a complete guide to escaping nowhere | jake peralta

TWO · just another day in the suburbs

It took four weeks for Alex to finally get up and go looking for a job.
After a harrowing search that went on for nearly an hour, the top contender out of all of three options turned out to be the ATV lot.
Everything Alex knew about cars he'd learned from the summer he'd helped his dad rebuilt an old convertible, like a made-for-tv movie about an all-American father-son duo. Only then, once finished, his dad had taken the car and driven off into the sunset without saying goodbye.

But anyway, locking that sob story in a box and pushing it to the back of his mind, all of that was more than twenty years ago. So it's safe to say that Alex did not, in any shape or form, know anything about ATVs. Yep. That's the conclusion that story was leading to.

Two weeks later, after a successful day at work (he sold two bee-yotches in one afternoon so clearly, business was booming), Alex treated himself to a whole box of pizza. Half of which he threw away because holy shit did the pizza out here deserve a whole new circle of hell dedicated to it.
He picked up the old journal he'd bought at a drug store the first week he'd arrived from the coffee table and opened up a page that he'd divided into two parts headlines 'pros' and 'cons'. The latter column looked like a pretentious actor's list of downright horrifying demands, while the pros column only had one thing on it, "more time to sleep-in"

Alex reached for his pen, intending to add another notch on the bedpost that was this horrible town. His pen wasn't there, though.
So he looked around the couch he sat in, but no dice.

"Damn it, here the hell are you, don't do me like this dude, today was supposed to be a good day."

Alright, so Alex was muttering. About a pen. To said pen. There was no one here to judge him so it really didn't matter.

"Ha!"

The cry of achievement that left Alex's mouth was akin to a child locating the Christmas presents a day early. And was prompted by a flash of silver from under the coffee table.

This was more proof that hee desperately needed contact with real human people again, but obviously that wasn't what was going through his mind back then because the pen was, at that moment, the answer to all his problems.

He crouched down, head under the glass platform of the table, and grabbed it. Right that second, his doorbell rang. Then rang again. And again. And again.
His head shot up, and the loud bang of it hitting the wooden top almost made the next ring inaudible, which was the only good thing about this situation.
Sharp pain shot through the back of Alex's head which made him scrunch his eyes and let out a string of profanities that would lead a network to take him off air.

He got up, rubbing the spot and stormed towards the door. Everything that'd happened in the past few minutes had caused him to forget about the fact that he lived alone, was in witness protection due to being targetted by a violent criminal, and didn't know anyone here.