There is nothing really special about Eric Lorens. He was infact quite an average person. Average height. Average build. Average looks. The only real thing he had going for him, was the fact that he could solve just about any puzzle you threw at him. Hell, if you give him enough time, he would probably figure out the answer for schrodinger's cat. It was because of his crazy level of intelligence that every prestigious collage in the country offered him scholarships so he would attend their collages. It was probably theonly reason why Eric would go to collage in the first place.
Eric was in his room, packing away the last of his things. Not that he had much to begin with. Even though he finished school four years earlier, Eric didn't really do much with his time. He spent most of his days fixing up computers and machines for businesses and factories as a form of a part time job. Because of his high levels of intelligence, he didn't make many friends throughout his time in school, and the friends he did make were all around the world now, meaning that Eric didn't keep in touch. After packing away the last of his clothes, Eric made his way downstairs and into the living room. He hugged his mom and dad and waved them goodbye after he packed his bags into his car and made his way to his new apartment which was a two and a half hour journey away. Throughout his car ride, Eric didn't do much except focus on the road and stop whenever he needed to. When he got to his new apartment complex, Eric was a bit surprised at how it looked. He was expecting more of an actual apartment complex, but instead he landed at a cheap looking motel that you would see some kind of criminal hide out in if it was a TV show. Eric checked his phone to see if he had the right address, and sure enough, he did.
Eric pulled into the near empty parking lot and switched off the ignition, locked his car and made his way over to the reception of the apartment. The reception was even more lack luster and Eric expectations of his room were slowly starting to fall away. Eric was greeted by a fat, greasy looking man, who looked like he hadn't seen a shower in the better part of two weeks. Or a razor for even longer. He sat behind a wooden reception desk that had seen better days. It had scratches on the surface and had chips taken out of it. The grubby-looking man was reading an old newspaper and only noticed Eric after he had reached the reception desk and rang the bell. The receptionist lowered his paper and looked at Eric
"What is it?" He grunted. "What do you want kid?"
"I'm here to see about an apartment." Eric said "My name's Eric Lorens."
The receptionist looked Eric up and down and grunted again. He put down his paper and slowly raised out of his chair and turned around to a rack of keys behind him and plucked one of the keys off the rack with a meaty hand and turned back around to Eric.
"Room 86," He said. "It's the upstairs near the corner. And don't forget that I'm your landord and you have to pay me rent by the end of the month. No exceptions."
He left the key on the desk and sat back down and went back to reading his paper. Eric grabbed the key and turned to leave the recpetion. It was starting to get dark. He made his way over to his car and opened the trunk and grabbed his bags. Eric maade his way up stairs and started looking for room number 86. After looking around for a few minutes, he found his apartment and stood at the door and looked around. He didn't see much except for a girl leaning against the metal railing, puffing away on a cigerette. Eric looked back at his door and slid the key into the door and opened it. To his surprise, the apartment was a lot cleaner than he expect. Right as you came into the apartment, there was a kitchen. Past that, there was a small living room that had a two seater sofa, a coffee table, and a small TV. The the left of the living room, were two doors, one was the bathroom, the other was the bedroom. Eric walked into the bedroom and left his bags on the bed before walking back out to lock the apartment door.
After locking his door, Eric went into the living room. He sat down on the sofa and pulled out his phone. He sent a message to his mom to let him know that he got to his apartment okay and started scrolling through his Facebook newsfeed. He saw all the normal things, status updates, updated profile pictures, irrelevent pages being suggested. One thing did catch his eye though. It was a news article that started talking about a string of assaults and battery that were happening all over the town. Apparently, they were being caused by the same person and that the police couldn't identify who it is. Eric continued to read into the cases of the assaults and started to slowly piece everything together, but the lack of evidence as to who the culprit was, was the only thing that stumped him. Eric inevitably gave up and went to take a shower.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
After his shower, Eric got dressed and went to the nearby convenience store to go and pick up a number of different things. He figured he wouldn't need to get much except for food. Although he realised that he would need to get a job soon if he was to survive on his own. Eric decided not to worry about it for now,and instead focused on settling into his new home, and a new routine. Eric finished with his late evening shopping and walked back to his apartment. On his way home, he spotted someone across the road. As far as he could see, they were talking to someone, but as Eric continued to walk on, the talking soon rose into shouting. Eric stopped and shouted over across the road the the arguing duo, but neither of them heard him. The next thing Eric knew, one of them raised their arm and swung at the other person whp stumbled backwards. Eric dropped his bags and ran across the road and started to shout again. The person who threw the punch turned to Eric and stared him down, but Eric continued to run and once he reached the footpath, he barrelled into the attacker. The two of them started to roll on the ground, but Eric was outmatched in terms of strenght and was pinned to the footpath by the man he had tackled. He started to lay into Eric, and the next thing the weight that was pinning him to the ground was shifting sideways and falling off of him. Eric gasped for breath and looked up. To his surprise, it was the girl from earlier, and now she was shaking her hand. Eric got back on his feet and looked at the man who was lying flat on the ground.
"Are you stupid or something?" The girl asked. "Cause that was a pretty fucking stupid thing to do."
"You're that girl from earlier," Eric said. "Why did he hit you?"
"That's none of your business." She said. "But, thanks."
"No problem. My name's Eric by the way. Eric Lorens."
"Elizabeth Conwell. You just moved into the apartments didn't you?" Elizabeth asked. "Do you go to any of the collages around here?"
"Yeah,I go to the the institute of Technology." Eric said. "That's a pretty strange question to ask, isn't it?"
Elizabeth looked away and stared down at the guy lying on the floor.
"Anyways, thanks again. I'll see you around."
Elizabeth walked off towards the direction of the apartments. Eric went back over across the road to pick up his groceries and once he picked them up, he went home. Once he got home, he put away the food into the fridge and went to the bathroom to look at his face. He didn't realise it before because of the adreneline pumping through him, but the pain was starting to creep into his jaw from where Elizabeth's attacker had hit him. While he was staring at his reflection, Eric started to poke around the bruising that was going across his cheek. If he knew he was going to get involved in a fight tonight, he would have picked up some ice. After he was finished with his face, Eric went into his room slid his bags onto the ground and fell into his bed. He was out like a light almost immediately.