Third Person - Complete

Wanting to Leave

"Asshole!" The woman on the other side of the door yelled at Roberts, who has just slammed the door in her face.

Roberts ignored her shout, stomping back into the room. She'd been hammering on the door until Roberts had answered and then had asked for Stillwater. Her banging on the door had annoyed him and the way she'd leaned around him to shout for Stillwater had just pissed him off more. He could hear her stomp off as he sat back down in the chair.

There was nothing in the room to read. He'd looked at the Heavy Metal magazines, but the nudity had bothered him. Roberts didn't think of himself as a prude, but the nudity and sexual references had just seemed gratuitous to him. He'd been told to leave the compute alone, and that made him want to mess with it, if nothing else to prove that he wasn't someone who could just be ordered around.

But Patch was an E-5.

Roberts sighed, getting up and walked around the room. There was a poster-board that was a collage of pictures and Roberts stared at it. Patch, the fat girl, the Texan, the big Amazon and other people. Some pictures they were in civilian clothing, others they were in military clothing. Sometimes they were smiling, other times they weren't. The oldest looking pictures, where everyone looked that youngest, Patch was missing that eyepatch and looked extremely young.

Frustrated, Roberts walked away from the collage. It bugged him, being in this room. The entire room was completely dedicated to Patch, leaving Roberts to feel like an interloper in what was supposed to be his own room.

Roberts walked around the room, looking at everything. Once again the feeling of intruding on someone else's home struck him. He turned around, grabbing his wallet off of the short end table, stuffing it in his back pocket. He grabbed his short ring of keys, jamming them into his front pocket, and headed out the door, taking the time to lock it.

Walking down the hallway he felt better. Away from that room.

In Basic Training, hell, in AIT, even though he'd been in the big eight man bays and then in a long building with thirty other people, his own little corner had felt like his area.

That whole room felt like someone else's.

Roberts walked all the way down to the front stairwell, the one near the CQ Area that everyone called the Near Stairwell. He passed a couple of people, nodding to them when nodded to him.  He walked down the stairs, looking up twice when the echoes fooled him into thinking that someone was coming down the stairs above him.

When he pushed into the CQ Area he noticed over a dozen people in there. There were people watching two men in BDU's attach a payphone to the wall in between the two sets of doors that led outside.

Roberts frowned, wondering why everyone looked so excited, looking around at everyone.

"Excuse me, soldier," A man said from behind him. Roberts turned around and saw a Captain standing behind him, in the open doorway to the stairwell, with a folder in his hands. Behind him stood a Lieutenant, both of them in uniform.

"Sorry," Roberts said, moving out of the way.

The Captain moved into the middle of the CQ Area, opening the folder.

"All right, all right, settle down, everyone," He said. Everyone went quiet, turning to him.

"When's it going to be turned on?" A woman asked.

"How long will we have to call?" A man asked.

"Will there be a limit to how many days it can be used?" Another man asked.

"If you'll all be quiet a moment, I'll get to that," The Captain said. Everyone went quiet and Roberts moved over to stand next to Chuck Newsome, who had just left the big room with the pinball and video games.