All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 5: The Invisible Leash Part 1

MUSIC TRACK LIST:

EELS – BEGINNERS LUCK

BOB DYLAN – I WANT YOU 

***
David's POV

After I deposited Atticus's check at the bank and returned home to make my landlord a very happy man, I pretty much spent the weekend curled up in the fetal position on the floor of my bathroom. I guess I really overdid it at lunch and would have to ease back into eating just like any ex-con used to a strict prison diet would. Freedom is a gradual process, at least as far as the digestive system is concerned.

Between all the retching and kvetching, I had forgotten all about the All Your Fates app and my epic fortune. Instead, with my bare back resting against the cool grey ceramic tile of the cramped bathroom, I stared at the baby blue paint peeling off the ceiling and tried not to anticipate much of anything. There wasn't really any point. Yeah, I would be able to work again...in the field I was trained to do. But no one would ever know of it. And once the project was over, what then? If I couldn't even claim to have worked on the project that was largely based on my own ideas, how would I get any type of decent work after? It was an impossible situation, but I had no choice to work under Atticus at this point. No one else would have me. And not many minimum wage employers were hiring ex-students from the field of Music, Science and Technology. Ex-students fired from their last place of employment and kicked out of school for academic dishonor to boot.

Maybe my proximity to Atticus would prick his conscious, prompting him to admit to the Dean and his hand in all that happened with Alice...

I shook my head, and banished the thought. The best way to think of Atticus was to remember he was only in it for himself, and the sooner I remembered that the better off I would be.

It would be great to get back to my work. Yes, I indulged myself by calling it "my" work when alone to myself. Why shouldn't I? It was my idea, my theory, my practical sound engineering skills – well maybe my sound engineering wasn't that practical in the grand scheme of things. But for all intents of purposes, I would have been the co-author had not Atticus convinced me it was better to put the grant proposal in his name seeing I was merely an undergrad at the time and all – to which he had a point. If only had been patient and waited until I was in the midst of a masters. But getting a masters would have been dependent on a receiving a fellowship in a highly competitive field, which working under Atticus would have given an upper edge on doing.  At least that was the reasoning at the time.

I had enough of thinking this over and over again in my little merry-go-round mind. Perhaps I was beginning to feel well enough to get off the bathroom floor and live a little. I had a little change burning a hole in my pocket and I was itching to get out and live large.

I checked the time. If I got a move on it, I could just make it to the last hour of the last day of the farmers' market. The best time to get the best deals. I didn't have anything in particular in mind. I just wanted to have the luxury of spending money. Any small amount would feel like a real treat at this point.

Even though I was pretty weak, my legs were too eager to walk at a safe steady pace. Several times on the way I had to stop and rest from pushing myself too hard into near dizzy spells. And the smell of street foods drove me between being wild with desire and sick with nausea both at once. Isn't that the worst feeling?

As soon as I got to the crowded market, I made a beeline for a table lined with milk-crates packed full of vinyl records that was sat up next to strawberries and organic peanuts. "These fruity records drive us nuts!" a sign read between the two. I smiled and felt sick. I had sold my direct drive turntable on craigslist to partially pay my rent a few months back, but now I anticipated that in a few weeks I could more than afford to get another one. I'd get a Behringer mixing board, a new subwoofer, and some stupid Skullcandy headphones.