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*work in progress. no current title* chapter 4 |
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~My apartment is on the second floor of a small housing complex in southwest Houston. It's a walled community, if you can call chain link fences walls. That means that if anybody wants to drive to my apartment, they'll need the passcode for the gate. With my particular lifestyle, however, it was rare that one of my visitors decided to drive. ~Apartment number 1010. It was a shabby one room shithole with wafer-thin walls and soggy carpet. Don't ask me how the carpet gets soggy, because I don't know. I asked the super to check on it once and the overweight, crack-revealing plumber who came mentioned something about a septic leakage. ~Barf. ~As you come in, there's a filthy little kitchenette on the left. It's not that I don't clean it, it's filthy because I can't clean it. Rust on every possible surface and discoloration on all the rest. My bedroom is just beyond the kitchenette area, which means that yes, I can see the stove from my bed. I don't have a closet because it's too expensive. The restroom is off to the right side of the room. My clothes stay in the brown suitcase I'd used to move in last year. Since then, business had dried up, and the roaches had moved in. ~I've put up roach motels when I can afford them, but it's just not as effective as I'd hoped. The damned pests always found somewhere to crawl through. Last week my neighbor called an ambulance because one of the buggers crawled down his wife's ear canal and wouldn't come out. ~Usually, I was adverse to carrying or owning weapons, but I still owned a small, and I do mean small, collection of handguns. Firearms are a necessity in this neighborhood if you even want to answer your door. My arsenal was a grand total of two weapons, both legal and licensed for concealed carry. ~The first, and my favorite, was a polished black steel P and R Medusa model number 47 that could load three different types of ammo. The second was a .38 snubnose. I like revolvers. Sue me. ~I kept both guns and ammo in a lockbox under my bed. The bed itself was a box mattress and a sheet, both worn to threads. The phone was somewhere nearby, usually buried under a pile of detritus and rat s**t. ~I reached down through the garbage and yanked on the phone's cord until I could see the 'no new messages' indicator. Looks like I'd have to put up with Celeste. ~So I pulled off my shirt and chucked my pants into the dirty laundry pile. I pulled a fresh pair of Dickie's pants and a white t-shirt out to go with my black soft sole shoes. I didn't really have time for a proper cleaning, so I rinsed off in my soapscum stained shower in ice cold water. ~The heater never worked, but neither did ambient air temperature. The water was inevitably ice cold regardless of which pipe it originated from. ~I stepped out, dripping on the cracked tiles, greening with age. I couldn't afford a full size towel, so my cotton hand towel always got used for everything. I dried myself as best I could and left the bathroom to air out through the countless cracks and holes in the plaster. ~I'd put in countless work orders to have the place fixed up, but the super hadn't sent anyone but the plumber. So I stood there, still moist, waiting for the heated air to dry me as best it could. ~Muffled voices came from three doors down while the prostitute next door negotiated with her most recent "client". She could do so much better for herself if she'd only try. But then, how many people try to be anything nowadays? ~After I decided I was dry enough, I pulled on some clean boxers and dressed. Since I was only snooping, I left the revolvers. No use for them, so why should I take them? Besides, I didn't think that anybody in Sugarland was going to attack me today. People don't really start attacking until I start trying to pick the lock on the closet door. ~Snooping this early in the game meant asking questions. Questions didn't involve sneaking, or darkness, or silence, or the moon. So I left my flashlight too. Okay, not so much flashlight as penlight. That was okay though, because I didn't have any batteries for it. The notebook I used was actually a small binder, originally part of a day planner I received as a gift, and a small spiral notebook. I already had the pen from my office, so I was set to go. ~I took one last sweeping look to see if I'd forgotten anything, decided I hadn't, walked out, and locked the door behind me.
LifesEndlessSorrow · Fri Oct 06, 2006 @ 09:15pm · 0 Comments |
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