A Wall Between

Chapter 4

Sasha had been putting off taking the garbage out for days, but it had finally reached a point where he couldn't cram anything more into the bin. He would have to either become a hoarder or take it out. Becoming a hoarder was tempting... at least until he thought about the smell. Besides, with the size of his apartment that would have been a short lived venture. There was barely enough room to move around as it was.

Unfortunately leaving it for so long and cramming it so full meant that the bag was unwieldy and hard to lift. Just getting the bag out of the bin was a struggle. This should have been a learning experience in being a responsible adult at the very least, but Sasha knew he would do the exact same thing again. If not next time, then the time after. He wasn't bad at recognising his mistakes, but he was terrible at correcting them.

He'd selected this time, late in the afternoon when he knew for sure everyone in the apartment next door was out, to do this. It had been a few days since his conversation with Cooper, and Sasha still hadn't decided what he wanted to do about it. He'd considered going out on the balcony again a few times, but he hadn't been brave enough. What if it went badly? He lived here now. He'd have to live with whatever happened.

Sasha carefully lifted the bag of garbage down the stairs, mindful not to drag it on the ground and tear out the bottom, and then he did exactly that anyway because the bag was big and heavy and he was weak and uncoordinated.

Garbage cascaded out and tumbled down the stairs, tearing the hole in the bag bigger as it went. By the time Sasha managed to get it to stop, the bag was mostly empty.

Sasha stared in horror at the mess. He'd had half a watermelon he hadn't finished, and the remains of it had all but liquified in the bottom of his garbage. It was now a sludge spread across several of the stairs. There were egg shells, cracked into tiny pieces and scattered everywhere. There were plastic containers that had bounced their way to the bottom of the stairs.

Sasha could feel his breathing quickening. He had no idea how he was going to clean this up.

#

Cooper pushed open the door to the apartment building, sweaty and pleasantly exhausted from his afternoon jog. He found exercise helped with his focus and increased his frustration threshold.

Sometimes they'd get a week of heavy rain or extreme heat and he wouldn't be able to go out and things would get bad. For some reason he could never properly keep it in his mind how important this was for him, and when he didn't get enough exercise his overall motivation levels would drop and it would be hard to get started again.

Ellie was pretty good at getting him back on track, though. She knew that if she could get him to do a bit of exercise it would re-engage his ability to self motivate. Usually she made up challenges where whoever lost the game they were playing would have to do a certain number of push ups. One time she just asked him to show her how many push ups he could do and then kept egging him on to do more.

She was a good friend. A better one than he felt like he deserved sometimes.

There was an empty shampoo bottle on the floor, which was odd because that was not where empty shampoo bottles belonged but not too odd because a few weeks ago there had been blood on the wall (which was not where blood belonged).

And then Cooper rounded the corner and saw that there were many things on the floor. And on the stairs. Mostly on the stairs.

In the middle of it all stood the guy from next door, clutching a torn, mostly empty garbage bag and looking on the verge of tears. He glanced at Cooper and then quickly looked away as though he hoped to avoid embarrassment by pretending Cooper wasn't there.