An Apartment to Die For

Triggers: Violence, language, brief sexual violence.

An Apartment to Die For

   “A word after a word after a word is power.”

                                                             -Margaret Atwood-

                                                       Prologue

  There are three rules. Do not ever piss off a writer. Never upset or underestimate someone who is good with words, and never, under any circumstances can you get the fuck in my way. Now, shall we begin?

Part 1

Lard-Ass and the Real Prize Winner

    There was a man that I called Lard-Ass, but trust me, that was not the worst nickname he received. He told me one evening when I was in a frenzy,

  “I hate Crazy Betsy. She just called me fat.”

  When he said the name, “Crazy Betsy,” the nickname stuck. I have met crazy people in my day, but Crazy Betsy was a real prize-winning fuck-up. I did not want to think about my next-door neighbor (Crazy Betsy) at 9pm- which was my bedtime. I was sitting outside of my apartment enjoying a cigarette when Lard-Ass brought his drama over and put it into my mind. So, I told him,

“In the morning after a good night’s sleep, your testosterone levels are high. That means that when you approach me in the evenings with things that stress me out- I must sit on my hands quite heavily to keep from knocking the shit out of you because my testosterone levels are low. You can pout, you can whine to me, but after 6pm, just leave me alone.”

  Lard-Ass shook his head and waddled back to his apartment.

Part 2

A History of Death

The owners painted all the walls and laid new flooring. The floors were my favorite feature of the apartment until the movers scratched the hell out of them when they delivered my antique furniture. It was too late now. No turning back. I had signed a twelve-month lease.

                                                           ---

Marcus was dead in his chair in the living room of the apartment that now belongs to me when Crazy Betsy found him with a key he had made for her. She was the love of his life- only God knows why. She would have made a great third wife for him if she did not have cancer. Yes, Crazy Betsy had cancer. Cancer of the blood. She refused treatment. Soon, she would hallucinate and die.

                                                                      ---

All I wanted when I moved into this apartment was peace, and to be on everyone’s good side. I even hung a sign that read, “PEACE,” on my front door hoping it would work. It did not.

Part 3

Evil, Evil, Wicked, and Evil

  The day had just started, and I already wanted to get drunk. I was smoking, and I heard Crazy Betsy pass gas, and I almost threw up thinking about her asshole. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

                                                                       ---

          I spoke to her Aunt Helen once- a lady I barely knew. It was snowing heavy outside when we both checked the mail. She grabbed ahold of my jacket sleeve.

           “She’s evil! Evil! Wicked, and evil! I don’t want to go back there.” Apparently, she was snowed in at Crazy Betsy’s apartment. I did not know what to do. The lady had tears in her eyes, but that could also have been due to the weather.

                                                                       ---

At first, Crazy Betsy and I, hit it off, but that friendship declined quickly when the bitch called the police on me for drinking a beer on my front porch. I was even written up by my landlord for public use of alcohol- a rule not mentioned in the lease.

Part 4

Shit on James and His Giant Feet

  James was the slowest walker I had ever seen. He had gout. His feet were so big that he could not find shoes that fit him, so he always walked around barefoot. I saw him check the mail one day, and I offered him my grandfather’s cane that I stole even though I did not need it.

  “To hell with canes! To hell with you!” he snapped.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  He had forgotten his cane, and he could barely remember where his own mailbox was. He was on the decline.

                                                                       ---

  “Shit on you, James! You filthy buzzard!” said Crazy Betsy angrily as she wrote James’s name on a piece of toilet paper. She then wiped her ass with it. Then she disposed of it with one quick flush. The next square was meant for me. She wrote my name down and pressed so hard on the toilet paper that she broke through it and got ink on the counter. The fat bitch hated me. She hated everyone, so we learned to hate her, too.

                                                                       ---

  It was September, and Crazy Betsy had already called the police on me twelve times since March just desperate to get me arrested. I was cleared every time. Crazy Betsy was a bad bitch. A very bad bitch. Evil. Wicked. A stupid, fucking cunt. She should be institutionalized never to return. Never did she have any proof against me. Harassment is alarming behavior, and what she was doing to me was alarming.

Part 5

Nightmares Must Come from Satan

I have been having nightmares. Nightmares of me having to jump from an airplane without a parachute. Me falling to my death off cliffs, off damaged balconies, and nightmares of me throwing myself out of speeding cars on the freeway as if driven by demons that wanted to treat me as their sex slave in the depths of hell.

                                                           ---

There were twelve apartments containing tenants that had sob stories. I was once told by a neighbor that people came here to die. She was right. We have lost four people in eight months.

                                                                       ---

Alcohol is in my system. Alcohol is on my breath every minute of every day. It lingers and strengthens me as I drink my cares away.

My disorders cause me problems, and anger is just one. So, piss me off today, and I will ruin you for fun.

                                                                      ---

In her downtime, Crazy Betsy would perform Voodoo in her apartment alone. She was always in her apartment alone. She mixed concoctions and put them in freezer bags that had labels with our names written on them in black Sharpie ink. Then she would have a shit with pen and toilet paper sheets in hand.

Part 6

The Bashing

          I was drunk and joking one night with Lard-Ass.

“Bash her windows. Prove all you can. You can’t catch me. I’m the sneakiest man.” I laughed, but Lard-Ass did not find it funny. He told Crazy Betsy I was going to destroy her precious, ugly vehicle, and that I would leave no proof behind that it was me.

Part 7

I’ll Have a Diet Coke, And Some Menthol Cigarettes with Blood on Top, Please.

“You are out of line!” Said Crazy Betsy when I flipped her off one morning. So, I, with my bludgeon, taught her what out of line looked like. My bludgeon is a stick. A thick, hard stick that is meant to draw some blood with every wounding hit. Bash after bash, and the bitch went down. Bash after bash, she hit the ground. Then bash after bash, I had received my reward for relieving all the people from the whore next door. Then I woke up to the realization that I had had another bad dream, and I wept knowing Crazy Betsy was still living next door to me.

                                                           ---

Crazy Betsy was not neat. She was not clean, and her breath smelled like sausages. She wore her hair up because she did not wash it. She always wore the same clothes for a week, and I never saw her drink anything but Diet Coke. Not even one sip of water. I could swear that the soda was going to kill her before the cancer. She smoked two packs a day of menthol cigarettes, and she would sit on her fat ass and scream and threaten people as they walked by her front porch with their doggies.

“I hope that little fucker gets hit by a car.” The toothless bitch would say. “Hey, you wanna fight? You wanna fight me? Well, come get some, motherfuckers! Bring it on, pussies!” She would scream at pedestrians, especially her neighbors. “Depleted faggot, non-achiever, worthless conceiver…” were strange things she would say to me. “Alcoholic dick. Major prick. An abomination of God. You make me sick!” became the norm after several weeks. What did I do, God? I wondered. I tried to befriend her time after time to no avail. Now I just wish she would go straight to hell.

Part 8

Simply “Ageless.” Simply “Divine.”

  “Actually, I’m almost 37.” I said to one of my neighbors, Sweet Sasha, the day we met. Her jaw dropped. She told me I did not look it. That I had an ageless face, divine spirit, and personality. My “ageless” face blushed. I knew we would become close friends, and she did, too.

  “I get disabled parking spaces, but I have no vehicle to park.” I said.

  “Same.” Said Sweet Sasha as her sweet dog licked soy sauce off my fingers as we ate our Asian dinners.

  “You have very nice, black dress shoes!” She told her neighbors that, too, as she bragged about what a sweet, young neighbor they now had. But now, months later, Sweet Sasha wanted me to stay. I wanted to stay, too, but the bad bitch next door was driving me so crazy that I wanted to escape her cruelty.

Part 9

Two More Years of Torture

  Crazy Betsy made my living situation the worst experience of my life. It was not long after I moved in that I missed living at my parent’s home, so I investigated moving back to my hometown. The best apartment for me had a two-year waiting list. I quickly became more depressed.

                                                                       ---

  Crazy Betsy wasted her life away playing online gambling games for hours that did not pay her shit. All night long, she would do this, and not one friend had visited her since I had moved in last November.

Part 10

The Followed One

  Once, a young woman approached me at church. She said that I had five demons on my tail, and her disabled parents joined us, and confirmed that she had the gift of seeing and believing. She had seen the demons the week before, so the family drove for over an hour in hopes that I, the followed one, would be there for the church service. Hearing all this information made me freak the fuck out. This was the day I realized I had demons wanting and hoping to get me. I moved out. I had to save my parents from the demons.

Part 11

The Decision of Hell

  “Bludgeon! Bludgeon her, her car, and everything in it!” Urged the demon who showed up on my left shoulder during REM sleep one night. “Go forth and make history! Kill! Kill! Kill!” And when the angel appeared on my right shoulder, I shut her out completely. It was time for Crazy Betsy to go down.

  As the angel flew away, she screamed, “You shall be blessed with glorious gifts if…” and I said, “Oh, shut up!” The demon had a better way- a violent way- and I liked it.

Part 12

Bliss and Ecstasy

  There were moments of bliss when Crazy Betsy would escape to her rich parent’s house, and we tenants would receive an escape from Crazy Betsy. We would melt outside in the summer watching fireworks at night that were always being shot off illegally, or was that the ecstasy? Anyway, we loved it as much as we loved Crazy Betsy’s absence.

Part 13

My Poor Tongue

  So, sure, Crazy Betsy had cancer. Cancer of the blood. At first, I felt sorry for her. Then I got to know her, and those sorry feelings went away quite quickly. We prayed that she would never come back.

                                                                       ---

  One day, I told Sweet Sasha, “I am always so happy when I come outside, and it is beautiful weather, and Crazy Betsy’s car is not here. It is going to be a glorious day!” Then Crazy Betsy’s car pulled up, and I said the word, “Fuck.”

                                                                       ---

  Living next to Crazy Betsy was more stressful than my two-month stay at the county jail where I was sexually assaulted by inmates, and harassed for days and days, because I am sexy.

                                                                      ---

  When I told Crazy Betsy one day to her face, “Nobody likes you here, bitch! Find a different place to die!” I felt bad for saying it for the entire weekend that followed, but I got over it quite quickly. I almost told her, “Just die already,” but I bit my tongue instead. My tongue still hurts.

Part 14

Only Crazy People Stare at You

           “I worry about you.” My mother once said. “It can’t be easy living next to that wretched woman.” She was right. It was not. Crazy Betsy liked to know everything about everyone in the apartment complex, and she had the gift of the stare. She would stare down every friend or family member that would come to rescue me from this place for a little while. They stopped coming to get me altogether when she started accosting them, cursing at them, and threatening them as they sat in their vehicles confused as fuck. So, I soon became lonely. Oh, so lonely.

                                                                       ---

Sweet Sasha gave me a sweet gift. It was a glass, solar-powered lantern that lit up at night. Well, Crazy Betsy smashed it all to pieces right on my front porch. I heard her do it as she screamed, “Take that you faggot! Burn in hell!” Then she stupidly stepped barefoot onto the broken glass. She was not even smart enough to wear shoes. Her left foot got it the worst as it was badly sliced up with thin slivers of glass that would take hours to remove. She screamed and cried, yet no one came to help her- especially not me- who was watching the whole ordeal through a peephole. She then sneezed a horrible sneeze causing her ugly, fat ass to hit the ground directly in a pile of Sweet Sasha’s dog’s shit.

As the acorns fell upon her from the old White Oak tree, she had fallen, too, but not as gracefully. Then old Lard-Ass walked up and saw Crazy Betsy twitching, crying, and miserable. He paused, and turned around, and quickly waddled away.

There was blood everywhere. It squirted from her ankles and dried up in her hair. No one gave a shit- especially not I. No one cared about her even if she were to die.

Bleeding and covered in dog shit, Crazy Betsy tried to ring my doorbell for help- a doorbell that had not worked for months. I continued to watch, but when she cop-knocked on my door- I decided to pour myself a nice glass of Merlot. It was delicious.

                                                           ---

Lying on my porch in the fetal position with an increasing pool of blood and her own feces from her IBS disorder, she cried out, “What did I do to deserve this, Lord?!” Then from Heaven, God heard her. I lit pumpkin spice candles to drown out the shit smell that seeped through the cracks in my doors and windows. They smelled nice.

Part 15

A Soul’s Departure

          It was Crazy Betsy’s time to go, and the angel appeared. She whispered to Crazy Betsy to hold on. That her ride to hell would soon be there. Crazy Betsy cried out, “Did I not make it into Heaven?!” The angel flew off without a response, and Crazy Betsy cried for the last time on Earth. Then the demon arrived and said not a word. She would soon find her comeuppance, and she would get exactly what she deserved.

                                                                       ---

  After Crazy Betsy’s soul left her body, I cut her up into pieces and disposed of them in the Tuesday morning trash. What a mess I will have to clean up. As I struggled to take the heavy dumpster to the curb, Sweet Sasha stopped me.

  “What is in there? A dead body?” She did not even notice the mess on my front porch. No one did. No one cared. My response was, “Do not mind me. I am just taking out the trash.”

Epilogue

What the Fuck Did I Just Read?

Ladies, and gentleman from around the globe, do not fret. I am still here, and I am as free as an innocent child taken straight out of the bath.

All had been discovered on a chilly, Tuesday morning. Crazy Betsy’s parts were seen by the trash collector falling out of my dumpster into his garbage truck. He then noticed the bloodstains that I could not remove from my front porch. I was quickly arrested.

A long story short, I had a bad attorney. I was so close to spending my life in solitary, but who would guess that the person who would come to my defense in court would be no one other than the one and only, Lard-Ass.

“He wasn’t home!” He told the jury. “This is all madness! Sheer, and complete madness!”

What he said was music to my ears. I took a good, deep breath, and a few moments later, the judge acquitted me. All my neighborhood friends cheered in the courtroom. Even Sweet Sasha’s dog did a victory dance while howling joyfully.

---

Oh, what a journey. Oh, what a life. I do not know what is next for me, but I know I’m going to take the next step, and I will keep taking whatever steps I must take in order to get my life in order, my conditions under control, and to forgive Crazy Betsy for dying on my front porch. That one will take some time. Yes, it will take some time.