calm threat of rain, and tried to remember where he put his keys with a thoughtful noise. With a backpack full of shopping and another bag by his feet Marcus didn’t like the idea of being locked out until someone came to let him in. He snapped his fingers as he remembered,

“Aha!”

He’d put his keys in his backpack for safe keeping. The tumblers turned loudly in the lock, old and but sturdy like much of the building, and Marcus stepped into the lobby with his shopping in hand. He nudged the door closed with his foot whilst completely forgetting his keys were still in the lock.

There was no post for him, “darn it”, other than bills and with nothing else of interest he continued on his way.

“Mornin’” He nodded to Devon, and another up to Felix further up the hall, as he passed by. “How’s you doing?”

He stopped suddenly, mid stride, and stared at the clock, squinting through the headache at the large hands.

“It’s Thursday right?”

---

“Ah shit…another day another dollar I guess” the deep inhale of smoke polluting his lungs. Truthfully, Leonard didn’t smoke much at all, almost never. Yet, he found himself slipping more and more into the embrace of the sickly intoxicating embrace of nicotine and the additives that would probably kill him before anything else did, but in Hollywoo you never know. The lavish life styles and the glitz and glam was all just propagated propaganda to peddle to audiences who wanted to risk it all only to crash and burn and live like the rest of the fools who joined them. One of those fools was smoking his life away one pack at a time. The flame bit the orange filter signaling the fleeting life of the cigarette, with a simple flick of his fingers the butt of the cigarette was gone, hopefully not ready to set a fire. The ticking sounds of his watch struck the turn of the hour. The buzzing alarm signaling him to get home before he was late and become a victim to the ever grueling traffic that LA was famous for.

Crushing the pack of lucky strikes, vintage I know, Leonard got into his dilapidated piece of shit of a car. The make and model was almost as old as his parents, god if he didn’t miss them every day. Leonard was an old mind and was quite slow on the uptake that was the virtual world of the 21st century. Wasn’t he a drug kingpin when he got out of the orphanage? Yes that was true, but he also had a congregation that followed him and networked for him. No, Leonard was stuck with his crappy flip phone. It was actually more like a burner phone you see in the movies people use when they’re on the run, except he wasn’t running from anyone besides himself. His fingers worked in overtime to send a simple text to his group of brainless zombies that ate his self-help pyramid scheme up. Let’s just say the Lamborghini parked next to his beater car was just a rental from one of those imported car stores, he was friendly with the owner so he let him keep it there for free whenever he had work.

Revving the motor and popping one of the few CD’s he brought with him, he hit play and raced down the strip on his way back to the Salty Dog Apartments. At least there no one judged him or gave him shit…it was somewhere he could be himself and remember the ambitions of rising to the top in the real estate world like that stupid Gazelle did so flawlessly. Parking his car and admiring the run down excuse for an apartment complex he shook his head and made his way through the front doors. Usually it was rather empty, but it seemed there was a party this morning in the main lobby. The faces were unfamiliar and much less likely the chance of him knowing their names. Every fiber of his being yelled at him to simply ignore them and continue up to his shanty humble abode, so why is it he decided to walk up to the group of passerbyers and engage with them. “Anyone else having a splendid day this morning?” the sarcasm stung the air with his ferocious bite.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Standing in the middle of the road, he was certainly going to either get run over or he was certainly going to cause a traffic accident. But this was a great vantage point to take a photo. A long horn passed him by.

“Why the fuck are you in the middle of the road!” the man shouted swerving out of the way.

That’s a good question. Why was he in the middle of the road? He was trying to convince himself that he was doing something important. But he was starting to consider this was a dangerous habit of his. Another car swerve out of the way and another stopped inches away from his leg.

The rabbit behind the steering wheel lifted up a paw.

“What the hell!” the rabbit shouted, “Get the fuck out of the road.”

“I would if I saw meaning in my own existence,” he responded, “Now your car is in the way of my shot. Working on a gallery.”

The rabbit swerved around him and he just continued looking down white painted lines. Taking photo after photo of a street with oncoming cars in the distance. If none of these photos turned out good he’d be disappointed, but then again he didn’t have much fucks to give even if the photos were crap and someone would tell him on his Instagram that they were not marketable.

Who’s the shit head who even decides that? Consumers? Consumers can barely decide whether they want a poptart for breakfast or cereal. How could they be trusted to know what was marketable? It wasn’t like he was doing this for his health. Clearly if he’s standing in the middle of the road with little fear that he’s going to get run over.

It’s a weird place to be. On one hand you enjoy your current existence and like it to stay where it is. On another hand you’re about ready to give up and want to throw yourself in front of a moving vehicle, jump from a building, shoot yourself in the head, constantly. A state in which both being alive is the greatest feeling ever, but the worse feeling ever and you wished you no longer existed. Where death and life do a constant dance in your head.

No normal person should constantly weight life and death this much in their head. He felt like he was obsessed with his own rotting corpse sometimes. Putting his camera back into its case with ease, he was sure he was being robbed by now. In the back of his mind he always picture his Depression as some shadowy asshole who robs him of his most desirable thoughts.

Oh you were actually have a decent day. You know what I am going to take that from you and let you hold onto all of these other negative thoughts.

He’d probably upload his photos onto his computer and edit them. It sounded like a good idea. There were places he wanted to be. To do. Go to the cafe. No you’re just wasting your money and that sounds like a lot of effort. Go to the comic bookstore. But then you actually have to engage another individual with words and that sounds like a lot of work.

He just couldn’t muster the effort to convince himself to do anything, but drag his feet back towards the Salty Dog Apartments.

@Syn @Arty Fox @knifeman

Where a group of individuals was beginning to develop in the lobby. Why? What was the occasion? Should he engage them? He’s never really talked to them. Beside knowing one of them was Devon.

Maybe he could sneak on by? His heart was racing and he was getting that weird feeling you get when you feel something bad is going to happen even though you know nothing will. A sense of doom just washed over him.

“Mor-ning,” he mumbled to the group, “Quite the congregation. Didn’t know the Salty Apartments was starting an evangelical group.”

Did that sound lame? Would anyone laugh? Or would they just blow him off?

It took Marcus a moment to process what was being said, or even going on around him. Even on the best of days his mind tended to wander.

“Yes, I am having a splendid day.” Pursing his peak, he thought for a moment. “As long as it isn’t Thursday.”

There were five of them now milling about the hall and lobby areas and Marcus had to shuffle further into the lobby just to avoid being driven into the old table or, even worse, squishing the loaf of bread in his shopping bag.

“ayup lads, let’s not all crowd here at once I’ve got eggs with me.” The shopping bag landed heavily on the little coffee table as he grumbled. "Come to think o'it, don't think we've all been here at the same time. Kinda nice in a house-mates sorta way."

"Anyone fancy a cuppa?" He let out twittering chuckle.

Deciding he wasn’t going to get to the stair anytime soon he dug his hands into his pockets and gently rocked on his heels. It wasn’t exactly the nicest day, and yet here they all were out and about indoors. Was this level of socialising an American thing?

“If we’re starting a religious group I call dibs on money collection.” His chuckle and waggling of eye brows came to an abrupt stop.

Marcus dug his hands a bit deeper into his pockets, his frown also deepening at the same time. He then checked his back pockets, his coat pockets and finally his jean pockets again for good measure. He made a thoughtful noise.

“I think I lost my keys.”

@TheRedWatcher@Syn@knifeman@AngelofOctober

Licking the top of his hand before smoothing down one of his wrinkles on his forehead, he sighed. Sounded like there was a party going on down there in the lobby. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to make an appearance, considering the stuff they said about him.

He wasn’t a man looking for fame nor glory, but they certainly made it out to seem that way. He just wanted people to see the idiots for what they were, idiots, and that the world would somehow embrace itself in a more logical way. Except he knew that wouldn’t happen. People were too interested in protecting their beliefs, they often tended to wear it like a suit of armor.

You weren’t just Joe who happens to be an editor. You were Joe the Editor and anyone who even criticized a single editor or editing style attacked you as a person. It was retarded. Why couldn’t people just accept criticism without it being against them?

He slowly walked down to the lobby to see Devon. They were probably the only ones who had talked the most to each other. He didn’t know any of the others. Not by name anyway. There was some jittery looking Bullfinch hanging onto grocery bags. A Panther, but he thought he was so cool because he had this black fur that looked like leathery velvet or suede. And he didn’t want to assume, but a boy who looked like a girl. Or a girl who looked like a boy.

Felix wasn’t necessarily the social type. People didn’t really have anything interesting to say and just reading the room the crowd felt stone cold awkward. A bunch of strangers just gathering in the lobby, trying to complete an actual conversation without really doing so. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to jump into the mess himself. He caught Devon’s eye, but didn’t say anything.

“So let me get this straight,” Felix mumbled overhearing parts of the conversation, “Two of you are locked out of your apartment? Devon you’re more than welcome to refuge at mine if the landlord hasn’t come back.” He was going to regret this, “And the bird. Just don’t, flap or whatever. Makes you look like prey.”

A crowd had assembled around the lobby within a few minutes. Normally, this would send Devon scrambling to the nearest small space to avoid everyone, but she was just too tired to care. So, instead of retreating into her Shame Closet (which she couldn't even do in the first place), she just sat upright and gave her neighbors her sleepiest smile, laughing a little at the comment about forming a religious group.

"Can we worship Macho Man Randy Savage? Because he's my personal lord and savior."

Hearing her own voice, she realized she could be easily mistaken for drunk. That's just what happened when she was tired, though.

It was a good thing the Felix offered his apartment to her until Myrna could get her own unlocked. If she hung out in the lobby any longer, her loopy ass would inevitably make a fool out of herself in front of her neighbors and then she would never ever be able to leave her apartment or show her face in public again.

Standing up, she said, "Yaay, party at Felix's place!"

Isadora Clawver | Interactions: @AngelofOctober@knifeman@Arty Fox@Syn@TheRedWatcher

Isadora slowly walked into the Salty Dog lobby from her apartment. Her manager, Darren, was making her work earlier shifts. Fuck you, Darren. Her usual happy demeanor was replaced with a slight sleepiness. Isadora pondered whether on not she could convince Darren that she had the flu. She squinted her eyes as her head throbbed. Her right hand reached up to her temple and her index finger rubbed the spot. Isadora's icy gaze glanced at the other apartment residents, they had been nice enough. All of the residents had big dreams like her. Even Felix Ebert, critic and C-list celebrity, lived here. Poor bastard. Salty Dog apartments weren't really the crème de la crème of Hollywoo. But who was she to judge? She was a wannabe actress that wasn't getting jobs. All because she refused to fuck directors for jobs.

She paused at she walked closer to the group, "Does anyone know of anything that will help this damn hangover?" Her paws self consciously smoothed her skirt down while waiting for any sort of answer. Last night had been a complete fail. She had another failed audition, Isadora still felt the sting of. She had drunkenly texted her ex boyfriend, Axl Grey, and they had hooked up. Like always they ended up in a fight and he left in his boxers... of course after calling her a 'dumb cunt'. Isadora personally held the billboards for his tour accountable. Of course out of all of the musicians, Axl had the one directly across from her apartment view! Her audits turned slightly as an automobile screeched its tires. "Dumbass." She muttered under her breath before turning her attention back to the group.

@knifeman@Arty Fox

He didn’t say anything about a party. He didn’t want his apartment trashed. He was simply giving them a refuge for the moment until they could get their keys from the landlord. A snow leopard waltz in and starts another conversation he certainly wasn’t in the mood to have in the beginning. He looks at Devon with a long gaze.

“Not a party, a social hangout where people sit on a couch doing normal stuff like drinking coffee and talking about the world’s annihilation. And nihilistic philosophy about how all of this is meaningless in the grand scheme of the destiny for the universe we happen to so be living in currently,” Felix told her, it was meant to be a joke between the two of them. But the others were probably staring at him like he had lost his mind. Or that he was some counterculture depressive. He was none of those things. But this is why he didn’t like so many people around.

Because they took the things he said out of context. Would make preconceived judgments about his character based on something that belonged among friends. But he wasn’t going to stop talking to Devon in a certain way because of all these strangers either. Why should he filter himself for them? When they should be mature enough to know that wasn’t for them?

“Are we ready to get away from all of this?” Felix asked the Finch and Devon, looking at quite the crowd accumulating like dead skin cells.