Until I Get My Way

A devilishly wicked smile played across the face of Leon Van Damme as he faced his superior, Mr. Tresp.  “I quit, Devon,” Leo said, the smile still tugging at the sides of his lips. The cold British jackass stood in the booth glaring at Leo as he handed him the handwritten formal notice. He took one last look around the room at the archaic machinery, the tapes churning away, and the lone lamp flickering over the control panel. Satisfied, he turned to leave WTF 100.4 for the last time. Tresp cleared his throat just before Leo reached the door.

“You’re a damn fine disk jockey, Leo,” Tresp mumbled. “And… you’re also the only one who knows how to fix the machines…”

“Nice try, Devon,” Leo said as his smile contorted sideways into a smirk. “But, fuck you.”

Leo paid no attention to the dreary overcast clouds as he walked home, but rather concentrated all of his energy on the weak spring sunlight that broke through the layer of cotton that hung lazily in the atmosphere. Ever since he’d decided to leave, there had been a pinging sensation deep inside of him. A yearning, not unlike hunger, that seemed to compel his entire body to head west.

As he reached the far side of the field behind Jack’s Jems and 100.4, Leo looked back on the rut he’d formed in the grass over the past however many years. A path, beaten into the earth possibly by his feet alone, stood stark and naked in the overgrown park. Careful not to damage any of the vinyl albums he was carrying in yet another box from Ray’s Liquor, he gently placed the remnants of his job on the ground, and lowered himself down on his haunches. It was springtime, and Leo looked closely at the exposed ground of his rut. He could see tiny little stems of grass bravely inching their way skyward. He stood, and looked up at the wash of gray that comprised the heavens of his little dome, and back at the tiny little green leaves. He took one last moment, before picking up his things, to envision the field in a couple of years, without the constant tread of his feet; where the grass encompasses the entirety of the space, the trees shimmering lightly in the summer breeze. It’d be high noon, so the shadow of Castle Apartments wouldn’t invade the little green swath of land.

His shoulder ached as he made his way up the battered, graffiti-scrawled stairwell of the apartment building, he felt as if he had been given a sign. The sprouting blades of grass had given him the thumbs up, the go-ahead, the green light – now all he had to do was escape Castle Apartments in one piece.

Back in his apartment, Leo placed his 100.4 stuff next to the bevy of other boxes strewn about the living room, and collapsed on the couch. He surveyed the cardboard cubes, and realized that all his possessions managed to fit into five boxes, that included the one he’d brought from work.

With all of his everything packed into five wine boxes, Leo no longer felt any attachment to room 1011. After a couple trips to the post office, he had successfully mailed his boxes to an extended-stay hotel just outside of Santa Barbara. Now absolutely alone in his room, Leo stood in the sun, and watched it catch the dust that pervaded the air, as it tumbled in front of the window. The sun was setting on Castle Apartments as Leo let the key to his room fall from this fingers and clatter onto the coffee table – an act that lifted a thousand pounds from across his shoulders. Taking a final lap through the sad, shadow-ridden rooms, Leo kept his momentum up and strode out of 1011 and slammed the door behind him. He made his way down the hall and felt his heart catch; slowing he looked down at his chest, and could practically see the great rusty fish-hook looping around him and piercing his heart, pulling him back towards his room. Running frantically back to the door of his personal Hell, Leo threw his sweaty fingers around the doorknob and searched in vain for his keys. In a rush of adrenaline to the fear centers of his brain, he slammed his fist against the peephole until blood began to spatter across the crooked aluminum numbers from a wicked gash in his middle finger. The beat inside of Leo began to slow as his fist did against the door, gradually he calmed down, and returned to his normal state.

Seeing his craggy features gruesomely reflected in the crimson glass of the peephole, Leo turned away from the door, pulled the hook from his heart, and ran his bloody hand through his prematurely gray hair; as he walked down the hallway towards the stairwell. He walked away from the door, away from Castle Apartments, and caught the last bus to the airport three counties over.