My Roommate Is A Wolf?

GOD DID EXIST AFTER ALL

Daniel scowled as he was busy scrolling down his phone screen looking through a list of ADs about houses and rooms rent. To his great annoyance, all of the price scopes were out of his pocket range. Some of them were even unbelievably pricey that they totally baffled him. He was not sure, who the f**k would willingly pay such a huge amount of money just to rent a freaking apartment. You could just rent an apartment at a lower price and save those extras money for two or three years and bought yourself a house or better yet built one yourself.

Okay, that might be stretching it a little bit, but the point still stand. Nobody should pay that much for a rent.

His eyes were getting dry, stinging, and itching a little bit from the long exposure to blue lights and for not blinking as much as they should.

But,

He only had a week left before the lease of the apartment that he shared with his friends were up and he had been looking for a month now. Yet luck was still not on his side. He would have started earlier if only he knew that finding yourself a single room with a crappy bed to curl up in was this hard.

“You okay?” Sarah, a red-haired girl with a shoulder length hair, one of his roommates, well, soon to be ex-roommate asked. A steaming white cup was clasped between her beautifully manicured hands. She sat herself down on a bright red loveseat on their shared living room.

Daniel sighed loudly from the couch he was lying on, turning off his screen and looked at her dejectedly.

“I mean, why is everything so damn expensive? $7000? Like who the f**k owned that much money?! I swear at this point I’ll just sleep on the park bench!”

“Oh, c’mon don’t be so dramatic. I know for a fact that it is not $7000. You are just being cheap. Look for a shared apartment and talking about sharing apartment, Luca still hasn’t found a new roommate, in case you change your mind.” said Sarah as she blew at her tea.

“I am not changing my mind. Luca is fine. He is super cool, but one of his roommates is an unbearable homophobic asshole. So, no. I’d rather get my ass hauled by the police and sleep on the cold cell’s floor than to live with that witch.”

Sarah rolled her eyes at his answer.

“Time is ticking, Daniel,” She sang, “I don’t know why are you being so difficult. It’s not like you going to live in there forever. Just until you find a decent place for yourself. You only have one week left!” Exasperation was oozing out of her.

“Well, I am sorry if I don’t want to live with someone who told me that I am going to rot in hell and constantly glare at me as if I am going to dry hump her boyfriend just because I am gay!” Daniel shrieked, sitting up and throwing his hands to the air.

“Well, yeah, maybe she is a little bit of a jerk,” She shrugged her shoulders weakly asn sipper on her tea, “But maybe, you can just like ignore her? Go to work. Lock yourself in your room. Repeat.”

 “Ignore her? How can I ignore her when she is breathing down my neck every damn second? Ugh. Can we please stop talking about her?  I can already feel my blood pressure going up.” Daniel cried out as he rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. He could literally felt a tension on there.

“Okay. So, what’s your plan?” Sarah obliged.

“Can we stop talking about that too?” He groaned mournfully, burying his face into his hands.

“One week, Dan. Only one more week. You cannot expect a miracle to happen out of nowhere to save your ass.” Sarah kindly reminded him.

‘Well, it’s none of your business.’ He almost said that, but decided to bite his tongue back.

He might be a little bit envious of how easy her life was compared to his. She came from a well-off family who definitely loved her to death. The constant video calls just to make sure that she was alright and healthy, the occasional family dinner whenever her family was coming to visit her, also the family vacation during her uni breaks that she could not help but chatter about and not to mention a decent and doting boyfriend whom she was going to move in with.

He was not shy to admit that he was jealous of her.

Everything was so simple to her because of the amount of loves and supports that surrounded her. Her family didn’t kick her out of the house at the tender age of 18. She didn’t have to constantly deal with hateful words.

Daniel, on the other hand, he had heard enough slurs and bigotry about his sexuality even from his own father. So, he couldn’t blame her for not understanding why he was ‘being difficult’, according to her words. She simply couldn’t understand that he had had enough of people’s nags.

Some people were just so lucky like that. Not many, but they were some out there.

“Maybe. Maybe a miracle will happen and save my broke ass, but for now I am not going to think about it. My head hurts and my eyes sting like a b***h. I am going to take a nap for my night shift.” He stretched his body out and got up from their shared couch to walk into his room and to forget about his problem even just for a moment.

A loud sigh reached his ear.

“Shut up, Sarah.” He shouted out and closed his door.

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It was not his fault, okay? The fact that he was born as a gay guy which resulted on him being kicked out of the house right after he graduated from high school. He still remembered how red his father’s face was and how the veins on his forehead and neck looked like they were ready to burst as his father yelled a bunch of swear words and slurs at him, chasing him out of the house. Humiliation and fear bleed through his skin as his siblings watched him being herded out of the house like a rabid dog, in silence.

He was also not proud to admit that he had to turn to shoplifting and pickpocketing during his first few months to get enough money to buy food because he spent the only money he got, after being kicked out, on train ticket to get the hell away from his hometown.

Sleeping through the nights wrapped up in his hoodie and jeans. A repeated routine of stealing and sleeping on hard surfaces with a few close encounters with the police. Until the day he met Chase, a man on his forties who was generous enough to give him a job to help around his thrift books store despite Daniel’s rough and grim appearance after spending months on the street.

Chase seemed to know that he was homeless, though not the reason why, and he was also being kind enough not to ask. He let Daniel to sleep at the back of the shop. The man even gave him some food sometimes, a warm leftover from home for breakfast, and Daniel might have tearing up a little bit during those moments. 

Daniel heaved a sigh, looking at the ceiling on his dimly lit room. He should be sleeping like he said to Sarah, but his brain just would not stop running. Moment like this would always send his brain into a reminiscence mode. As if to find a reason that could have possibly cause his life to turn into such a s**t shows and he would always, without a fail, come into one conclusion, it all started because he was gay.

He could not understand how his father called him abomination just because of the fact that he liked boys, as if he was getting caught doing pole dancing butt-naked at the town hall just to get some money to buy the latest iPhone. 

“Stop.” He chided himself before his thought could spiral out of control.

“God, I know you’re up there and probably watching me having a pity party right now and I hope I looked pitiful enough for you to take a tiny little bit of mercy on my dark soul. So, can you like send me a help or give me some miracle like Chase? I don’t really mind sleeping in someone’s storage room or even closet for that matter. Just not the street, please. I really hate the cold and the bugs. Anything but the street. Yeah, just anything, really. Please. Pretty pretty please.” He begged religiously while clasping his hands together. Something he had not done in many years because apparently being gay and homeless meant that you didn’t have time to be religious. It didn’t help you in a single bit.

He breathed out slowly and curled up on himself before he closed his eyes and drifted off into horrible choppy dreamlands.

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Work was demanding as usual. His feet were aching so badly due to the number of walking and standing still he had done. His lower back was a little bit sore because he had yet got the chance to sit after hours of standing and moving around.

He stood stiffly against one of the walls, his usual spot during his night shift on Wednesday. He looked at nothing in particular, keeping his head up and waiting for the customers to finish their food. His eyes would occasionally flicker to the clock, just a brief glance to not make it glaringly obvious, counting down the hours and by doing so he was torturing himself even more. The ache on his heels throbbed viciously when he realized he needed to wait two more hours.

The urge to stretch his leg was coming so strong, he had to balled his hands into tight fists. That would be so unprofessional.

‘f*****g finally!’ His brain cheered as he saw his patron raised from their seats.  

He bid them farewell with a friendly smile painted on his face and wishing them a good night, then proceed to collect the empty plates and glasses from the now unoccupied table. With well-practiced grace, he walked to the kitchen to deposit the dirty dishes to the sink.

That was basically what he did for the rest of the night; taking order from the customers, fetched the food from the kitchen, served them to the table, and stood by his assigned spot, waited until people finished or when someone needed his assistance.

“Tired?” someone whispered to him.

He glanced to his right side, looking at a dark blonde-haired man in white uniform and black pants, identical to his own, with a primly styled hair as required.

“Yeah.” He whispered back with eyes trained to the busy dinner. Being caught for ‘gossiping’ was not in his bucket lists for today or ever. He was already about to lose a place to stay. He didn’t want to lose his job as well.

“An hour to go. Can’t wait for this s**t to be over. My feet are killing me. What’re you doing after this?”

Daniel had to stop himself from rolling his eyes so hard to the back of his head. Collin, the guy’s name, was what he would consider as his friend at his workplace because everyone else, though they were not outrightly being mean to him, was a little bit self-centered and some ass-sucking people.

Collin was the only person beside Daniel himself who didn’t care about being the manager’s favorite. They both just wanted to do their jobs right and got paid. So naturally Daniel respected him for that.

Though the guy had his own flaws, like this one, where he liked to drag Daniel to get shitfaced after their shifts ended.

“Going home obviously.” He said evenly.

He knew that Collin would ask him to go to the bar they frequented after a night shift together or maybe dragged him to the gay club that for some reason, for someone who identified himself as a straight man, instantly peaked his interest after he found out that Daniel was gay.

Collin had begged Daniel to let him came along because he was curious as hell. The very next day, the guy claimed that he might have some uncultivated attractions to men and used that as a good enough reason to keep coming back frequently to find his real identity as a man. Now, it was just like a routine for him.

“Seriously? We both have the day off tomorrow. I know because I looked at the schedule. The hell are you going home for?” Collin whispered yelled at him.

“Sleep.” Came his short answer.

‘And probably digging through the internet again to find a cheap room to rent because I only have a week left.’ He thought to himself bitterly.

He was not about to dump his housing problem to Collin because he didn’t want any additional member to the list of people who pitied him for being so pathetic and having to constantly struggle to just simply have a comfortable life.

“You’ve been super boring lately.” Collin murmured, eyes glancing around just to make sure that the coast were clear.

“Trust me. I know.” He agreed gravely.

“Gotta go. Talk later.” Collin rushed out as he waltzed away to walk to one of the tables.

Daniel sighed. He was quite aware that he had been brooding lately and constantly avoiding any kind of ‘meeting up’ with the only handful of people that he could call as his friends. Friends were another aspect of his life that he was lacking in. He didn’t have time to form a solid relationship with a bunch of people because he had to constantly worked his asses off to earn himself some pennies.

On top of that, he seemed to have problems sustaining his relationship with the people around him. Only a few of them were nice enough to keep in touch every once in a while, despite his poor social skills and messed up life. Collin was one of them and he was silently feeling grateful for that.

After three years away from home, away from everything he had ever known, constantly moving from one place to another and changing jobs after jobs, Daniel missed to have something consistent in his life. He had that for a while now; a place to stay and a permanent job, but it was about to change just when he started to feel comfortable and found his footing again.

He just hoped that tonight he would be so f*****g lucky and that God would finally took mercy on him after all these years because if He didn’t, Daniel was about to lose his s**t and probably would end up doing some desperate thing like blowing someone on a dingy alley for 50 bucks, if anyone would ever pay that much for a b*****b. Maybe he would even put his virgin ass on sale for some rich depraved people who had way too much money on their hand and had a kink of deflowering a virgin gay boy.

Fuck, he hoped he would find a good offer and by good he meant cheap rent price. He had tried his best to steer away from that kind of ‘job’ despite of the promise of easy money. He didn’t want to do that no matter how many times he had imagined himself of doing it. It was just when he felt like he was on his last rope, when the cold was so unbearable and he was longing for a warm place, or when he felt like dying because his stomach was extremely hungry.

He promised himself that exchanging his body with money would be the last resort when everything else was not working. When he could no longer get himself a penny by other means.

Right now, he could still earn some money though not handsomely, but still, he survived.

He could be living in someone’s wet basement with some rats as companion and he wouldn’t even going to complain as long as it wasn’t on the street. As much as he pretended and often times boasting about how he would not mind to sleep on the street, the truth was, it bothered him so much. He didn’t know why. It just did and just by imagining it was enough to give him chills all over his body.

Fuck. He really needed to find something tonight. He might as well put an all-nighter and went to every corner existed on the internet about room-renting.

One week.

He only had one week.

Fuck.

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‘You slimmy f**k. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you’re running away from me.’

‘You’re missing out a lot. Your fav bouncer is here’

‘Fine. Ignore me.’

‘You asshole’

Daniel ignored the latest text popping up on his phone, merely giving it a glance just enough to read it. Collin could wait. He might be a little bit mad because Daniel ghosted him without saying anything, but the guy would not hold a grudge against him. At least not for too long. Daniel knew that.

He sipped the lukewarm coffee which tasted slightly disgusting, but he really needed a supply of energy to help him got through the night, because after hours of scrolling and clicking he had yet to find anything.

Look like God didn’t exist after all.

Maybe he was truly meant to sleep on the street and he should really stop fighting to avoid that fate. The approaching headache was a clear enough message sent by the universe. He really needed to sleep and forgot about the whole ordeal about finding a decent place.

He was ready to end his search when his eyes caught a post recently shared on the platform he was in, for a room in a two bedrooms apartment. The rent was for $250 a month which was already cheaper than any other places he had looked at. Definitely the cheapest one.

It was 20 minutes away from his work place by car, not that he had a car, but that didn’t matter because he only needed to walk around 10 minutes long to get to the nearest subway station and a little bit of walk to his workplace after that. He would do a lot of walking for sure and his feet would ache even more, but that was only a small price he had to pay to not sleep on the street.

Fuck. This was it. f**k. He needed to act quick.

His mouth was salivating as his heartbeat increased because this was too good to be true. He clicked on the post and looked for the contact information which only provided him with an e-mail address. He didn’t even bother to read the whole contents of the post. The price was what really got him and he was desperate. He didn’t want to waste any time because he knew that he wasn’t the only person out there urgently looking for a roof to sleep under and not to mention a cheap one.

He copied the e-mail address and wrote in an impossibly fast pace. He never felt this inspired to write something in his entire life. Not even for his job application which took him hours of deleting and writing. He tried to make it as appealing as possible, borderline overly eager and maybe even appeared to be begging. He might or might not have offered to pay on the spot because he was THAT desperate.

He clicked the send button, not even bothered to double check for any kind of mistakes or ambiguity. He didn’t even care that it was already past midnight. Ben, the username of the advertiser, was obviously still awake, at least until a few minutes ago.

After waiting for an hour with no new messages coming into his inbox file, he decided to call it the night and turn off his computer with a sigh of disappointment. Anxiety filled his chest as he lied down on his bed, thinking about the worst scenario; someone else were going to get it, there would still be no reply tomorrow morning when he woke up, or he would not get the room and he would end up homeless again.

With those negative thoughts swirling around inside his head, Daniel sent himself into a fretful sleep. At some point, he dreamed about packing and sleeping on hard concrete floor. About losing his job because he was constantly late after being homeless. Then, he dreamed about his father sneering face, laughing at him for how miserable his life was and that it was what he deserved for being a queer.

Daniel woke up sniffing, looked at the clock on his bedside table. It was three in the morning. He was asleep for barely an hour. He wiped the wetness on his eyes and flopped back down on his bed. He pulled his blanket tighter around himself and curled up on his side, then closed his eyes to prevent them form getting any wetter and willed himself to go back to sleep. He just wanted to forget.

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‘Hello, this is Ben. You must be Daniel. I believe that you are interested to rent one of the rooms in my apartment. If it is possible, you can come to look around today at 4 am or we can reschedule if you are unavailable.’

“Shit.” Daniel stared into his phone in disbelief.

He had to read that over and over again just to make sure that he was not imagining things.

His hair was in a wild disarray from sleep. His eyes were still a little bit crusty as well and he was barely awake. For all that he knew, he could still be half-asleep and experiencing one of those lucid dream where the dream felt way too real, it didn’t feel like a dream at all until he woke up feeling a little disoriented.

 He slapped himself just to make sure that he was not dreaming. This had to be real because his cheek felt like someone just slapped him and the text message was still very much intact not missing any word nor disappearing.

After getting over his shock, he animatedly typed a reply. The way his face shone could rival the peeking sun on the horizon. After a month of agonizing fear and worry, God finally took mercy on him.

Well, it seemed like God did exist after all.