Writings » Apartment 4B

Apartment 4B

By Buttermilk Baby at 2007-10-27 | Ridiculous!, Comedy | Printable version

« Apartment 4A - Apartment 4C »

            The key never fit quite right, so Miggy had to insert it, tilt it, and jiggle it through the whole turn.  It was a process, but over the last seven years he'd gotten used to it.  Ever since his apartment was burglarized he'd taken home security deathly serious.  Five locks in all, climbing the side of the door like a brass and copper bolted ladder.

Oddly enough the only thing stolen that fateful night was Miggy's vintage collection of Swank magazine, but the bandit had hit 'em where it hurt.  He always suspected the Super Attendant of the theft, especially thinking back to how he was eyeballing the box they were housed in during one of his many visits to remind Mig the rent was due.  Surprisingly he withdrew his claim with a smile, remembering the rent was already paid, while Miggy knew damn well it wasn't.  But a month free was a month free, and he wasn't going to look this gift horse in the mouth.  Little did he know it was going to cost him seventeen years in naked sluts, less he would have forked the cash over.  He particularly missed an issue from 1992, but that's a story for another time.

He finally unfastened the last padlock and pushed open the door.  The vibrant cherry radiance that washed the room cut across his aging face as he entered.  The red light cast from the Harvest Moon Restaurant across the alley was fought by equally deep shadows throughout the apartment; so vengefully in fact, you'd see in shades of green for a half hour after you left.  He dropped his keys in the dish by the door and slammed the bag of frozen meat on the counter.  "It is time to party gentlemen, time to par-tay..." he announced aloud for no one but himself to hear.

He flicked on the bathroom light which hummed to life in a crackle and strobe of faded lime dyed light.  The bulb was old, years past expiration as could be seen by the four inch burns on either side of its base.  That's not to mention the fixture itself, so decrepit the ballast was pumping enough PCB's into his reproductive organs to put down a rhino.  He scrubbed his mitts in a sink that had seen better days, lined with a two-inch thick orange stain that ran the circumference of the ceramic hollow.  He flipped the light off and made his way back to the kitchen.

"Almost forgot, have to set the mood," he smirked out as he raised an eyebrow and kicked of his mud-caked shoes.  He took two fast steps and slid on his tattered socks across the linoleum and up to the stereo.  He called it a stereo, but was in fact an old Walkman he'd found in the trash behind Harvest Moon.  He'd plugged it into a pair of speakers that stood perched atop his refrigerator, but only the left one worked.  He slammed the play button on side B of the only cassette he owned, Elton John's "Sleeping with the Past."  It was currently on the third track, "I never knew her name," and Miggy concurred with a "Damn right Elton, never knew that bitch's nombre!"

Miggy danced back into the kitchen, lighting the stove and putting his only pan atop the burner.  He dropped an entire stick of butter in the skillet and scampered back into the living room while it melted.  He flittered around the room like an excited kid on the first day of summer vacation, lighting candle after scented candle.  Steak night was a special night for Miggy Barton; and the soothing vocals of Lord Choc Ice, or Lady Choc Ice as he would later be known, got his heart pumping.

He poured half the cylinder of Morton's onto a plate, followed by a bottle of paprika, cumin, oregano and just a pinch of cinnamon.  He used to have one hell of a time trying to get this mixed pile back into their respective containers.  That was until he invented a rather ingenious straining system involving consecutively larger strainers.  He pressed the meat into the small dune, then flipped it to coat the other side, and threw it into the pan.  It was only a matter of time now.  "Ah, what the hell," he thought as he reached back to his spices.  He cupped his hands and scooped a substantial fraction into his palms, he eased it back careful not to spill a granule, and dumped it on top of the already over seasoned cut of meat.

Across the bleeding foam and plastic were about eight stickers that read, "Prime."  But this steak was at best Utility Grade.  Miggy had gotten it from Thrift-Rite, where some Ass slapped on a day-glow orange label and marked it up eleven dollars.  At least that way everybody won; Miggy Barton gets a Prime steak, and the Ass gets eleven dollars.  The meat was thick, the largest, juiciest bloodbath he could find in frozen foods.  It was a straight shot of almost four hundred and fifty grams of protein, sure to be as much fun coming out as it was going in.

Miggy flipped the slab in what would amount to a whirlwind of steam and seasoning.  He choked for a bit, but once he got his bearings he grinned and breathed in that thick smoky fragrance.

 

He'd finished the steak, along with two bottles of Pepto, and a glass of white wine.  Side B of the Elton John cassette had come and gone, the candles were almost burnt out, and Miggy sat with his legs crossed by the window reading a copy of Teen People.  Losing his Swank hoard was arguably the best and worst thing that had ever happened to him.  Although he was no longer ogling bare-ass bleached blondes, his knowledge of Hilary Duff's likes and dislikes had become quite vast.  A small, fifty-something, reasonably assimilated Asian man sitting feverishly in a windowsill reading Teen People by a red neon light might paint some disturbing pictures in the heads of parental guardians nationwide.  Not that they'd be at all true of Miggy Barton, but still they'd be painted, and fast.

He was too simple of a guy to realize what he was doing would be considered, "creepy," by the outside world.  He didn't care for it much anyway, rarely associating with anyone but a few coworkers, his boss, and his neighbor in the next apartment over.  His life was simple.  He woke up, went to work, ate, slept, and started it all over again the next day.  He didn't even own a television set.  He didn't know what he was working toward, just that he was working.

An interesting article caught his eye, and he pulled the magazine close to his face, eyes wide with approval.  "Hot Hollywood Night Spots for Teens," something he pondered worth checking out, if he were ever in the area.  Just then his stomach dove with violent abruptness.  He sat up, in attention.  The vessel he called his gut was headed for choppy waters, and the crew was about to start a mutiny.  It creaked and it groaned beneath its own weight, and if he made the slightest wrong move it could result in the hull springing a leak.  He slowly put down the magazine, took a breath and begun to unfold his legs.  He stood carefully, ever so slowly, trying not to pull the pin on this grenade.

The bathroom was at best ten steps away, but the tumultuous turbulence in his abdomen was growing by the second.  Next steak night he was going to down three bottles of the pink stuff.  But first he had to surmount the issue at hand, how to cross the distance that was seeming more and more like the Odyssey than a few feet to the restroom.  Sirens and Cyclops's and Suitors, all in the form of work shoes and a kitchen stool that stood in his path.  He saw himself with essentially two options.  A, the slow and steady method, or B, the mad dash to the throne sparring nothing or no one in his wake, which amounted to a race between him and his plumbing.  "B" it was, and Miggy got his crew mates ready to pull up anchor, because this wave was about to crash...                  

 

« Apartment 4A - Apartment 4C »