Chapter 5: Seizure Behind The Door
Theo stepped out of his room and immediately started up toward the higher floors. For all its size, the building had no working elevator. There was one, technically, but it had gone out of commission years ago, back when the place was already old.
So he took the stairs, all the way to the top. It was a real test of stamina.
At last, after what felt like an eternity, his legs shaking as if the stairs had just given him one hell of an orgasm, he made it onto the top landing and sank down onto one knee, breathing hard, in and out.
Afterwards he pushed through the door, still panting, and stepped out onto the rooftop. The only good thing up here was the fresh air, which Theo couldn’t even say was a completely good thing.
After the world survived the apocalypse, the ozone had been greatly infected, and at times the world came under attack from its own air. So depending on the what and the when, that fresh air could even kill.
That aside, there were bands of laundry strung across the whole floor. Theo looked at the sheer number of clothes on the lines — shirts, dresses, sheets, things he couldn’t put a name to — and wondered.
’I’m confused... just how much does she wear in a day?’
He shook his head, ducked, and crossed the garden of clothes to reach the little cubicle built on the rooftop. It didn’t even have a window.
He stood there for a moment, utterly confused.
’Why is the landlady living in a shabby place like this?’
The whole building was shabby, and the neighborhood around it too. But she was the owner, and Theo still gave her the reasonable respect any property owner was obviously owed.
He couldn’t even say he was disappointed, and he especially didn’t want to come to any conclusions.
He sighed and knocked.
The first three knocks got nothing. He knocked six more times, and then a hurried voice came through, muffled behind the door.
"Who’s there? I’m coming right through!"
It was the landlady, and almost the instant Theo heard her, the door opened. She stopped short when she saw him, thrown.
"Room 23. Do you have your rent already?"
Theo just stood there, blank, wondering at himself.
’What am I doing here? I didn’t think of any plan, I just came... shit, so dumb of me.’
’No shit, I’m just going to be myself.’
He breathed in, breathed out, and lowered his head.
"Please... ma’am, my name is Theolyne. I came to apologize for my indecency. For running into you in the hallway, for my shameful appearance. And for asking such a stupid question just now."
The woman studied him carefully, then answered, her tone still walled off.
"I don’t care about your name, but at least you’re not as indecent as one might expect from a gutter rat. I accept your apology. But things would be much better between us if you paid my rent."
Theo smiled politely.
"Honestly, I don’t have the rent yet. But I’m working on it."
She folded her arms, a mean look on her face.
"That’s the same thing you said last week."
Theo let a childish smile through. He wanted to defend himself, to say last week was different, that somehow he’d been slaughtered and time had flown. He also didn’t want to sound crazy.
While he was still buried in his own head, a loud thud yanked him out of it, like something heavy had fallen.
The landlady spun back into her apartment, terrified, and the door swung wide enough for Theo to see it wasn’t something that had fallen, but someone.
He burst through after her. In the small room, sprawled on the floor, was a lady with pale blue hair and alabaster skin, trembling violently, her heels drumming against the boards.
Theo barked, urgent and stern.
"Remove every harmful object near her — this woman’s having a seizure!"
The landlady, shaken as she was, skittered around the room, shoving tables aside, snatching up the pots and cutlery that had fallen with her. Theo guarded the space around her. He didn’t touch her, but he made sure she couldn’t crack her skull on anything in all that jerking.
He stood over her, watching, jaw set, for the next few minutes. Ten of them went by, and the seizure didn’t stop. That was when the worry set in.
He glanced back at the landlady.
"What’s going on... who... no, never mind. Is this the first time this has happened? What about her medications?"
The landlady, Thaleria, lowered her head.
"They ran out three weeks ago. We’ve had no money to restock her drugs."
Theo understood, then, exactly why the landlady had been pressing him so hard about the rent.
’But I’m not the only one in the building. Why am I the only one she collects rent from? Aishhh... no use thinking about that now. I have to move fast, or she might die.’
He turned to the landlady.
"Please, lend me your phone and write me the prescription. I’ll go get it. I have to hurry, her seizure’s gone on too long already."
Thaleria didn’t question him. She brought out a mobile phone with a cracked screen, and while Theo entered his bank details into it, she wrote out the prescription. Then he shot out of the building and down the stairs, racing against time to keep the strange lady alive.