Lazarus Teirney

Lazarus, 2023 (age 19)

## Early Life

Lazarus was born in 2005, but his mother disappeared the night that he was taken home from the hospital. He never met her, and dad refused to tell him her name. It's suspected that she left purposefully, but no one knows for sure. His dad, Mike, was relying heavily on his mother to parent a child. He was hesitant to have a child in the first place, and considered abandoning him to die. His faith was the only thing that stopped him.

As Lazarus grew up, he had to learn lessons on his own. His father was not absent by any means, but took little interest in him if it wasn't to make him work. Lazarus spent a good amount of his childhood learning to fix cars, repair various broken appliances, and build houses. His dad, who he only called "Mike", was a strong believer in tradition. This applied mostly in reference to gender roles and politics. He owned a construction company made up of him and two good friends, and he wanted to raise Lazarus to inherit it. His son would group up to be A Man, and that's all that he cared. As long as he was tough and strong and respectful, any condition or punishment, no matter how painful, was justifiable.

When Lazarus wasn't at work, he was out of the house. He had a handful of friends, most of which were called 'trouble' in the neighborhood, but he trusted him with his life. In his eyes, they were his family. He cooked all of his own meals from the moment that he physically could, but that usually just meant working with what he had- hot pockets, pizza, occasionally a steak in the freezer that he was locked out of the house for eating. He made and stole his own toys, and made any clothes that his father didn't deem masculine enough to buy.

## School

Lazarus was extremely intelligent, but not in a way that he cared to transfer to school. He could've done it if he cared, but he knew he was different from the rest of the kids his age. By the time he got to high school, he had his education. He could read, he could do all of the math that simple construction required, but more importantly he knew what the world was like. None of the kids around him did. They belonged there, filling their heads with useful bullshit. It just wasn't useful to him. So, spring of freshman year he stopped going almost entirely. He would stop in after lunch once every week just to see what was going on, but that was the extent of it, and around march even that faded out. Mike didn't care until the school threatened to press charges and he had to call the cops to make it look like he was doing something and Lazarus was resisting. They didn't care much either. They escorted him to school once before the end of the year.

He ended up failing that year and being told that he'd have to repeat it. He didn't care much. It didn't matter what grade the paper said he dropped out in. During his days he worked for Mike, on the clock. It was almost ironic, he'd spent all his life balancing his pointless responsibility to school with his constant housework and general wellbeing without making a cent. The moment he gave up, Mike payed him for it.

## Teenage Years

That summer he started going to local punk shows. He couldn't believe he'd never done it before. It was exactly what he'd been chasing. *Life* or whatever. His countless night turned into hungover mornings with his new friends, until he stopped coming home unless he had an afternoon job. His 5 closest friends lived together in a two bedroom apartment that Salem and Chem, the oldest, officially rented. He expected a mess but he found it pretty clean, mostly because Argo and Jay slept on floors and Lucas slept on the couch. There was an ironic hierarchy that he noticed, for how many "A"s they scratched out on their walls and leather vests. One of them, Lucas, a tall, mean kid with a neon green mohawk tended to make the decisions. He clearly loved his friends, but he was always just teetering, and a tiny huff of air could push him over. Lazarus learned by late June that Lucas and Argo had been doing coke together since before he knew them. He wanted to be appalled, but he was more curious. About what it did to them, sure, but more about what it would do to him. It's not like this was out of character, he'd been a mildly heavy drinker when he turned 14 and had trouble keeping up with the world around him, and he smoked whenever he could get his hands on weed, he never was good at choosing his words, and so he asked for a bump and then a line and soon he only went home when he needed a job to help pay for more. And beer, of course. And food.

Mike fired him a the Fourth of July barbecue, right before the fireworks started. He told him he could move his shit out of the house to wherever he'd been. Lazarus stood next to him in silence while the fireworks went off, and then silently walked away. He was 15, he came in while Mike was out to get his things, and he never planned to speak to him again. He still loved him. Mike was a friend he'd grown apart with. His role as his father ended when Lazarus started asking to work. There was no hate. He understood what Mike did and why he did it, even if he couldn't make himself agree with it. He was on his own now. It made him sick, but it felt like a fine time for it to happen.

He went out to put out applications for car repair jobs the next day. It was always his best skill, and the one he hated the least. It was really cool knowing how everything worked together, to be the one that could figure out a problem. He officially moved in with his friends as the sixth member of the house and elected to sleep in the bathroom when no one else felt like sharing. They added him off-paper to the split for the rent. Lucas (17), Argo (17), Salem (20), Jay (17), Chem (18), and Lazarus (15) were officially roommates. He got a job with Murphy's Auto Shop in a week. His boss didn't seem to care much that he was young, as long as he was a good employee. He paid him under the table for extra hours. Lazarus barely ate, he slept during the day, he made enough to save at his new job and he was having the time of his life when he didn't have a headache.

Sometime around late July Lucas started making comments about needing a "spark", something to break him out of whatever lull he was in. Lazarus half-agreed. The novelty of the situation was already starting to wear off. He knew Lucas wasn't the best decision maker, but he followed that train of thought with him. They spent the fall of 2019 jumping off cliffs, trying new drugs, blacking out at shows, committing petty misdemeanors, and coming home to a family. He knew that he was walking on thin ice, but he had a stable job and home, he kept up more frequent school visits just to keep the cops off his back. A day after his 16th birthday, Lazarus went to his dad's house tp have him sign off on Lazarus dropping out of school and being emancipated. They didn't talk much, but he signed.

He really felt like were good, all the way up until Lucas, Argo, and him were gonna rob a gas station and Lucas had a gun. Lucas's voice saying "Go turn off the cameras, and don't even think about calling the cops" was the last thing that Lazarus heard before the gunshots, and he immediately ran. Apparently the cashier had a gun, too. When he got outside, there was a boy on the bench, staring from the opposite side of the road. He knew the kid could see his face, and he hoped that he looked like a bystander running from gunshots, until he detachedly saw a bullet go right past his shoulder and into the kid's. He didn't know what to do, and Lucas had his arm, so he followed him. They ran for blocks before they were sure they'd lost the cashier and they stopped to breathe in an alley, where Lazarus immediately started to panic and scream. He knew he had to leave, so he did. He ran from them, and he hid behind their house until they left for the night so he could go in to get his things.

He spent that night in an abandoned gas station a block from their house. In the morning he got up to go to work and asked his boss to leave his shit in the office. He didn't ask questions. He left everything but two jackets and his wallet there for the night, and while he was walking home,

xhe realized that he was, for once, entirely alone. He had nowhere to go where his pride and morals could follow.xHe stopped on the way back to the gas station to spend all of his savings on a dog and all that went with it. He named it Sheep.

## Personality

**Flaws:**

Wants to "feel alive". Basically just an adrenaline junkie. Too trusting and loyal, becomes blind to flaws. Even once he breaks away from people, he keeps pieces of them with him by thinking like them and holds onto that even if it's not the smartest. If he really loves and cares about someone, he can understand anything that they do, even if it hurts him. He can make himself think through their thoughts and realize that he's almost always had very similar ones. Has trouble separating the thought process from the outcome and actions they take. He has nearly the opposite problem with strangers. He views people as seperate and unworthy of thought until they cross a line and become divinely entangled with his life. They can easily cross back. Wildly impulsive, has trouble controlling his mouth. He has a very good idea of what the good decisions are but a lot of the time when the decision is immediate he just kinda does the other thing.

**Strengths/neutral traits:**

Very surprisingly introspective. He knows his limits and his values, his problem is that ignoring limits is easy when you can think through most situations front to back to find a sensible justification, and values can be stretched to fit a lot more than you'd think. Determined/driven. If he wants something, he'll find a way to have it, and he doesn't mind going through hell to get it. Resilient and resourceful. Very creative in his resourcefulness, sorta denies that that's one of his strengths because his dad got to him. Optimistic. He prefers to solve problems instead of stew in them, and so he's very practiced at solving problems. Loving!! While his attachment can bite him, he is also a creature of love!! He loves people and experiences and connection and being alive and that's why he has so much energy to fight for it!!! If he has even a small glimpse of something's life that he can connect to he wants nothing but the best for it and will put in effort to make that happen!