playdead

Chapter Sixteen

Teddy walked on the grey pavement.

Every now and again, there would be a spot of where a streetlight was pointing. There would also be parties in very few houses. Sometimes big, sometimes small.

Teddy arrived to a white three story building, with the looks of a church.

The sign in front read:

ANGEL CHILD FOSTER HOME:
All children of God need loving parents!

Teddy walked through a small garden of oversized flower bushes and opened the door to the foster home.

Kids were running around, chasing each other and also doing chores. All of them were pretty young, so the older kids would be in the next floor, on the SNES the foster home just bought. They horde it every day.

Teddy closed the door behind him and walked to a marble counter to the left. Behind the counter, was an old lady reading a book.

"Hellooooo, Mother Sarah!" Teddy said.

"Hi, Ted." Mother Sarah said, without looking away from her book.

Mother Sarah wasn't actually a nun. She was called "Mother Sarah" for ego raising purposes. Teddy knew she hated him, because he held it over her head that she wasn't a nun. So, Mother Sarah insisted he call her "mom."

"What's new?" Teddy asked.

"Nothing. Four hours until bed time." Mother Sarah replied.

"Greeeeat. Thank you, Mother Sarah." Teddy said smiling, but once out of the sight of Sarah he rolled his eyes.

That ghoulish old bitch couldn't tell me to stop strangling her. She'd be like "it's almost bed time, Ted. ARGH!"

Teddy's mind wasn't exactly a healthy one.

Ted walked up the stairs. He looked around.

At the TV, were almost 20 kids trying to get on the SNES. Mario Kart music blared from the speakers. Almost drowned out was hard rock playing on a radio nearby. The emo kids stood in the corner, like zombies, talking to each other. The nerds did homework in another corner.

They all didn't exactly have "privacy." The older kids slept in a giant room that had basically no furniture apart from an old couch and the TV. They had sleeping bags jammed into a closet, that had their names on them. Meanwhile, younger kids had actual beds and rooms. To be fair, there wasn't that many of them.

Teddy slipped by the kids and went to the closet. He grabbed his rolled up sleeping bag (one of the only ones that doesn't smell like murky teenager) and went to the most secluded and quiet part of the room.

He laid it out, sat on it, and did his homework.

What's fun about being alone, you might ask. Well, Teddy knew.

Inside the closet next to him, was another TV. It was bought just last week, but for some reason nobody used it because it looked old.

So Teddy brought it out, put it a few centimeters away from his sleeping bag, and wasted his four hours with glorious television.