Writings » Apartment 3B

Apartment 3B

By Buttermilk Baby at 2008-01-13 | Ridiculous!, Comedy | Printable version

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            His leg twitched slightly and he ran his tongue across the cloven surface of his upper lip.  He blinked once or twice and continued to lay there.  Motionless.  Basking in the warm, ruby glow of the neon light from across the alley.  It was the nightlight banner to the Chinese food restaurant, mere feet from his window; the "Harvest Moon."    The light massively plagued all the "B" apartments on floors one through four.  It would have cut a normal soul to shreds, but there was never anything normal about William Skink.  In his early thirties and suffering from an extreme case of hypopigmentation, more commonly known as albinism, he'd always seemed to be on the outside looking in.  Despite a few honest attempts otherwise.

            His school and career had gone much as expected...with a lot of awkwardness, dirty looks, and the always horrified, staring children.  He new he'd face such obstacles, but Willy Skink faced them anyway.  What he didn't expect was to lose his job after he'd been struck with mild paralysis in his left leg.  Or more accurately put, struck with a forklift in the warehouse at the plant.  He once spent his days as the supervising inspector at an engineering firm, now he spent his days lying face down on a musty old sofa, collecting disability checks.  He hated what he had become.

            His life seemed to become one battle after another, predominantly with constant physical ailments.  His latest crusade was against a severe outbreak of eczema; a persistent skin condition that can manifest itself in a variety of uncomfortable ways.  He was losing the fight over the last seven months, and on Halloween a young boy asked if he was supposed to be "Killer Croc."  The reference escaped him, but the answer was clear.  Willy was every bit of six foot four, skinny, shaved head, with bleach-white skin, and bumps and cracks that could easily be mistaken for scales gracing his hide from head to toe.  He was in fact, "Killer Croc," at least in his own mind.  But all this killer could muster up the will to do anymore was slouch motionless and stare, in a perpetual state of depression.

The mini red solar source outside his window cracked viscously and quite abruptly, as it did every thirty or forty minutes.  To some the sound was lost in the background of the city, but Willy stirred slightly every time he heard it.  Then he drifted back into his expressionless gaze.

Minutes went by, same as hours, and days before that.  He'd even given up his trek to the toilet if it was anything short of an infamous number two.  It wasn't worth the leg pain.  He'd already "drained the lizard" three times into a day old cereal bowl left on the floor.  Needless to say the place smelled.  It was harsh and acrid, with a subtle, sickly sweet aroma from the hundreds of flypaper rolls dangling from the ceiling.  Dead insects littered the gluey strips like dry leaves on a country road in late November. 

The apartment was a mess, it had been since his girlfriend Diana left him and ultimately started his downward spiral.  She didn't dump him because of any of his afflictions, it was since he'd lost his job, he'd grown to be the laziest bastard she ever met.  He had no will to live, nothing to get out of bed for.  And so, he lost the last good thing that he did have.

He regretted it, calling a few times pleading that he'd change.  But they all went straight to voicemail, and he was left with the somber feeling they'd never even be listened to.

The light sparked up and hummed again, ripping him from his own mind.  He looked around for a second, blinked, licked his lips, which were incidentally more chapped than New Mexico, and went back into his daydream.  He never had a family, not one you call by that name anyway.  Nor any real friends, a couple names he could remember, but mostly those of people that tried too hard to overlook his differences.  That ultimately felt worse to him.  Fear he could understand, even curiosity he could understand, those were natural reactions.  But people trying to prove something to themselves by attempting to be his friends aggravated him.  As a result, he usually came off as cold, or sarcastic, at times even ungrateful.  Diana was the only one who understood that.  They had two good years together before the "accident," but why you'd eat a meatball sub while operating a forklift still escaped him.

A new sound awoke him from his self appointed unconsciousness.  An unfamiliar pulling, tearing, splitting sound that grew in reverberation.  "Crap," he uttered, realizing what it was.  He arched up, leaning on his arms, looking over his shoulder to the bags of granulated sand he'd been storing recently.  He'd purchased the first one as an impulse buy.  But every one of the twelve subsequent bags, he bought almost subconsciously.  He craved them for some unknown, unquenchable reason.  He didn't know why he needed them, just that he did...  He had them stacked along the wall that led into the kitchen, and the bottom bag was splitting as wide open as the seat of a grandfather's slacks.

He hobbled off the couch, frantically limping on his bad leg to stop the flow of sand across the hardwood.  He haphazardly dropped to one knee and yanked at the bag, trying to spare it the weight of it's twelve angry brothers.  But all he did was end up dropping more burden on it, blowing a thick gritty cloud across his face and chest.  He choked out, "Mother 'Effer!!!"  This didn't bode well for his already dry skin and lips.

Anger filled him, for the first time in months, an emotion other than grief.  Blind rage, directed at the bags of sand; granulated sand, of all things.  A hatred only rivaled by the Trix Rabbit, and his secret disdain for those kids who wouldn't let him have a bowl of cereal in over 38 years.  Damn racists...  The hate manifested itself as Willy hurled the bag over his shoulder into the center of the room.  It spilled it's guts out onto the floor in a silent soothing agony.  For just as sure as every bag of sand was filled, Willy knew it would just as sure be emptied one day.  That day was today.

He began tearing at the bags, gritting his teeth, and violently tossing sand about the room.  He slammed the fifth bag against the wall, and "shot-putted" the sixth through his television set.  He let out an anguished breath, and clutched the ears of bag number nine in each hand.  He pulled it back over his head and swung it down, bursting at his feet and scattering along the wood.

"Mother 'Ef!  Mother 'Ef!!!" he cried, unable to swear, despite his current fury.  He thrashed and punished those bags in a way that can only be described as manically and sadistically prejudice.  He took a long deserved breath after dispatching the last of the sixty pound bags amongst his apartment floor.  He took a small step back and threw the plastic husk aside.  When he saw what he had done, he felt a wave of calmness sweep over him.  William Skink finally felt at home in his small room.

The dark brown sofa had long since collapsed in on itself, resembling more of a slab than a couch.  His large houseplants had died from dehydration, hanging low around the room.  And along with everything else in sight, his furniture was coated in a fine layer of sand.  There was a small sapphire kiddy-pool he left on the floor because he had grown too miserable to shower anymore.  He found it easier to just roll around in the water; he'd even begun to drink from it.  The flypaper rolls were swinging back and forth after his skirmish with the sandbags.  All this smothered in the crimson light from "Harvest Moon" on the other side of the alley.  The light cracked again and he licked his lips, tasting the sand, blinked twice, and climbed onto the couch, face down.

He laid there, arms and legs hanging off the sides of the mangled loveseat, still depressed, but feeling a cool serenity now that he hadn't before.  Minutes went by.  Hours went by, until a rustling behind the wall snapped him out of his trance.  He looked over, wondering what was going on in the other apartment, but just for a second.  He licked his lips, blinked twice, and drifted back into his delirium.

 

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