CedRic Lthues. Claret City

Chapter 4

It was only when I woke up that I realized I slept in my outdoor clothing, and it was completely uncomfortable. Leaving the bed was an arduous affair because my feet were deader than a doorknob. I fell face-first onto the carpet the moment I tried to stand up, but I just shook it off a few seconds later and went out of the bedroom. The first thing my body did was remind me that I haven't eaten in god knows how long. My stomach shook so violently that I felt like it was about to cramp and break. Like the hungry lion that I was, I scoured the mini kitchen for even the tiniest crumb of food, but regretfully, there weren't any meals nor any ready-to-eat food stuffed in the cupboards. It kept growling and roaring every second it didn't receive any food. I was starting to grow insane! I then remembered the paper that was given to me the previous night and glanced at it, in hopes that I would find something to at least ease my predicament. Thankfully, I found a very effective elixir that could solve my issue—all guests of the hotel get free breakfast every day. Calmly, I dressed up in better clothing, grabbed the keycard for the room and some other things I thought I might need and closed the door behind me, dashing to the elevator as fast as my legs could. Alas, the elevator was too slow despite the massive technological advancements of this century. Impatient and seemingly out of options, I decided to just take the stairs.
It was a lethargic and tedious process, but had I chosen the elevator, my stomach would've eaten itself. I took short breaks on some floors, some for a few seconds, some for a whole minute. Eventually I arrived at the restaurant, wiped the sweat dripping from the sides of my head and sat down on the fancy chair. The screaming of my famished stomach didn't stop and the waiters took too damn long, but then aagin, the place was quite packed in the morning. It took a minute or two before one finally came and handed me the menu.
"I'll have the baked shrimp casserole, ultra-meat pizza and a tower of beer please," I requested respectfully to the waiter. Every single minute, every single second, every single mili-second were complete ludicrous agony. My stomach was turning on itself and would surely devour me soon. After what felt like a year of sitting still, the food finally came. I was close to just going full savage and just eating the food before it would even reach the table. But I was in a civil place, with civil people, I had to be civil. When the food was nestled on my table, I went as crazy as I could, which wasn't crazy at all, and just ate as quietly as I could, which was not very quiet.
"Excuse me, young man," an old voice from behind said to me. My mouth froze before turning my head to see an old lady calling to me. She was sitting alone at her own table- her skin was like a raisin, her eyes were a simple color of brown, and everything she wore—top to bottom, hat to heels—was a cute color of peach.
"How may I help you, ma'am?" I asked nicely.
"If it's no bother," she said softly- almost sadly, "Do you mind not eating quite loudly?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am, I just came from out of town, my stomach couldn't wait any longer."
"I see, that I understand, sometimes when you gotta go, you gotta go."
Both of us had a little giggle. This old one got jokes.
"Well, in any case, I will eat slowly now," I responded.
"Thank you." She smilingly said. And we went back to our breakfast.
I spent the rest of my time eating the food I ordered, and I could say with full certainty that it was a good meal, even though some of the meals weren't for breakfast. With my stomach tamed, I grabbed my things and went back to my room. This time, I was patient for the elevator to come even though it was on floor 78 at that moment. I hummed some music to myself while I stood there waiting. But when it finally came and the doors were about to slam shut, a familiar voice called my attention.
"Oh, excuse me," a woman's voice gasped gently as she got into the elevator just in time.
"Oh! It's you. What floor might you be going to, my dear boy?"
"The 47th floor," I replied. Her eyes widened.
"Oh my, I'm on the 47th floor myself."
"What a coincidence."
The old lady asked another question, "What room might you be in?" That was when my senses tingled, something seemed a bit off now...I have to dodge the question.
"Why do you ask?"
"Well, it's because we have a little party later at lunch. Room 4708, my room," she continued, "I was wondering if you'd want to come." She had a solid reason, and a reasonable one, but something didn't feel right. What would she do with the information about my room number? Maybe because she would send me things like cookies in the future? Or maybe she was gonna send me poisoned cookies? Paranoia took the better of me. What could a sweet old woman do to me besides send me poisoned cookies? She couldn't fight, obviously, so I decided to indulge her invitation and agreed to come to her party later that day.
When we arrived at our floor, we waved goodbye to each other before heading to our rooms. I opened the door to my room feeling refreshed. And with the realization that I had absolutely nothing to do, I just crashed face-first onto my bed. I grabbed my phone and set an alarm for 11:30 — 30 minutes before the whole affair I agreed to. It was 9:00 in the morning at that time, so I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted. I spent the time sleeping.
Some time before my alarm, I managed to awaken myself so I took a quick look at my phone, I still had 30 minutes. Obviously, I went back to sleep, after all I still had time to spare, or so I thought. My alarm made a whole riot shortly after. Only then that I realized that it wasn't 30 minutes—it was 30 seconds! My frustration couldn't be expressed, felt like just fading away from existence. Annoyed and in a total rush, I forced myself up and got myself ready. I decided to wear the fanciest clothing I could find from the things I bought from the thrift shop. A white t-shirt, a black coat and a pair of jeans. After fixing myself, I walked out the door and went to the gathering.
The 47th floor was quite big with 20 rooms, and each room was quite sizable too. I looked for room 4708, that old woman's room, and it wasn't long until I found it. I knocked, opened the door, and I should say that I was surprised—the party was lame. Though the room was just as beautiful as mine, there were just people squeezed in a room with decorations on the walls, and there weren't even that many people! Quick count: 6, including me.
"Oh you came!" A familiar voice cried. The same old woman came over to me wearing a pink apron, pink mittens and a pan of steaming hot chocolate chip cookies.
"U-umm, this is...the party?" I asked, trying not to sound disrespectful.
"Well, there aren't many people on this floor," she explained to me. "Cookie?"
Naturally I took her offer and grabbed one; it was as good as it looked. The right amount of chocolate and batter ratio, the flavor was perfect—not too sweet, not too salty.
"Zhish is guud," I spoke with my mouth full, "Ummm-" I tried to say her name, but it was only then that I realized that I have no single idea who she is.
"Susan," she cut in, "Susan Evans."
"Susan, the cookie is really good!"
"Thank you."
She put the tray of hot cookies on her cooling rack and told me that she was going to introduce me to the rest of the guests in her quaint party. I was a bit surprised when she just grabbed my hand, and even more so when she said, "Oh my, it seems that I have never gotten your name."
I gasped, "Cedric...Cedric Lthues."
"Cedric Lthues," she whispered, "What a unique name."
"Well, let's just say that my parents we're creative," I replied with a chuckle and she chuckled with me as well. She then carefully pulled me to where the others were and proceeded to introduce me. First to a woman drowning herself in wine, leaning to the bathroom door, but she wasn't as old as Susan. Karen Wolfe, and she looked exactly as her name suggested, but quite older. Just from experience, I have a creeping trouble about this woman named Karen.
"She is my best friend," Susan claimed.
"Ditto," Karen interjected, gurgling down a whole bottle of wine, before looking at me. "So who're you? Never seen your face before."
"Cedric Lthues, at your service," I answered with fake respect.
"I don't like your face."
I desperately wanted to say that I didn't like her face either, but that would just spark some superfluous trouble, leading to the woman playing the victim; I have seen all of this with my own two eyes. I didn't know what to say in return, luckily though, Susan was there.
"Oh stop, you old hag!" Susan whispered to me, "Don't worry, she's always like that when she hits the grape juice." Once more, Karen downed her bottle of wine just as we headed for the rest of the guests.
Next, we headed to the sofa where two people sat. An old woman who looked to be about the same age as Susan, and a young man who looked to be a few ways past his teenage years.
She pointed to the old woman and said, "Cedric, this is Gertrude Mertle," then to the young man, "And this is Dennis Bryt."
Gertrude wore the same clothing Queen Elizabeth II wore once, except it was red, instead of pinkish white. Dennis was wearing a regular black t-shirt, which was the same as mine but it had a print of some sort of anime in front, and jeans. The former was smoking, while the latter was playing a game on what looked to be a very advanced version of the Playstation Switch.
"Dennis, introduce yourself to your new neighbor," Susan demanded. The young adult grumbled and said depressingly and hatefully, "I'm Dennis Bryt, I live in 4701, and my parents are owners of a big company. They didn't care about me at all, so they just stuffed me with money and forced me to live in this hellhole." He spoke quickly right before gluing his eyes again to his game.
"Thank you," Susan continued, "Gertrude..."
"I'm Gertrude Mertle, and I'm old, now leave me alone," she said in a raspy tone. It was painfully obvious that she was no sweet lady. "She used to be my friend," Susan muttered, "But she started to hate me, for no reason."
"Because of your stupid cats, you know I have allergies."
"You can't control me, you old hag. You know what, we'll just stay away from you," Susan cried before dragging me off.
"You better!" Gertrude shouted.
"Well then, if you need anything, just gimme a call," the hostess kindly offered as we got away from the previous scene. Since the party was beyond boring, I had to do something and did the first thing that came to my mind. Susan was about to go back to whatever she was doing when I called and stopped her tracks, "Actually, do you mind If I help you bake some cookies?" I didn't know if she was actually baking some more cookies, but I thought it'd be worth a shot anyhow.
"Oh! That would be delightful!" She cheered innocently. Susan and I spent the rest of the party together, baking and eating cookies. The shindig ended at exactly 3:30 in the afternoon. In all honesty, we might have baked enough cookies to feed all of Claret, and my stomach cramped from all the goodies I ate; they were just too good after all. Just as I was taking a break from the excitement, Susan said, "Such a shame that we couldn't all make it."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, there's one person on this floor who wouldn't come. Albert Arbon, 4714, never leaves his apartment for anybody."
The idea of another person on the floor who had some peculiar habits piqued my interest. "Why aren't there many people on this floor?"
"Honestly," she replied, "I don't know. I think it's because the rooms on this floor look old. These rooms were designed to look like something from the 2500." To think that the glorious room I stayed in was considered ancient by 2900s standards!
"Do you not know that?" She asked.
"Actually...no."
"What place did you come from, young man?"
"I...don't like to talk about that."
"Well, in any case, let's go back to cooking, shall we?"
I spent the rest of the time baking with Susan. On my way out, she gave me a big tin can of cookies, and though I was starting to get sick of it, I still took it anyway for the future. I left that one hell of a supposed party satisfied and merry. "What a nice woman," I said to myself while I skipped and hopped back to my room. With me happy and a tin can of cookies in hand, I unlocked my doors and entered my room.
I guess it was because Susan's room was full of people, but when I entered my room, I suddenly felt lonely. There was no one but me and a batch of cookies; once again I had nothing to do. Those who desperately wanted a break from their lives would envy me, but from my perspective, it was boring. I got to lay around all day and sleep, but I was tired of sleeping, if you could believe that. I then decided to just sit on the claret-colored sofa, ordered some room service, and turned on the TV. The moon was soaring in the night sky once again. The ebony shade of the heavens ruled everything I could see, while the glimering lights dotted the earth below. It was eight in the evening, and for the past four hours and a half, my eyes remained affixed to the huge screen and my body glued to the wondrous couch. My mind had already turned to mashed potato, but I didn't mind, I had nothing to do anyway. A few moments passed before I finally got myself to turn off the screen and lights, and switch from my sofa to the bed, which was way softer. Somehow, sitting on the sofa all day drained all of my energy. It was like I was at work for the whole day. When my body crashed to the mattress, my eyes instantly turned itself off, along with my control over my body. It was one of those instances where I didn't have a dream. I just closed my eyes during the night and opened it again only to find out that I was tapped out for more than two hours. Why was I woken? Because of the violent banging on my door. It was like the FBI was about to break the goddamn door down. My mood always switches to red when someone wakes me up from a nap and that time was no different. Me and my hair that looked like a tornado blew through it hastily stomped to the front door and opened it angrily. Once unveilied, I was taken aback by the surprise prepared for me by the residents of the floor. "Wha-"
"SOMETHING BAD JUST HAPPENED!" Karen screamed. I was just about to ask what happened when she just cut off my raspy voice—why am I not surprised? "SUSAN IS DEAD!" She screamed for the second time. Two words that I've known for a long time: Is and Dead. My body automatically switched from tired to energetic in a single second upon hearing the news. I then grabbed some things and ran to Susan's room. At first glance I found nothing, but when the others caught up to me, I asked, "Where is she?"
"IN THE BATHROOM," Karen was screaming at the top of her lungs again and it was getting annoying; she was helping and not helping at the same time. I dashed to the bathroom and found something gruesome beyond compare to a normal person's eyes, but to me, it was the sign to get into action. The old wrinkly woman was naked and DEAD. She was bathed in her own blood and a weird knife was stuck to her head. What made it a little unsettling for me was not the blood, but her lifeless eyes—it made a few shivers creep down my spine. Nevertheless, I swallowed my emotions and got straight to investigating.
"Okay, EVERYONE!" I raised my voice to get the others' attention, "I will call the IGPPS, they will get this body, scan this place, and you will all go to bed. We will get to the bottom of this." Knowing that the others didn't want anything to do with this mess, the other residents ran back to their rooms, except for one. The once somewhat furious Karen was now breaking into tears. It reminded me that Karen has a heart.
"Are you okay?" I asked, comforting the old woman.
"We we're friends," she cried, "It might have not looked like it, but we were friends, best friends in fact."
I suddenly felt sympathy for the old geezer. "We will try our best to know everything," I said before gently helping the sobbing woman back to her place. Honestly, as I helped her, I was surprised by the fact that they were friends. From my first encounter with them, I felt more like they were enemies more than anything.
"SOMEONE DIED?" Idaliah and the others shrieked. I used something called a Holophone, which was basically a video call, but the screen was a hologram projected above the phone. I could see every single frame of shock in their faces.
"Yeah," I replied, "So send in the ninjas or whatever."
"Are you sure she's dead?" Jenntih asked.
I turned the camera to the gruesome scene in the bathroom. "Alright then," Qor said, "We'll go there with a team." I ended the call shortly after.
Obviously, without any equipment, I couldn't do anything at that moment, so I decided to just sit back on Susan's couch and wait for reinforcements. I felt a little weird sitting on the couch of someone who just died, but I figured she wouldn't mind. Susan and I bonded over that little cookie-making session, and I felt a little sloppy that she died when we just met. But, from my experience, when people close to me died, there were only two things I could do, let it break me, or forge me into something greater. As cringey and cliché as it was, it's a fact, and I always used it to better myself by learning from mistakes and remembering them in good spirit. That would also explain why I barely cry despite the death of a loved one. I would only shed a few tears and not an entire river, because I didn't want to get lost within that depressing spiral. I knew that it could break my whole person. I started to get lost into my deepest, darkest thoughts before a jumpscare by a sweeping team for the IGPPS startled the living daylights out of me. They hurried to the room and secured evidence. Some of them even tried to arrest me for some reason, but I showed my ID and they left me alone. It turns out, it wasn't only the team who barged-in—Idaliah and Qor came along too.
"Where's the body?" Qor asked. I pointed to the bathroom and he signaled some men to go in. "What happened?" Idalaih asked, "And why are you just lying around on the sofa?" I yawned before I answered, "Someone killed Susan Evans."
"And?" Idaliah was obviously irritated.
"And, nothing."
"You haven't started investigating yet?"
"I haven't."
"WHY NOT?" Idaliah freaked it.
"Cuz'I'm tired."
Idaliah was so mad that she couldn't speak. Unfazed, I stood up and said, "I'll investigate this tomorrow, okay? For now, can you guys just please gather evidence for me to work on tomorrow? Thanks!" I demanded nicely before yawning and leaving the room. Alas, Idaliah had other ideas and she tugged my hand before I was even out the door.
"What makes you think you have the right to tell me what to do?" She asked, vexxed.
I, on other hand, was beyond tired and had no time for her. I sighed before responding, "Under Article 27203, Section 7, any anti-crime agent who was within 500 meters of the crime scene will then have jurisdictional authority over the scene." I sounded like a karen, spilling out the law, but I paid no attention to that. "Meaning to say I have the authority here, but neither your organization nor this state stipulates that an anti-crime agent must address the issue immediately." Idaliah was speechless and Qor was simply indifferent.
"What?" I told Idaliah, "You think I didn't read your laws?" I knew she was a stickler, someone who always follows the rules, so I smirked and watched her get smoking hot red in fury. "Now if you excuse me," I said with yet another yawn, "While I take my well-deserved nap, please gather as much evidence there is for me tomorrow, good night." With a bow and a set of tired eyes, I wobbled like a penguin down the hall to my room. I diidn't even bother to take a bath, I was so tired that I just jumped to my bed and my body closed itself on impact.