Wild Future

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Tom sat in the living room on the two red couches along with his three roommates, Edd, Matt and Tord. Not a sound could be heard apart from Edd who tapped on his Lucky Can, a cola can laced with a large chain that was in his hand. Matt held his mirror up a foot from in front of his face like he normally does. Tom on the other side of the couch held Susan, his bass guitar propped on his knee as he strummed a few notes. Susan had seen better days since he'd first received it years back. On the other hand Tord had his red phone held tightly in his hand inches from his face zoned into what was on the screen.

The rest of the living room had walls of a mustard yellow color and plain light brown but worn down carpet beneath their feet. In front of them was a large flat screen TV propped on an old and worn wooden stand. It had pictures that sat on either side of the screen. One was a group picture of the four of them at a theme park on the ferris wheel. It made him feel better but yet not, it'd been some time since their last adventure. The other pictures were smaller but singular pictures of each of them neatly in a row. Everything else in the room blended into each other as the ceiling fan above gave out a low hum. It was calm but it still set Tom to unease as he stopped playing and propped Susan against the side of the couch next to himself.

Tom waited and tapped his foot and he had hoped that someone else would jump in after having played a few chords, noticing that Matt was looking at himself and that Edd had been tapping on his Lucky Can for most of the time they'd been there. It was annoying but Tom's attention was pulled away as he looked over and noticed that Matt a few minutes after setting Susan down for once put his mirror face down on his lap and he sighed. They sat there twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do and it made Tom frown and this was slowly starting to eat away at him with each minute that passed. He couldn't face not doing anything for much longer and he then decided that he wanted to step forward and start the search in curing their boredom and finding something to do.

Tom looked at everyone once more and groaned when he noticed Tord. The guy never seemed to slow down as his fingers moved just as fast as his eyes as they scanned the pages from what he'd seen on his screen and a deep chuckle to catch Tom's attention as his muscles tensed up. Tord gazed from over his phones and grinned as he always had something to do no matter the situation. It made him envious and his skin crawl but that feeling faded quickly when Tord went back to his screen. Between Tom and Tord there was always tension that Tom knew was between them most times. It played on loop in his head consistently and Tom also didn't want to speak to him half the time anyways. Tom gazed around the room then back to Edd next to him and groaned.

"What are we going to do? We've been sitting here in the living room for hours doing almost nothing. I'm tired of sitting here." Tom groaned.

After he spoke nobody acknowledged him, not even Edd who he'd stared at again. With nobody paying attention to him Tom's shoulders sagged and his chest started to ache. He wondered why this always happened to him when he tried to stand up for himself for the good of their group. A few minutes passed before he sighed and reached into his blue hoodie pocket pulling out his silver flask. It was the only source of comfort and escape Tom had as of late. Not hesitating, Tom opened the top and took a swig of the sweet, honey-like flavor of the whiskey that burned his throat on the way down. That morning he'd poured it inside earlier that day in preparation for what might come.

"Hello? Do you guys hear me?" Tom said as he tried to take initiative again.

Tord was the first one of the group to react, he lowered his phone on his lap. A toothy grin crested his face and he let out a short chuckle before he looked up at Tom with narrowed eyes. Tom sat and glared back, he wasn't going to take anything from him while he was there while he plotted his next move. Tom knew that this wasn't going to turn out well between them as it never did in the past when Tord was deep in thought and that's with the direction that things were already headed. Tord rose from the couch, walked over and stood in front of Tom.