Sneak back into your room and hastily pack up your possessions

From Create Your Own Story

You really dislike confrontation. The mere idea of trying to talk this over with your landlord makes your chest tighten with anxiety, and besides, you figure it's probably too late for that anyway, as you hear your landlord, who is now at the front door, complain that he bit into one of the "gold nuggets" to see if it was real. Better pull a runner.

You hear your next-door neighbour, a snake oil salesman who sells fake Papal indulgences on the side, sympathizing and explaining to your landlord that he always knew you were crooked (presumably it takes one to know one). You silently bless his slimy, long-winded soul for buying you these precious seconds. Hopefully he'll even launch into his well-rehearsed sales pitch.

All your stuff is still in your room, including what little cash you have. Praying that your neighbour keeps trashing you to your landlord for a little while longer, you noiselessly swing through the window back into your room - unseen, you hope. You race around, flinging all your possessions into a sack. Once you're sure you've got all your things - easy, since you own so little - you reach under your mattress and pull up a certain floorboard. You pull out the gleaming silver circlet that is your only heirloom, passed down to your sister by your parents and from your sister to you.

You are the very last De Angelis of Fiume.

You carefully stow your precious family treasure beneath your other possessions, and stand up.

Your breath catches in your throat as you hear heavy footsteps echoing in the stairwell - time to go. You take one last look around the place you've called home, and sometimes less polite words, for the last four months of your life. It wasn't so bad, you think to yourself with a twinge of sadness, at least when it wasn't raining (the roof leaks like a sieve), sunny (it turns into a sauna) or cold (so drafty you might as well be outside), those little terrorists weren't trying to rob, molest, maim or kill you and the couple downstairs were getting along (kicking rather than throwing things at each other). You look wistfully at the mattress you're going to have to leave behind - it wasn't easy to scrounge that nice, soft straw, and you're pretty sure the bedbugs in it were smaller than the ones in your old mattress (you had to abandon that one in similar circumstances).

The footsteps have reached your door, so you wave a final goodbye to your home. You heft your sack onto your shoulder and, as one of the hired goons kicks down the door, you gracefully slide out the window, effortlessly climb down the wall one-handed and disappear into an alley.

As you make for the city centre - you know these streets like the back of your hand - you figure your landlord is probably leaning out the window, mouth agape, craning his neck up and down the street looking for you. You hope one of his mercenary gorillas pushes him out. What kind of idiot actually believes that someone renting a hole like that could pay for anything in gold, anyway?

It doesn't really matter now, anyway - once again, you're homeless. As you silently reproach yourself for wishing harm upon your moron of a landlord, you kick at a pebble in your path and miss.

The first thing you should do is:

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