Andrew Cromwell scoffed as his menacing opaque eyes jittered up and down, scanning the headlines of the newspaper. There seemed to be no shortage of mindboggling stories in the local news. The timeline almost seemed warped at times; an actor was president, there was a pervasive looming threat of war with the Soviet Union, crime rates were through the roof, the drug epidemic was at its zenith, the kids were wearing their hair like lion's manes, and it felt like they were drifting farther and farther away from the Good Book. Sometimes, it seemed like the end of the world as they knew it -- but Andrew Cromwell felt fine. Comfortable in his proverbial ivory tower of privilege and wealth, he was safe to look down on the rest of the world like ants, merely scoffing with perfunctory concern about the smorgasbord of murders in the area with the same lingering of his eyes that he did the movie theater ticket sales for Ghostbusters. Mr. Cromwell was dressed to nines like a high class mogul might be expected to at his lacquer-accented maple desk; the walls were lined with bookshelves, awards, commendations, and trophies. It was almost a show room more than an office. It was hard to tell whether he was disgruntled or intrigued by what he saw in the newspaper, but a stiff grunt of annoyance escaped him when a gentle knock was heard at the other end of the pinewood door.<br/><br/>"What?! I'm busy," Mr. Cromwell barked at whoever it was, slamming the newspaper down on his desk with authority.<br/><br/>The door was cracked open and the aggrieved response prompted the door to timidly open. Andrew Cromwell immediately recognized the fit, strapping young man walking into his office as his son, but that knowledge didn't make him any less hostile. In fact, it may have made him even more ornery. With his fist gripped tightly on the table and a snarl practically marred on his face, Mr. Cromwell slammed his back against his chair in indignance.<br/><br/>"What do you want, boy?" Andrew sneered. "Have I not already deposited your allowance for the week into your bank account?"<br/><br/>The two men had completely oppositional visages. The elder Cromwell was large and barrel-chested, but packing on a good deal of weight around his midriff. He had a thick mustache tinged with white hairs that curled over his pencil-thin lips and a bulb for a nose that had the tell-tale signs of rhinophyma. The way he lumbered with a large, imposing form gave weight to his obscene wealth and he carried himself like a man who felt invincible. And those eyes.... they looked like something was wrong with them, but as best as Sebastian could tell, his father had 20/20 vision. By contrast, Sebastian Cromwell had a somewhat slender physique with broad shoulders and the chiseled muscles of an athlete that spent an obsessive amount of time training. His hair was a bright blond and contrasted his sun-kissed fair complexion with a pair of tender-hearted practically royal blue eyes. The young heart throb could best be described as a Boy Next Door with all of the privilege and suaveness one might expect to a young heir to obscene fortune. But the soft expression on his face belied the crotchetiness of his father as he shook his head as if mildly irked that his father even suggested that that was why he was here.<br/><br/>"Uh, no," Sebastian began, trying to gather his speaking voice, which is something he never had a hard time doing outside of interacting with this one individual. "I finished up my training, homework, and studying. Just wanted to let you know that I was going out for a little while."<br/><br/>"For Christ's sake, boy!" Andrew shouted, throwing a book across the room in Sebastian's general direction, but not aimed well enough to actually hit him. "How old are you now?! This is your damn mother's fault for raising you to be a timid little sissy who can't piss in a pot without announcing it to the world. Do you want an award for that too? You kids today think your every little fart, piss, and pubic hair is a cause for celebration -- and every good God damn inconvenience is a federal emergency. Your mother coddled the shit out of you and now I gotta put up with this needy shit?"<br/><br/>"Can we... not talk about mom?" Sebastian spoke up, the bass in his voice rising as if not willing to accept his father's verbal abuse on this particular issue.<br/><br/>"Oh, you gonna cry about it now? Fucking Christ, you kids. Fine, where are you going anyway? I hope you're not still fucking that girl who lived in the trailer park. Have some good God damn respect for yourself, boy," Andrew ranted, seemingly able to find all of the things that annoyed Sebastian the most and jab him with them.<br/><br/>"Brooke's family lost their house when you closed down the plant, and besides, she moved 4 months ago after her father couldn't get insurance to treat his cancer," Sebastian riposted in a tone that sounded matter-of-fact, but was meant to underscore how much of a jackass his dad was. "Anyway, I'm going to a funeral for one of the students at my school who died in that crazy diner frenzy."<br/><br/>"Oh, so now it's my fault that that ne'er-do-well father of her's lost his job? That's the problem with this country today. No one takes responsibility for anything anymore; it's all just me, me, me. If he'd been any kind of real man, he'd have pulled himself up by his bootstraps," Andrew growled. "I was just reading about that case though. Doesn't make any damn sense. No leads on it either. This whole country is going to Hell in a hand basket. It's all those damn freaks and weirdos with the colorful hair and ripped clothes and weird piercings. And all those fucking colors! You'd think this entire generation spent the first half of their lives color-blind. Then you got all of those unsavory sorts moving in, ruining the whole damn neighborhood."<br/><br/>Sebastian was growing even more uncomfortable, if that was possible, since he knew that the 'unsavory sorts' that his father was talking about were people of color.  He wasn't even going to explain that the girl whose funeral he was going to was one of the 'freaks' he just described. He'd actually never spoken to her, but he felt that it was the right thing to do to go to a classmate's funeral. As far as he knew, he was one of the only people from the school going, which was all the more depressing to him.<br/><br/>"Alright, get out of here," Andrew chimed in after a moment of silence, where Sebastian was thinking to himself. "You've wasted enough of my time."<br/><br/>"Love you too, pop," Sebastian said sardonically as he walked out of the room.<br/><br/>Shaking his head, Andrew opened the drawer to his desk and fished around for his quaaludes as his eyes glanced back at the article in the newspaper about the diner incident. Thinking for a moment, he rubbed his chin before reaching for his telephone.