TWs (in no particular order): child abuse: neglect, emotional, sexual, perhaps triggering to physical abuse survivors. Animal abuse, suicidal thoughts, self harm, potentially triggering relationships with the body and food*, sexual assault

General warnings: trauma

*Not sure about this one because I think it'd have to be a pretty specific situation, but I figure if I could come up with it, they've probably happened to someone else. Stay safe dudes


Chapter One: Dark is the Night, Cold is the Ground

I decided I was going to leave

Nope. That just didn't sound right.

I knew I was going to leave

That was too simplistic. Was this not a life that Alfred was trying to discuss?

On the last day of winter break in my freshman year, while cleaning up cat piss, I determined that I could not possibly stay.

Piss? That was already too vulgar; Alfred was not a vulgar man.

It was the last day of winter break during my freshman year of high school. I was sitting at the top of the stairs, mopping up cat pee

Pee? Was Alfred ten?

...urine

Alfred resumed his writing, peeved but unable to figure out what exactly was wrong. He put his pencil back against the paper, thought about what to write next. Two sentences done. A million more until he realized he was mediocre, right?

But alas, his motivation was gone. Perhaps it hadn't been there to start. He would stop for the night, but the least he could do was write the date: October 21, 2023.

...

Alfred was still puzzling over his writing when he found himself at a laundromat. It had been a long morning of unadulterated despair, but now he was at the laundromat... and he didn't know how to do laundry. Hell, he'd only found the laundromat today.

Alfred should have known he was defeated as soon as he realized he was unaware of how to do laundry, but he was a determined man. He found an article on how to do it, read it... and it didn't make sense to him. Whenever things didn't make sense to Alfred, a sense of complete, utter failure and general doom overtook him; really, what was Alfred to do except start crying in the laundromat?

He covered his face, still attempting to keep the sort of dignity one loses as soon as they find themselves crying in a laundromat, and continued to cry. He kept his laundry bag between his feet so that he could cover his face without fear of his laundry being stolen.

For God's sake, he didn't even have that many items to wash!

Even as Alfred cried, he couldn't help feeling very ashamed of himself. This is the sort of thing one can expect when they start crying in a laundromat, but crying in a laundromat wasn't something Alfred would do regularly... normally. Alfred could only speculate what he would do under normal circumstances.

Alfred stopped crying; he'd had an idea. He could simply ask the man at the counter! Why did he always cry before finding simple solutions?- either way, it didn't matter now; he'd found a solution.

Alfred went to ask the man behind the counter if he could please give some general information about laundry machines, but then he felt stupid. A twenty-one year old in NYC, unable to do laundry. Alfred felt the need to defend himself; it swelled inside him, directly mirroring shame. And soon the man had heard about his cat, and how he couldn't ever go back to his home state because there was nowhere to go, how cold the nights had been; generally, the man heard Alfred's entire story.

"Shit, man. You should get therapy."

"I can't afford therapy!" Alfred's voice was ungodly; it cracked with emotion, only drawing more attention to himself.

"Excuse me," a man mumbled, tapping Alfred's shoulder. Alfred jumped, got embarrassed about that, and sheepishly turned to face his perceived assailant. "You don't seem quite alright. Why are you crying?"

"I c-can't do laundry," Alfred managed. He was not having a hard time breathing; on the contrary, his mind and body were just as disconnected as always. While Alfred was in a state of extreme emotional distress, physically he was 'quite alright'. "I can't fucking read," Alfred elaborated; he winced, as he was not a vulgar man and these were irregular circumstances, but also because that was a completely useless elaboration.

The man nodded in mock understanding and prompted, "Is that all?"

"Y-Yeah." That was not all, and both of them knew that. Nobody has ever cried in a laundromat over something so trivial as not being able to do laundry while surrounded by laundry machines; almost always these people had deep-rooted issues that went unaddressed, seeing as they were in a laundromat.

"Well, I could teach you how to do your laundry," the man offered.

"Really?"

"Yes, of course."

The man guided Alfred through the process and sat with him while he waited. Alfred just stared ahead at the clothes, spinning and spinning and spinning- he wished he was a piece of fabric spinning in a laundry machine, or maybe blowing through a dirty alleyway. That would be better than now.

"What's your name, son?"

Alfred did not point out that the man was only two or three years older than him. This man had taught him how to do his laundry, after all; he was more useful to Alfred than Alfred's father had been. "Alfred. What's yours?"

"Arthur."

"Oh. Nice to meet you." Alfred was unsure of what else to say. What should one tell a man who has unwittingly saved their life, without even knowing their name? "Thanks."

"Yeah, no problem."

Alfred had the urge to dig his nails into his arm, something that would surely hurt terribly, but he could not do so in front of Arthur and the rest of the people at the laundromat. It would be too much mess.

And then it was done. It was all done; his clothes were dry and in the bag, and Alfred was leaving. Such mundane things, mundane but still numerous. Alfred would go home today and think only, 'I did the laundry.' That was okay. An entire life didn't need to be written.

Writing. That was what Alfred needed to think about.

The trouble, really, was that Alfred couldn't find a proper writing style- not to convey his life, anyway. Not a human life. He could write elegantly, describe the ennui from waking up everyday knowing things wouldn't improve. Alfred could describe the constantly plummeting nadir that he'd found himself in for much of his adolescence. How was it that every day back then had been the same, and yet he still had so much to say about it? How could Alfred explain the knowledge of ephemerality and how it could exist with the urge to die- how was it that life was short, and still seemingly too long?

That wasn't perfect; all it did was scream, I OWN A THESAURUS! which wasn't true. Alfred did know these words and he knew them well; he'd lived through many entries. Even if Alfred's writing had been rich and articulate, it wouldn't have been accurate. Alfred's most detailed memories were nothing short of disturbing, and to make his writing pleasant or enjoyable would be tantamount to failure.

So Alfred would try to dial it down a bit, to take the bells and whistles away; perhaps things were better understood when vocabulary was limited. Alfred was an aspiring polyglot, so this was rather easy: pick a language, write in it, and translate it back to English. No matter what, Alfred would end up writing simply; he had never been able to commit to a language, and his vocabulary was only ever enough to read a children's book.

What came back to him was always elementary, something that read like a traumatized elementary student explaining their home life to a concerned teacher. Sure, what Alfred had gone through may have been horrific to an elementary student, but he hadn't been an elementary student when everything started; nobody had cared or stepped in.

Alfred had nowhere he needed to be that day, so he headed to his apartment much more slowly than usual. It was a hot day, and all Alfred could really think was that he hoped to get a heat stroke and die- something peaceful, or at least not violent, like that.

"Yo, man! Don't jump! You prolly have so much to live for!"

Someone else shouted, "Yeah!" Alfred instinctively looked up in time to see a man begin a steady plummet toward the Earth. The kids gathered around the base of the building scrambled out of the way.

Everything from there happened incredibly quickly, so much so that Alfred felt he'd blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to, a man was in the arms.

Alfred put him down and then realized, with something akin to terror, that it was quite possible that these punk ass children were recording. He picked up his laundry bag and started to run.


Alfred sprinted all the way home, laundry basket tripping him up several times. Blessed with seemingly superhuman strength, but endurance was a no-go; that about summed Alfred's luck up; perhaps it did justice to his life as well. Alfred wouldn't actually know if he had great endurance or not because he didn't eat anything healthy and he also hadn't worked out in a very long time; as it was, he was winded and in significant pain when he opened the door and fell into his apartment.

Alfred was on the news that evening. Kiku, his roommate, had turned it on just in time to hear what had happened. The man was okay; a few broken bones, but that was better than being mangled on the pavement. The man had been working at the bakery at the base of the building, and that day had decided to just keep climbing until he reached the roof. Alfred had never imagined working at a bakery to be stressful, but he could see it now that he lived in New York City. The man wasn't available for comment.

There was a video, but it came from a security camera across the street. Kiku calmly asked him, "Alfred, was that you that caught the man?"

"No."

"That looks like your laundry basket."

"It's not."

"Okay." Kiku didn't sound convinced, but he didn't pry, which Alfred was grateful for.

It would be reasonable to assume that Kiku felt no total malice for Alfred, the roommate he'd only known for the past three days. At the very least Kiku felt no malice for him at this moment. Alfred still thought the situation tense despite the fact that it clearly wasn't, so he carefully planned the rest of his day to avoid Kiku. That was really quite easy; all Alfred had left for the day was shower and go to sleep. In the morning things would be fine.

Alfred took a shower and tried not to think too much, but trying to sleep afterward was overwhelming. Alfred didn't have the money to spend on sleeping pills, but he did have something that would surely lull him to sleep: a pencil and paper.

Alfred reviewed all he'd written: the entire two sentences. He wasn't sure what to write next; for now he jotted down I and stopped.

In high school, shortly after the incident, Alfred had lost the ability to comfortably write in the first person. This had happened by way of being forced to write several short stories; combined with the general disbelief Alfred had at his living situation, it was enough to force him out of the narrative entirely. Alfred had still kept a journal after the incident despite how dangerous it was to do so; he still kept it, but he had disappeared from the narrative. So had specific times, and days were only occasionally mentioned.

Before the incident Alfred had dedicated pages and pages to each day, meticulously documenting his life in an almost narcissistic manner. Immediately after the incident there were at most three or four pages per month, dates mentioned without the accompanying times, and recurring issues that became so recurrent that Alfred would stop writing about them entirely. Alfred had went from a full-on diary to occasional thoughts on the obscure.

As a result of all this, Alfred had lost the ability to write from his own point of view in a grammatically proper manner, as well as a fair chunk of everyday horrors from that time. He had, in a sense, lost himself. To combat the first point Alfred could have created a character to distance himself from his experiences entirely, but that would have taken the purpose of writing away. There was no getting the lost time back, and that was for the best.

Writing isn't that hard, Alfred thought, frustrated. He still knew how to form sentences, and nothing else really mattered when one was just trying to get things onto a page. Alfred held the belief that, once things were written, they were no longer real. That was obviously incorrect, but at the very least Alfred found that things didn't plague him as much when he wrote them down. He could write of the incident a million times and it would still haunt him, so all he needed to do was write it down a million and one times.

Alfred wouldn't give up until he'd thoroughly banished his entire childhood from his life. So he continued: That was the night I knew I was going to move to New York City. That was well good and everything, but it made the first rather redundant.

After a bit of editing: On the last night of winter break during my freshman year of high school, I mopped up cat urine while imagining a future in New York City: one where I belonged with eight million other people, one where no one could find me, one where I was alone.

That was a little too wordy, and it didn't explain why New York City guaranteed his safety. The average reader- not that he was planning on publishing this, but still- would likely think, "but private investigators!" or at least that was what Alfred was thinking as he read over it.

He tried again: My parents always hated New York City- it was too dirty, the liberals ruined it, it was too dangerous, they would never step foot in it again if at all avoidable. While mopping up cat urine on a cold night in my freshman year of high school, I decided I was going to move to New York City precisely for this reason.

Alfred was a little more satisfied with this. It wasn't perfect; if he continued with this theme the story would read more like an ode to New York City than anything else. Alfred was alright with that; New York City was his protector, his savior. He was blanketed by eight million people and politics, and that was a protection unrivaled.

Alfred was a little more satisfied, and very tired. He was afforded just enough contentment to go to sleep.


You ugly, fat, stupid piece of shit.

What a beautiful thought to start the day off with. Alfred was used to belittling himself, and he was able to combat it easily; he just didn't buy enough food to be fat, he wasn't particularly ugly, and maybe he was a bit stupid if, as a writer, those were the best insults he could come up with.

Alfred didn't feel great, but it had nothing to do with thinking himself an ugly, fat, stupid piece of shit. Alfred just never felt great, and that was alright with him because it had to be.

He made his way to the kitchen and started brewing coffee, and then he just sat down and rested his head on the table. "Good morning, dude," he said, not bothering to look up when Kiku entered the kitchen.

Kiku jumped; Alfred imagined he wasn't used to having a roommate yet, much less one that woke up earlier than he did. Finally Kiku responded, "Good morning."

Alfred was pretty sure Kiku didn't like him very much. Kiku certainly didn't seem like the sort that would; Kiku was quiet and introverted, and Alfred was Alfred. Alfred spilled his problems to strangers in laundromats and listened to music for fear of silence. Clearly they were very different.

New York City saved him again by being incredibly unaffordable; Alfred was convinced he wouldn't have a chance in hell of Kiku ever wanting him as a roommate was rent not incredibly high.

He was on the news that morning as well, perhaps the second-most reported thing after last night's political mishap. Alfred hoped the man's attempt would be more of a regional event rather than something that garnered national attention. Thank God for that blasted politician.

This story won't affect anything else significantly; it's already written and just needs a fair amount of editing. I just wanted to get the first chapter out because it's been two years since I joined this website and I felt I should do something special.

Title was a work in progress but I decided to leave it like that because it's accurate. A review would be lovely. Have an awesome day/night.