Chapter Text
Change is inevitable. In your life, there will be many changes, big or small. Changes you notice, changes you don’t notice until you look back and realize how much it differs. But people like for things to stay the same. Time moves on mercilessly and it doesn’t care that we’d like to stay in the same situation as before. It doesn’t care about our feelings, our ambitions, our little habits and traditions. Change must happen. Change is inevitable.
And every once in a while, that change will be so drastic there is no turning back. That change turns your whole life upside down and redefines everything. It takes away the people you love and care about, through distance or death. It brings you to a whole new place, to an environment you were unfamiliar with. It brings you to new people who don’t know you, who – it seems in that moment – will never understand what you’ve gone through, what you’ve experienced, what you have lost.
A teenage boy who called himself Sausage found himself at the receiving end of such drastic, permanent change, which led him across the country to the Caesar House.
The car dropped him off right there. It had driven into the forests at the edge of town, to a somewhat remote home away from society. A boarding house for the nearby high school. Sausage had stepped out of the car, holding onto the one suitcase he brought, now releasing his grip on the suitcase slightly. He had still been staring and standing when the driver decided to leave him there.
He thought the concept was odd. A boarding house, in what felt like the middle of the woods. Maybe it was close to the school, he had no idea. The building itself was weird as well. Or maybe it was just the style, unlike any he’d seen in real life before. Two floors, red and dark bricks, lots of windows with dark metal frames, lots of spires. A tower next to the main entrance looked too narrow to be functional. It all reminded him a little too much of a horror movie, and he was the protagonist, ready to walk to his doom.
He wasn’t sure if he liked it. The housekeeper had made it sound homely, secure, safe; that’s not what it looked like to him. Could he still turn around and walk away?
He shook his head. He told himself he’d make an effort. He promised himself he would give living here a try. This would be home, after all, until he turned eighteen and could do as he pleased. Besides, as he stood and stared, the images of his parents and sir Carlos came to mind. They’d want him to be happy. They’d want him to continue. So he would try. No matter the eerie, creepy vibes he got from this house.
Movement snapped him back to reality. The front door creaked open and a woman came out. Her blond hair was pulled up in a messy bun, her expression tired but warm and her gray eyes friendly. She approached Sausage quickly, but not in a way that made Sausage feel threatened. Almost like a mother coming to welcome her son back home after he’d been gone for a while.
It might have helped that he knew her. They’d only communicated through video chat so far – but even then, she’d been warm and caring. And she listened without judgment, didn’t ask all the hard questions others asked. She had introduced herself as Emma, the housekeeper and manager of the Caesar House, a boarding house where only six other teenagers lived, all around his age, and he was promised they would understand his situation and wouldn’t pry. All the while, she’d smiled; Sausage still hadn’t formed an opinion on whether that was genuine or learned, or maybe a strategy to lure him in.
He could almost hear sir Carlos tell him to be kind but wary; you never know what hides behind a smile.
“Hi, Sausage,” she said. Her enthusiasm wasn’t feigned, at least. “It’s good to see you’ve arrived in one piece. I’ll take your suitcase if you want.”
He clenched his fist around the handle, the ‘hi’ he was going to say stuck in his throat. Maybe he even moved his arm back a little, his eyes on her, ready to take a step back and defend his only belongings.
Emma pulled back her outstretched hand when she noticed Sausage’s gaze hardened.
“Why don’t we go inside?" she then suggested. "Get you something to drink?”
Sausage nodded, he hadn’t noticed how parched he was until she mentioned it. She turned and walked the door, calmly, looking back every couple of steps to see if he followed. He did, at a slower pace, almost afraid to enter the strange house and leave everything he’d known behind. This did not betray his origins, he reminded himself. This was only temporary. He wouldn’t change drastically just because he entered a house, or was made to live here. He took a deep breath and entered through the doors.
The interior was just as weird as the exterior, and it didn’t help get rid of his nerves; instead, it intensified his horror movie analogy. The crimson wallpaper with a strange pattern had something unsettling to it and the offset black and white checkered floor didn’t help either. The hallways trailed all the way to the back of the house, where another set of double doors waited. To his right, a dark wooden staircase led to the second floor. Emma guided him to the left, through a wooden archway into the open living room.
“Come on in,” she invited him. “You can sit down, make yourself comfortable, I’ll get you a glass of water.”
Sausage sat down on one of the couches. It was an old couch, and it felt like one of these days, someone would sit down and fall through. He sat comfortably, though, the suitcase resting on his lap. A large window allowed the sunlight to stream into the room. There were two more couches, each a little smaller. A darts board hung on the wall across from the wooden archway. The final wall, the one Sausage looked right at, had two more archways, smaller, only allowing one or maybe two people to pass through at the same time, and the space between was blank, just the crimson wallpaper with the strange pattern.
Sausage turned his head and looked outside: it looked out over the driveway and the forest around. A sight was going to familiarize himself with. Today, tomorrow, until the near future was now, that sight was new. Fresh. Different.
He probably shouldn’t form an opinion based on first impressions and his own desire to literally be anywhere else. But looking out the window instead of into the room comforted him a little. He wasn’t trapped – not per se. He could always go out, get some fresh air. Get lost in the woods. Find a space only he knew about.
“Sausage.” Emma’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. He turned his head; Emma offered him the glass of water. Sausage took it from her and thanked her. She sat down on another couch and eyed him while he took a sip.
He wasn’t expecting anything but still found another way to be let down. How was it possible that even the water tasted different from what he was used to? Couldn’t there be something small that remained the same?
“So,” Emma then asked, “what do you think?”
Sausage glanced around the room, so he wouldn’t have to look at her for a second more. She was better off not knowing what exactly he thought. It wasn’t her fault he was in this situation.
“It’s… a house.” It was the most diplomatic answer he could think of.
Emma nodded and glanced around as well.
“It sure is a house. A beautiful house, if I say so myself.” Her gaze landed on Sausage again and she remained silent for a while. Sausage tried to keep his face in the most neutral position he could muster.
“You don’t have to like it here, okay?” Emma said, her voice a little softer now. “I know how hard it is to have your life turned upside down and then be thrown into a new place. I lost my parents when I was young. Younger than you are now, even.” She sighed. “I’ve been just about everywhere, in every possible scenario you can think of – until I settled down in a place very much like this one. And I promised myself that, if I saw someone in need, I’d provide them with the stability they needed. I’d give them time and space to adjust to this new reality and wouldn’t force them into situations they didn’t like.” She leaned forward a little, toward him. “You’re allowed to hate it here. Whatever you think, you can always tell me and then we can try to find a way to make you feel better. Okay?”
Empty words. Hollow words, even, for nothing would make Sausage feel better. For all he knew, his life stopped four months ago and his body was just going through the motions until life caught up with him. Or maybe it would be better; maybe, after a while, he wouldn’t mind being here. Maybe he’d even start to like it here. But now, at that moment, he disliked it. Not even ‘hate’, just ‘dislike’.
“You’re not alone,” Sausage,” she continued. “If you ever want to talk – to me, or to anyone here – just do so. Everyone in this house knows what it’s like to lose people. We’ll listen.”
Sausage nodded. Because he found no words to respond verbally. Because he didn’t want to say something he might regret later.
“Is this the new guy?”
Sausage turned his head to the right. A boy stood in the archway, leaned against the wood. He wore a black coat and a red scarf – inside. An interesting choice. His curious blue eyes looked at Sausage and he’d folded his arms.
“He is,” Emma said, and she directed her attention to both boys. “Sausage, this is fWhip. He’s been living at the house for about three years now. fWhip, this is Sausage.”
“Sausage?” He raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me that’s a nickname.”
Sausage had been expecting that question. He wondered how long it would take for the people here to get used to it.
“Names have power and nobody can have such power over me,” Sausage said, in the exact intonation his parents and sir Carlos had used when they taught him this valuable lesson. “I am Sausage.”
“Okay,” fWhip said. It didn’t sound like he agreed with that philosophy. So few people did nowadays. “Was there no better option?”
“fWhip, not now,” Emma said, giving him a quick glance. fWhip just shrugged in defense. Sausage didn’t mind – he had heard every possible joke, every jeer and snort. Every question. This question was valid. There might have been better options, but Sausage had chosen it himself. For all intended purposes, Sausage was his name and if people wanted to take offense at that, he’d let them joke and jeer and snort. They were too small-minded to see the dangers of using their real name.
“I actually have an errand to run,” Emma said, standing up from the dilapidated couch as she looked at Sausage, “so I thought it’d be a good idea to let fWhip give you a tour of the house. How does that sound?”
Sausage looked at fWhip again. He looked harmless. Even a little nice. fWhip shot him a reassuring smile.
You never know what hides behind a smile.
“Hey, I don’t bite,” fWhip said. “You’re in good hands.”
“I won’t be long,” Emma said, and she walked to the front door already. “Don’t get into trouble.”
“No, ma’am,” fWhip answered.
He watched her leave the room, leave the house through the front. Once the door fell into the lock with a loud CLANG that echoed through the hall, fWhip turned his head to Sausage again. Sausage stared him down, unwilling to step down easily. Instinctively, he let his arms cover more of the suitcase on his lap, protecting its contents.
“So, Sausage,” fWhip asked him, finally tearing away from the archway and entering the room, “how much of the house have you seen?”
“This room.”
fWhip nodded. “Alright, let’s move on to the dining room, then.” He motioned to the two narrow archways in the wall. Sausage stood up with a sigh and followed fWhip into the dining room. A grand wooden table stood in the middle, four chairs on either side. A painting hung against the wall, and a wooden floor made this room feel a little more agreeable than the checkered floor in the living room. Two doors – one to the right and one right across from the archway they walked through – connected this room to the rest of the house.
“It’s nothing fancy,” fWhip said. “We usually eat dinner at six, lunch and breakfast whenever you’re able to. You can seclude all you want for lunch and breakfast, but we do eat dinner together. Everyone also has their own spot.”
fWhip placed his hands on the back of the chair on the far left, off to the side.
“You're sitting right next to me and across from Katherine. She doesn’t bite, but I have to warn you, she has a mean glare. Don’t take it personally, she glares very easily. Like, if her phone lagged a little, she’d glare at it as if it had personally offended her. Very nice girl, though.”
Sausage nodded. “Okay.” He would have to find that out for himself. For now, this Katherine was just a name to add to the list.
“Right,” fWhip said. He looked to the door on Sausage’s right. “Through this door – you just go back to the hallway, it’s basically useless, but through this door, you’ll find the kitchen.”
fWhip opened the door and walked into the kitchen. A large window let in the natural light, with a nice view of the forests behind the house. fWhip walked right up to a couple of cabinets to the side, a bowl of fruit standing on top of it.
“There’s some generic snacks up here, some stuff from the fridge.” He pointed out the cabinets as he spoke about them. “You’re allowed to just walk in and grab what you want, though we are advised to pass by the fruits first before we reach for a chocolate bar. Not that we do – well, Scott and Gem do, but that’s just them.”
Scott. Gem. Two more names. Katherine, Scott, Gem. fWhip. That meant two more names would need to be added to the list and he’d know all the names of those who lived in the house. He didn’t want to imagine what they looked like yet, lest he be disappointed by what he found. Sausage did not want to have to deal with the disappointment of picturing these people in a way they were not.
fWhip took him to the hallway, their backs almost looking at a wall with three more doors. It almost felt like they were tucked away; almost as if he had no business being here.
“Down this hallway, you can go straight into the garden.” fWhip pointed to the double doors on the left. “Which isn’t really a garden, it’s just a door to the outside. Basically the whole forest is our garden. There’s no curfew, you can stay out as long as you want, but you should tell Emma if you plan on staying out past ten.”
The doors in front of them, fWhip explained, are none of their concerns. They lead to the laundry room, Emma’s private room, and a spare room respectively. So, if Sausage ever needed any help, he knew where he needed to go. fWhip quickly grabbed his attention again and announced they were going upstairs now.
Upstairs. Up those old, creaky stairs. It made it impossible to use them without making any noise. Sausage tried to remember which steps made the least noise, but they were so far between that attempting to sneak down would result in more noise than if you just used them.
A wooden railing separated the walkway from the view of the first floor. Still, a door greeted them as they walked right ahead, and fWhip pointed it out while they still climbed the stairs.
“That,” he said, “leads to the men’s bathroom. That’s ours. So if you even need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, just go right to the abyss until you hit the railing and you make a right. Okay?”
Was that meant to be a quip? A joke? Sausage couldn’t tell.
“I’ll remember that,” he said, looking at the door. He didn’t quite want to enter yet, though. A bathroom – it was so weird to think about how he would use it as if it were his own. And one of these rooms upstairs, that was going to be his room. The suitcase weighed a little heavier now.
“Right next to the bathroom is Scott’s room,” fWhip said and he paused briefly. “Now, you’re not gonna see a lot of Scott. He likes his privacy and for the first couple of days, you’ll probably just see him at dinner. That’s normal behavior, you won’t immediately get to know one another.”
Sausage nodded. That was… good, somehow; to have at least one person he knew who wouldn’t immediately try to befriend him. It did make him curious about the boy, about this introvert who didn’t show his face often. It also brought a semblance of respect with him.
fWhip glanced at Sausage. “Maybe you should also know that you can’t lock doors here.”
Sausage frowned. “Why?”
“It’s more of a practical problem,” fWhip said. “I swear, this house is cursed in this regard. We had keys, we all had keys, but we keep losing them somehow. And Emma, she can’t keep giving us spares or ask the locksmith to make new ones, so… yeah, unless we find the key to your room, you won’t be able to lock it. But nobody else is able to do that, either, so don’t feel singled out.” fWhip glanced at Scott’s door. “Well, nobody but Scott. As far as I know, he hasn’t lost his key yet.”
“Lucky.” So while Scott could close his door through conventional means, Sausage would have to push something heavy in front of his door. Nobody would enter his room unless he explicitly invited them in; he hoped that would be the case.
fWhip nodded. “Sure is. He’s also being homeschooled, so you won’t be seeing him go to school with us. He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Sausage nodded once. It was Scott’s right not to want to talk about it, and he wouldn’t pry. Hopefully, it meant the other inhabitants of this house would respect his own wishes not to talk about his past.
And he looked into the hallway and noticed a window, into another room. It looked out over the walkway and railing to the first floor. How had he not noticed that before? It was a strange thing, and inside it looked like a dusty office space.
“What’s the window for?”
fWhip followed his gaze.
“Oh, that’s the old office. Apparently, the previous homeowner had this office to himself and was really keen on keeping everyone in check. Which meant staying in the office to make sure nobody would sneak downstairs.”
Sausage took a deep breath, thinking about this previous homeowner. fWhip wouldn’t have known him, Sausage realized, and he swallowed his question.
“I think Jimmy’s been using it,” fWhip continued, “though I don’t know what for exactly. He doesn’t really talk about it and we don’t ask.”
“Okay,” Sausage said. “Is there any reason?” It would be good to know if there was something he should keep in mind, so as not to upset this Jimmy.
“Let’s say Jimmy needs his space right now,” fWhip said. The silence that came before was tangible, and he’d hesitated. Sausage didn’t allow his face to betray he knew about the slight hesitation. fWhip wasn’t telling something. Maybe he wanted to let this Jimmy explain it himself. Maybe he didn’t want to share this information yet. Either way, Sausage wasn’t allowed to know yet and it itched his curiosity, not knowing what he may need to know.
“Next to the office is your room,” fWhip continued as if nothing was wrong. “Right next to your room is mine, then Gem’s and the women’s bathroom. And then, next to Scott, you’ve got Jimmy, Lizzie, Katherine, and a general storage room for the stuff you don’t need but don’t want to throw away. Or just to dump something. Nobody really goes into the storage area.”
He looked into the hallway. There was no escaping the crimson wallpaper, but at least there were no tiles on the second floor. Just wooden planks that formed a nice pattern. But those walls - couldn't Emma have at least hung up some tacky paintings or something? Anything to make the walls feel a little less bare and ominous. Maybe he just interpreted it that way. fWhip didn't seem too bothered by the wallpaper. Then again, he'd been here for three years already. He's had more than enough time to get used to this environment that felt so strange to Sausage.
Sausage tried to memorize the sequence fWhip had presented, as a distraction. Scott, Jimmy, Lizzie Katherine – Sausage, fWhip, Gem. He repeated it in his mind – he knew people wouldn’t be mad if he asked later who slept where, as he was still new, but he wanted to know as quickly as possible. In case of an emergency.
“That’s a lot of names,” Sausage said to avoid that suspicion.
“Don’t worry, you’ll know in no time,” fWhip reassured him. “You’re meeting them all at dinner tonight. At six, remember?”
Dinner at six. That left a little under four hours for him to settle into the room he was assigned. Not his room; not yet. He would have to make it his own.
“So, that concludes the tour,” fWhip said. “I’ll be next door so, if you need anything, just call my name and I’ll help you.”
“Will do.”
“Great!” fWhip said, a big grin on his face. He tried to be amicable – Sausage admired that.
He walked to his door, pushed it open, and glanced at Sausage once more.
“Oh, and one more thing. Welcome to the Caesar House.”
He disappeared into his room. Sausage waited until the door closed before he opened the door to his assigned room and walked in. It was a narrow space; it held a bed, freshly made, a closet in the back, a desk, and a chair. The room was quite narrow, almost claustrophobic; if two beds were placed next to each other, there was not even an inch left to move around. The office chair blocked parts of the desk, even placed right up against the desk. At least the wallpaper here was better; a faded dark green, wooden planks that didn’t creak as heavily as the stairs.
Home.
Not yet. Maybe soon.
He placed the suitcase on the bed and opened it. Inside, old and new items lay interspersed. His clothes, the sets they’d given hem, folded neatly and placed next to the charred and slightly scorched remains of what he could salvage from the burning debris. Menial things, small items that held value nonetheless, all reeking of smoke. He reached into the suitcase and pulled out the first thing he touched. In better times, it would’ve looked like a bandana. Now, it was just a piece of fabric. He wasn’t even sure what color it used to have, now almost completely black.
This. This charred piece of fabric was home.
He placed the remnant of his past life on the desk, to remind him of what has been, to lift his spirits when he needed it, to remember what he was doing this for.
Sausage unpacked his suitcase.
Welcome to the Caesar House.