Shuffling Feet, chapter 1 and 2

Seth Hammond had everything, until a man came in and stole away his fiancee. Natalie Anderson finds him on the side of the street in Seattle during a trip, and helps him on his way to finding his love

Chapter 1: Seth Hammond

 

My life was great, until he came around. Now it sucks worse than a fifty cent w***e.  At twenty-two I was employed at a great job, engaged to the woman of my dreams and high school sweetheart, and father to the best little girl a man could ask to parent. I met Melanie at a concert a couple years prior to us dating, and we quickly became best friends. At just over five feet tall, she was a stark contrast to my six foot three inches height. Her raven hair made mine seem blonde and her perfect body looked as if it were a doll’s. I never noticed that I was the only one who saw all these things in detail, and always seemed to know when she was upset or in need of a friend.

 

We began dating at the tail end of our junior year in high school, when we both discovered that our friendship hid a deep love for one another. Our senior year had been hell for us after Melanie got pregnant at seventeen, but we worked through that and both of us graduated successfully before our daughter, Francesca, was born. The months and years we had been together were the best time of my life. Melanie was my driving force, my motivation to keep working on graduating and writing music. At nineteen, I was found by a record company, who I worked for after my band fell apart. At twenty I became an agent for the record company and at twenty-one I proposed officially to Melanie. It was the happiest day of our life (minus the birth of Little Miss). I could not ask for a better life.

 

            …And then he came into the picture. Attractive, dark hair styled like those emo kids I never seemed to get along with, and most of all had the same interests as Melanie. Three months after Jason came into her life; Melanie split the engagement and admitted she had feelings for him. In a rush of emotions I told her to get out and broke off any relationship with her. I could never see her with another man, or anyone that wasn’t me. Melanie’s last words to me before she moved with Jason a couple months later were, “I always loved you Seth.” Those words stung the shattered pieces of my heart. If you ever wanted to see a giant cry, that day would be a perfect example of it. After that day I stopped living, breathing, existing mentally in this world. If I wasn’t drunk, I was trying to get there. My family stopped talking to me after some sort of intervention, believing my alcohol abuse to be an addiction of some sort. I didn’t care I had lost everything in the course of three months that had taken me years to find. My friends from high school weren’t much help, as they had families or boyfriends or girlfriends to be with. My one true friend from college, Brad, just helped me get drunk or brought me food from his wife Laura. Laura would come over every now and then with Brad to clean my apartment up a bit or give me my mail, but I never looked at it. I couldn’t stand the sight of Seth Hammond on anything. I was no longer that man; I was just an empty shell of humanity that had lost its will to live. After three months of the single life I shattered the mirror in my bathroom, the mirror I had written, “Will you marry me?” in the condensation when she was showering. Brad took me to the hospital, but the mirror left scars that to this day won’t go away. Looking back, I can only call them a reminder of the broken state I was in.

 

            Six months had passed since that day, and in the middle of the rain and wind the Western Washington called late autumn, my boss came to my apartment. Mr.Williams was nearly sixty, a product of the Woodstock era, with a head of hair that was missing the top half. Sitting on a dirty and unkempt thing I once called a couch, he spoke calmly to me.

 

            “Look Seth, I know you’ve been having trouble this last year, but I need you to come into work more often. Lou and Kyle are saying I should fire you, and if you don’t I’ll be forced to. I can’t pay you such a high wage if you only come into work once every few days.” Leaving a card for a psychologist, Mr.Williams stood and put on a bowler hat he always wore to work. “Please go see this man, he can help you. I’ll give you another month to get your act together, but if I don’t see you in work more often after that I’ll have to give you the boot.” I picked up the card and read it as he walked out the door, then put it in my wallet and forgot about the card. Needless to say I never met the shrink on the card, and a month passed without me doing anything. On November 22^nd I was fired and later that day evicted for not paying my rent the past four months. Evicted, jobless, single, broken, and drunk, I became another number in the statistic of homeless people on the streets of Seattle.

 

Chapter 2: Natalie Anderson

 

            I met Seth on an off chance that I had just moved into my cousin Evan's apartment in Seattle. I was spending my day playing tourist while Evan was on a work trip somewhere up in Canada. I was near Pike’s Place Market when I saw a ragged man nearly the same age as me, and automatically I assumed he was like any of the homeless in the area. But something drew me to him, almost a feeling of similarity between us. I walked up to the man and pulled out a few dollars to place in the rain soaked hat in front of him. Immediately he snatched the money out and gave it back. His first words to me were, “I’ve never needed charity before and I don’t need it now miss. So if you would take your cash back and be on your way everything’ll be alright eh?” The man’s accent was odd, some strange mixture of Canadian and something from the Mid West.

 

            “What’s your name? I’ll give take the money back if you tell me.”

 

            “You know what? I’ll take you damn money. Just leave me be I need to go get something in my stomach.” The man scratched his head and scowled. I tried to imagine him smiling but all I could see was an empty face permanently stained by anger. He intrigued me and I got stubborn.

 

            “Then tell me your name and I’ll give you the money back.”

           

            “Why the hell do you want to know my f*****g name? God it’s like you have some annoying little obsession with me now.” He pulled a cigarette out of the inner pocket of his deteriorating coat and lit it with weak lighter. A shopper passed by and complained about the smoke, to which he replied, “F**k off you meaningless sack of flesh I care about your opinion about as much as a dying rat with AIDS.” And then he proceeded to take an exaggerated drag and blow it in the face of the shopper. I knew the cops would come and arrest him for harassment, so I grabbed the man and took him away from Pikes. When I stopped I planted my fists on my hips and glared at him.

 

            “S**t like that will get you thrown in prison, you know that right?” The man laughed.

 

            “You’re helping a complete stranger. I used to do that, until I found out that mankind is a useless waste of flesh and food. And before you ask again,” he grabbed the money from my hand and took another drag, “My name is Seth. And no I don’t need charity or money for alcohol; I was evicted for not paying rent because I was fired for not going to work. Now if you wouldn’t mind I have to return to my wonderful home underneath a bridge so f**k off please.” Seth began walking away, and rage took over. I was always known for having a short temper.

 

            “Looks a*****e, I just gave you money and saved you from the f*****g cops so unless you want me to cal them down here you’ll get your head out of your a*s and thank me you waste of flesh.” Seth flipped me off and walked away. It wasn’t until after a bit of screaming that I noticed he had dropped his wallet…or someone’s wallet. I picked it up and looked inside the old thing. The only card that wasn’t faded from water damage was an old driver’s license with a photo of a little girl taped to the back. The name on the license was Seth Hammond, age twenty three from what year it said he had been born in. The face was similar, but what must have been months in this weather and being homeless had left him much thinner than he had been. The picture on the back had a caption in permanent marker that read “Francesca Hammond, age three”. I was stunned by that. How could a bitter man like that have a beautiful little girl like this somewhere in the world? My interest grew, and I looked for Seth.

 

            I found him near the ferry terminal, walking out of a McDonalds with a small hamburger and drink that he quickly ate. “Seth,” I began as he turned to walk away from me, “I found your wallet and, would you please come back to my apartment? Just until you get back on your feet of course.”

           

            “I don’t need charity miss. Least of all from someone who though calling me a waste of flesh would get her a thank you. Now I’ll be taking that back thank you.” Seth went to grab the wallet, but I moved it just out of his reach. His scowl became more noticeable. “I’m warning you, you do not want to piss me off miss.”

 

            “One, my name isn’t Miss; it’s Natalie. Secondly, you WILL be coming back with me to get back on your feet or I will drive off with this and you will never see it again.” I smiled a bit at that. Seth threw his hands up and turned around angrily.

 

            “Fine I’ll go back to your f*****g apartment. Don’t think I’m some prostitute though.” He laughed a bit, cold and empty, but he laughed at his own joke. I showed him to my car and we drove through the hell of rush hour to the University District.

Author's Note

Chapters 3 and 4 will be posted sometime between Thursday June 3rd and Tuesday June 8th

Reviews

[Essa G]

I like this story a lot, especially how you showed how much Seth changed after Melanie left him.