The confines of an empty hall were much less depressing than the confines of a growing room.
For the cesspool of ignorant players was shrinking, and the floors were becoming less cramped - Ren wasn't too fond of the elbow room, if he were being honest with himself.
As he thought back on his exit, he knew path out of the room hadn't been far. No, the path hadn't been far, but it'd taken its toll, and for that he held a fresh scorn in lungs that sucked up smoke.
Silence had been ablaze in his ears with heavy throbbing. His fingertips twitched against his palm, not quite sure whether Emerson's finger and the trigger were gone or not. Breaths came short and shallow, and he'd been convinced that his chest would be marked with bruises at the rate his heart beat against it. Bodies parted, but it only felt as though they were squeezing in on him; lights peered around shadowed heads in flashes, like the little strobelights at his previous residence.
At some point he'd gone stumbling forward, saved from a blow to the floor by a hand on his arm that lugged him up and dragged him away from the crowd.
With the scruff of red in his vision and the freedom of space, he could breathe.
They'd continued to move to the exit of the gambling hall, Milo guiding and Ren appearing to hold his own when in actuality it was only the first of the two that knew what to do - the one often told that he didn't know how to handle things.
In a haze of color and shadow the double doors were pushed open and Milo took to his instincts, sharing no words but shoving Ren off to some place where he could recompose himself. An apologetic crinkle at his brows let Ren know that he was sorry for leaving.
However, before he could shrink away into the room again, Ren took his arm - in an almost desperate attempt to keep him there - and whispered the first words that came to mind as a method of thanks.
"The world's just nothing but a bunch of selfish assholes. Remember that, and you won't go wrong."
Despite the circumstances, Milo smiled a smile that said he'd already figured that out long ago, and Ren could almost feel a prickle of pain at the corners of his lips, a small price to pay for matching Milo's grin.
"Right."
Then he'd disappeared beyond the doors, and Ren watched as they came to a steady close, as the crack of light became nothing and he was left on his own in a poorly lit hall with horrible wallpaper.
Flash forward twenty minutes to his composure, two gunshots, and three cigarettes, and you'd see him draped lazily against the aforementioned horrible wallpaper, blowing smoke at the ceiling and going over what exactly his behavior meant for himself.
The sweat had left his palms and his heartbeat had gone normal, but he'd still panicked - something completely unlike him, and yet, it was just one root stemming from the tree that'd sent him there.
There were many more to uproot, but he'd rather keep them buried. Not all of them could be dug up in just one night, and that was all the reassurance he needed to fall into a steady, relaxed slump. His fingers drummed the wall to some happy tune, his other hand constantly fiddled with the stick in his mouth.
He was impatient, but it didn't show anywhere but his hair, the beginning of a mess.
And I left my comb at the motel. Lucky me.
With the cancer-stick dangling between his lips, he attempted to salvage what topped off his classy air, his perfected atmosphere. Fingers swept through strawberry blonde - still twitching - to fix the mess, because, as his mothers had always said, "we know you're a mess, but nobody else has to figure it out just by looking at you."
He missed their advice. The constant frustration had just about run dry.
Some part of him wondered if they'd even recognize him if he showed up on their doorstep one fateful evening. It was true that he'd gained a few pounds over recent months, grown his hair out a little bit. And he was clean. Free from burn or blemish, free of grease or grime.
But would they recognize the effort?
Ren gave himself about two seconds to think.
Nah.
He tapped the edge of the stick in his hands and the ashes went falling to the ground - then, figuring he'd get no more use out of it, let the whole thing drop to the ground. A crack of warm light spread over the little stud, one that grew and accompanied a bustle of talkative energy - no, wait, wait - that wasn't energy, just shock. Or maybe they're just tired. The droopy lids and wide eyes told him it was a heavy mixture of both. They moved slowly, deliberately, as if the next event depended on the pace of their heels.
Ren could've taken the time to see who came out and who didn't, but he was much more obliged to check his pack - five cigarettes left, damn this - and tug out one of the few that remained. Never before had he burned through a pack so quickly, but then again, it'd been years since he'd used the bitter things as refuge. He'd smoked a few before coming, surely, and had gone through maybe seven in total since arriving. Lucky seven! Maybe I should put this one back, just to keep the irony going?
Up went the lighter, on went the flame.
Through all that'd happened that night, his main concern was how rancid his breath probably smelled from smoking so much, but a close second was the whereabouts of Milo. He meant to catch up with the guy, to look back on the past twenty minutes for a good laugh, maybe offer him a drink before taking it away again - the usual cruel teases he'd been doing all night. The halls had emptied, the lights had dimmed.
He was free to do whatever he wanted in that prison.
Similar circumstances made him chuckle; to work in an institution meant to give up your own freedom. Others were blessed with the choice to go home, but Ren had an around-the-clock sort of schedule.
The pay was complete shit, but he was fed and had a roof over his head. Made friendly with the patients, too, even though he wasn't permitted to do so.
As he wandered, he thought over these things again and again. The pep in his step never faltered. He had to "keep the mood light to avoid outbursts." Always a motto. One patient in particular continued to pop into his memory, a bald, scarred-up little thing, in his early twenties like Ren. The guy had always been sickly pale, skin like chalk, but he was always smiling and making deals, negotiations, bets.
The morning Ren had received the invitation to Milena Seble, he'd fallen trap to such a bet.
"Why is the security of this place so shitty?" the guy had asked.
"I wouldn't necessarily call it shitty. Escapees are just extremely lucky, with the help of a few malfunctions," Ren had replied.
Then came the snickers. "Lucky? Is that it?"
Then so on and so forth with conversation, until: "All right, hot-shot. You prove that luck exists, and I swear I'll never try to leave this place. Cross my heart, stick a needle in my eye, you know the drill."
And thus, Ren had gone off to prove that luck did not, in fact, exist, but lately he was starting to think that he was chock full of it. Loneliness hadn't even settled: even though the patient was gone, Milo was there. They were both interesting in their own ways, and Ren found himself picking up his pace in the near-dark.
Now, Ren had never been a fan of committing to something - not a family, not a relationship, not even a job he missed oh-so much in that moment. Oh, who am I kidding? The place smelled of goat urine and there were clumps of ripped out hair up to your ankles wherever you stepped. Fuck that place, honestly. But this, whatever this was, as he hurried on through the halls in search of Milo with excitement boiling in his gut...it made him want to commit to something, just once.
He would stick by the man's side until all was over, at least.
There was only one condition: when they were to part ways, Ren wouldn't remain to exchange goodbyes. Those sorts of things were awfully time-consuming, weren't they?
So was an almost blind search, and soon he was resting his hand on knobs and peering into unlocked rooms, all of which had the lights shut off. The energy that would usually have him searching for the switches was just about drained, so he didn't waste his time. Sometimes he would cross paths with another wandering visitor only to bump shoulders and keep on searching - it wouldn't bother him, for if he couldn't see the faces, he couldn't hold guilt. All he saw was the burning of orange embers when he took a drawl on his cigarette.
Minutes passed in upbeat skips despite the exhaustion, and as Ren continued to hum the same tune over and over again, he thought of simply waiting until the next game to find Milo, where all of them would be corralled into a small space yet again. He held a strong resolve to do just that, and soon he was settling comfortably against a door, prepared to slip on down. Floors always feel better than beds, for some reason. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just too fucking tired for all this. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
He bent his knees to begin the slide, but before he could make a move, he felt the hard surface disappear from behind him and he went crashing backwards. "Shit!"
Ass-first he went to the hard, carpeted ground, but he told himself it'd been with grace so he didn't criticize himself. He still had many reasons to do so - like not checking to see if the door was fully closed before trying to pop a squat against it.
Ren pushed himself up, groaning from the pain flourishing at his rear end, and would've left the room altogether had there not been one big difference: the lights were on. Dim, fluorescent lights shining down from a low ceiling. Directly below the lights was a table, and atop that table, a briefcase.
It was like a prized possession atop a pedestal, and it was far too perfect to be some matter of coincidence.
It's like having the overrated yet wildly valuable Mona Lisa laid out on a table at the annual burglary convention. As the analogy hints, it's sketchy.
I shouldn't touch it.
Naturally, he landed a heavy slap to the leather surface of the briefcase and left it there, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he prided himself on his "wonderful" instincts, the equivalent of common sense having left for good.
Still, something felt off about the whole situation - it was a table for two, and the room felt incredibly small with the extra chair sitting there. Ren circled the table, judging, trying to think of something that could delay his opening the case. He came to a stop in front of a thick curtain on the furthest wall, thick with pomp and decor despite the dullness of the room overall. The walls and the fabric clashed in imperfection.
Maybe that was why Ren felt a surging need to gather the curtain up in his hands and yank it down. Furls of red and purple settled at his feet, enveloping him in shackles. Beneath the cloth was a wall made up entirely of glass, from the ceiling to the floor. Immediately, Ren's fists unclenched from the fabric and went to the glass, the window, pressing flat to the cold surface. It burned him, but he stared on at the pitch black of night.
The room must've been located somewhere at the back of the casino, because behind Milena Seble Ren remembered there being nothing more than a few roads heading off to nowhere's-land, no buildings, no sidewalks - just asphalt. Every now and then he'd catch sight of a set of headlights, disfigured by the raindrops on the window.
Cars rushed on by, with a clear view of him standing in the window, but no one stopped or swerved to help.
The world was completely wrapped up in itself, in the worries of its own perfection, and it would stop for nobody that might ruin that. Little people drove in little cars off to their little boxes where they raised their perfect little families, and they'd come out all the same.
They wouldn't mind the mud at the edge of the road that Ren once toiled through, dug through, tripped through. They wouldn't mind the grass sticking to wet feet as long as it didn't track through their houses, and they wouldn't mind the blood spilling from every pore so long as it didn't get wiped on themselves. Sweat from another would never touch them; it wasn't their problem.
"The world's just nothing but a bunch of selfish assholes. Remember that, and you won't go wrong."
Ren wrenched himself away from the window, untangling himself from the drapes at his feet before trudging his way to the table in the center. Hurry up here, please the ones dealing the cards, and then find Milo.
His fingers trailed over the metal surface, fiddling with everything that was there - first, a post-it note that'd flittered off when he slapped the case. Ashes sprinkled down his fingers and he yelped, dropping both the cigarette and the note upon a picture frame. For the first time that night, he let the frustration get to him and he slammed his palm down on the table, growling curses under his breath.
Then, as soon as he'd lost it, he regained his relaxed stance, picking up the note with steady fingers.
"Would you rather leave this casino as the sole survivor but with the money you desperately need, or leave the casino with all the remaining players alive but as poor as you were when you came in?"
Down went the note again, released carelessly by the beholder who took up the picture frame, feeling as though he'd just gotten all the answers of the world - his world, anyways - out of a few letters. He held the frame horizontally to his face and blew away the ashes, flicking the stick to the ground and grinding it into the carpet with his dress shoe.
If Milo isn't on this fucking picture, I'm taking the money.
He held it up to his face then, trying hard to keep the glare of the lights off the glass. The glare showed his reflection, and he'd already found his own picture, a smoldering set of eyes and dastardly good looks. The picture was perfect, his reflection was not.
Again and again he swept through the images, tracing them with his finger, squinting so hard he thought a face might appear if he did it long enough.
A neck boring bizarre tattoos never appeared.
Unruly black hair had seemingly vanished.
Red scruff and tinged cheeks were nowhere to be found.
Milo isn't on this fucking picture. Out his hand went, opening his fingers like the hands of a crane would, and the thing went crashing to the ground. The shatter of glass and splintering of wood was simply refreshing. I should take the money.
Had Milo's face shined up at him amidst the nine others, perhaps he would've considered leaving the place broke, if only for the sake of letting his friend out. He would've given up everything he needed to go completely under the radar, to ensure his safety for years and years to come, entirely to benefit a man he found mildly interesting. That was simply how Renworked.
But the fact was that Milo's face hadn't been there. Ren clicked open the briefcase and, had he been any other man, he might've salivated at the rows upon rows of green bundles.
When it came down to things, they meant nothing to him.
He bit down on his lip so harshly he thought he might've drawn blood, giving one last glance to the picture sticking out of the broken frame on the floor.
In each of those faces, he saw something that reminded him of that chalky, scarred patient. They were perfect people trying to cover up imperfections - but that was how it always went, for everyone. When all was said and done, if they got out, they'd go back to smiling and sipping their martinis dry to cover up everything that'd happened.
Ren, in a bout of almost calming rage, kicked at the picture and spread his arms out to either side flamboyantly, flinging them open to the appearance of the window. Lights shimmered and shone, blinked at him. "You guys are so fucking lucky to be on the other side of that glass."
Yes, in each of those faces, he'd seen something that'd reminded him of that chalky, scarred patient.
In each of those faces, he'd seen something that'd reminded him of himself.
"Would you rather leave this casino as the sole survivor but with the money you desperately need, or leave the casino with all the remaining players alive but as poor as you were when you came in?"
A dumb smile crept onto his face, and he approached the briefcase again. Out came a pack of cigarettes, where four remained, and out came the lighter. He slipped one out, stuck it between his teeth, looked on at wonder at the flame that spurted out when he flicked back the silver lid.
"Tonight, we mourn the death of a bachelor. Let's give 'em one hell of a memorial."
Down went the lighter, out went the flame.
Dull greens erupted in vibrant oranges, color that swept through the briefcase faster than he could make a flirtatious statement about a dead man. He could linger on the regret later - first, he had to burn down the little boxes.
The smoke alarms went off first, but Ren's voice rose above it all.
"Kol! Get me a drink! You owe me!"