$300 Apartment by T.H. Cee
At the ripe old age of eighteen, I decided to move out and get my first apartment. Inexperienced and broke — never a good combination — I searched for the cheapest place to live, crossing out every ad in the newspaper above $300. I eventually found a place a few days later. In my mind, I’d stumbled upon the deal of a lifetime. Several units were available in a large and quaint old home converted into a two-story apartment house. From what I remember, the faded wallpaper masked an antique visage that borderlined on decay. A nicotine-stained ambience plastered the rooms with a cancerous yellow. You could almost hear the chipping lead paint crumble. Rehabbed just enough to convey the concept of occupancy, the structure appeared to be either on the verge of becoming an historic home or winning an eminent domain raffle. But the great news — the landlord advised basic utilities were included — all for $300 a month. In a hurry, I quickly leased a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor, and through a belief that my frugal search was somehow successful, mistakenly ignored the rest of the area. My naïve ears failed to warn me what the surrounding neighborhood tried to say. On a budget and motivated solely by price, the crazy taste of freedom had blinded me to the imperfections of what $300 could … and could not buy. ### The first day living there, I noticed a large hole in the bottom of a bedroom closet. A few hours later, I met my downstairs neighbor, Jizz Man. Jizz Man, when informed of my discovery, quickly held his needle ravaged arms up two feet apart. With wide eyes and a graphic vigor, he described the actual size of a rat he’d seen scurrying from his unit the day before. Somewhat of a philosopher, his potent use of simile immediately grabbed my attention. “That fucker,” he said matter-of-factly, “. . . was larger than a cat.” ### The next day, I met one of my next-door neighbors. For the record, I don’t recall his name. But for the sake of keeping things concise, being this is a story — let’s just call him “Old Alcoholic Dude” or Mr. Oad for short. It's also important to note that Mr. Oad was married, to none other than Mrs. Oad, who as my luck would have it ... was also an alcoholic. Mr. Oad banged on my door promptly at 8 a.m. With ass breath, he welcomed me to the neighborhood, and in a gruff tone, offered me the deal of a lifetime: a no risk chance to double my money, to experience high finance at its most primal level. “Just give me $10,” he said slurring his words, “and you can have $20 back in food stamps.” He then began to clear his throat with a cockeyed grin; in my mind, I watched three wet coughs form an imaginary ellipsis and introduce daylight to dark phlegm. My first impressions were that his liquid habit had washed away too many brain cells, that the man couldn’t chew a stick of gum and walk a sobriety line. I also surmised he probably wasn’t going to buy Girl Scout cookies with the proceeds — that is, unless they were somehow laced with rum. The scene played out like a dental nightmare, with Mr. Oad's breath reminiscent of a used anal thermometer thirsting for alcohol. The putrid wind expelled from his lungs hit my nose as if it were a fecal brick. In my mind, he’d become the unofficial spokesperson for the hazards of not flossing. Our conversation ended abruptly when I told him I had no cash. He quickly turned away quite frustrated, and in a welcome reprieve of sorts, spared me his next exhale. With a mixture of tenacity (and a possible case of the DTs) he started knocking on another door before I could close mine. In retrospect, I suppose many great sales motivators would have been proud. ### At the time, I had a girlfriend named Darcy. She was a Drama major and from what I remember a bit on the ostentatious side. Notorious for changing her hair color as often as her underwear, she possessed the unfortunate luck of being an eccentric bohemian. Back then, I overlooked these personality quirks primarily because of her bra size. That much I remember. As a young man in those days, I’d begun to look at many things on a sliding scale — and breasts happened to be one of them. Darcy was excited to see my place. She happily bounced from room to room and rambled on ad nauseum. “I love this. I love that,” she would say. In many ways, the girl was easy to please. Along with the apartment, we had a bed and didn’t have to use the backseat of my Gremlin anymore. I no longer needed to cover her face with a sweater attempting to keep the decibel level to a minimum. Not a huge fan of multi-tasking during sex, it was pretty much a win-win. ### Even my best friend Derrick liked my new digs. He’s been dead now for twenty years, but I still remember the first time he strutted into my apartment on that day — how he looked around a few moments before using his favorite catchphrase and part-time mantra. “Cool.” A person of few words, Derrick would always be cool to me — Miles Davis cool. If there’s a heaven, I surmise he's up there right now, fornicating with all the female angels and snorting fairy dust. Maybe even looking down at me and throwing high fives. We were kindred spirits back then, teenagers at that mysterious turning point of becoming men, keeping true to what decades later would be called the “Bro Code.” On occasion, I’d let Derrick bring women to my apartment after I left for work or school. From an economic standpoint, it became the barter system at its finest. All he had to do for me was leave a six-pack in the fridge and occasionally change the sheets. Mi casa, su casa. ### My new life, however, did not escape peril despite these obvious perks. Enticed by the idea of saving money, I’d not yet learned how greed could inversely make things more expensive. An acquaintance talked me into taking on a roommate after a few weeks living alone. According to him, the dude “walked on water.” My main regret: finding out too late, he literally thought he could. I discovered after the fact that my new roommate, Brian, worked nights, and while not sleeping during the day, went door to door handing out his religious cult’s magazines. Unfortunately, this didn't get disclosed until after he'd moved in. Footnote for the naïve, the absolute first thing to ask before you shake hands and give anyone a key: You’re not crazy, are you? I'd always considered myself open-minded. Even somewhat spiritual. A huge fan of the “love thy neighbor” concept — especially females. If you’d asked Darcy, she would have vouched for me back then. But nevertheless, after several weeks, Brian’s proselytizing, no matter how much I tried to ignore it, took a strange and unexpected twist. With his “brotherly acceptance” stepping over into the dark side, he portrayed a different type of Passion Play, and to my surprise, soon crossed the thin bromosexual line of no return. Because he’d been my first roommate, I'd assumed it was normal to see him occasionally walk around naked. This belief, however, quickly changed when he added an erection into the mix, accompanied by garish bouts of living room masturbation theatre. Then, slinking into my room one night, his hands made the fatal mistake of moving from his penis toward mine. Not wanting to be a rape statistic, I taught him through a chokehold to speak in tongues. From the apartment to the hall, he got his ass pounded — and not the way he would’ve preferred. At the highpoint of our skirmish, my pugilistic rendition of the Last Rights almost introduced him to his maker. You would have thought he'd been thrilled. But when push came to shove, the man had no faith. Our battle ended with his baptism to the bottom of the first-floor stairs compliments of my large heterosexual foot. To summarize the moment: “‘No’ means no!” What devolved into a homoerotic adaptation of “Dante’s Inferno,” ended in forty days, and almost forty nights, if you included the evening I ended our arrangement by kicking that conflicted simian down a flight of stairs. In hindsight, the situation helped me understand a few things — like why my cousin, for amusement, always comes to the door naked when Jehovah’s Witnesses knock. ### A few days after getting rid of St. Brian (the Patron Saint for homos in denial), I discovered my other neighbor, who’d recently moved in, worked as a prostitute. This knowledge compliments of rolling paper-thin walls and a thick headboard that banged out a raunchy Morse Code. Weirdly, it was a result of this discovery that Darcy developed her own version of drama exercises to, I assume, hone her budding thespian skills. It started one night while both of us were in the throes of “enjoying each other’s company.” As we lay in bed, we overheard my neighbor on the other side of the wall working overtime. After listening to her and her John’s theatrics for a few moments, Darcy suggested, just for laughs, to emulate them. This meant, when my neighbor moaned or screamed, Darcy would do the same; when my neighbor’s “trick” made any sound, I would mimic it. We would also have to make these noises while doing what they were doing on the other side of the wall. In a matter of seconds, the moment transformed into an erotic version of Twister choreographed to an X-rated soundtrack. “Spank me daddy,” screamed the hooker. “Spank me daddy,” Darcy shouted. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum … If you’d asked Darcy at the time, she would’ve said the exercise had been about (in a dramatic voice): “transcending the emotion” or “being able to duplicate the acting experience.” That’s at least what she told me. This off-the-wall form of role-playing she’d concocted became hilarious. Especially, when we realized they could hear us on the other side, befuddled about what to make of it — like maybe their apartment was special in some way or had built in reverb. It also makes me wonder today if Darcy is now a porn star. When I consider all of the factors, it would make a lot of sense. “What the fuck was that?” said the John. “What the fuck was that?” I echoed. “Shut up and put your finger in my ass,” yelled the Prostitute. “That’s not your finger,” moaned Darcy. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum … The other thing that wasn’t so cool about my neighbor, the working girl — she had a pimp. This deduction came from the noisy conversations that often followed when he'd show up. Keeping pretty much to the same predictable script, he’d always start out yelling something like, “Aww Hell Naw!” and then make some loose reference to where his drugs were kept followed by many sentences ending in the word “bitch.” Their meetings either closed with a classic pimp ritual common to the “Slap-a-Ho” tribe or an S&M session on angel dust. After a while, it became too difficult to tell the difference. ### For most young people, one’s first apartment becomes a ceremonial rite of passage. A path toward adulthood. Mine, however, had jumped the tracks and taken a nefarious turn; before I realized what happened, I found myself trapped in what seemed a ghetto bar mitzvah — one where I'd wished my yarmulke (if I even had one) were bulletproof. To avoid the constant drama, I struggled to keep a low profile. If one tenant didn’t have the police at their door, another one did. I became the poor college kid amidst all this wild trailer trash excitement. Then, one day, everything went sideways and shitty. Mr. and Mrs. Oad began to go on longer binges where they brazenly avoided sobriety for days at a time. I’d hear them up at all hours yelling and screaming. Even crying. And sometimes around 3 a.m., I would listen to Mrs. Oad loudly whimper the following: “I’ll be your German. Let me be your German.” The deviant sounds that followed, molested my ears. Also causing me to throw up a little in my mouth. Had you been able to read my thoughts back then, you probably would’ve seen a pink elephant wearing a Speedo. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the situation did. My neighbor’s long benders bled one into another and took on a sinister dimension, becoming one never-ending event. Mrs. Oad, the more dramatic of the two, did one of two things intermittently: She would climb naked out of her second story window onto a large tree and scream at passing airplanes or she would run naked around the building with a machete. Before I realized what happened, it became a National Geographic episode outside my door. I’m not sure where she got the machete. Truth is, her charging at me with the mighty blade effectively killed my curiosity to stop and ask. Every time I heard some bimbo tell me about how grueling her aerobics class had been in those days, I’d think of Mrs. Oad, her wrinkled and gravity-ravaged body, weapon in hand, chasing me up a flight of stairs. It somehow didn't compare. The situation, over time, took on a theatrical déjà vu. When she screamed naked from her tree at airplanes, the moment reminded me of the character Tattoo on “Fantasy Island,” the little person known famously for the line “Da Plane! Da Plane!” Thirty years later, this memory remains. When flying, I often catch myself looking out the window, wondering if there are other Mrs. Oads down there somewhere, and if so, are they staring upward, challenging me in some unknown existential way. Say what you will about the woman, her movements were quick despite her obvious age. The police came out numerous times, but every time they’d show up, she’d sneak into her apartment before they could record the offense. This wouldn’t happen today, as the same circumstance would’ve easily gone viral the first hour. Viva la YouTube. ### Along with the approaching heat of summer, however, Mrs. Oad’s psychosis escalated. Her behavior became more defiant. Everyone sensed she was moving toward an impending and inevitable face-off — one where I'd hoped to enjoy eight hours of sleep after someone carted her ass off in a straitjacket. But after several weeks, there was still no end in sight. Like a hurricane stalling offshore, this quagmire of dysfunction neither waxed nor waned. But then one day, everything suddenly changed. I remember how Derrick and I trudged our way into the local grocery store. We were there in aisle three, when Tom, an old friend from high school appeared. Along with serendipity and a giant bag of weed, he'd moved back into town. He also needed a roommate. Thirty minutes later, the three of us sat in Tom's van, and over a few beers and the occasional bong hit, a new roommate alliance was forged. He even offered to help move. My luck appeared to be changing. That afternoon, we became the Three Musketeers, local Ganja Chapter 420. Poster boys for P.S.A.'s against reefer madness. Our perspective clouded by copious amounts of THC, we could have doubled for the Three Stooges with a profound case of the munchies. Derrick and I, for humor’s sake, decided not to warn Tom about Mrs. Oad's theatrics while on our way to retrieve my stuff, and on a last minute dare, looked forward to the opportunity of watching him discover this spectacle for himself. The moment would be priceless. Of course, when Derrick and I decided to do this, we planned on only letting Tom carry the light stuff. Say what you will about my sense of humor; I am not a monster. Once we arrived back at my $300 apartment, however, the timing could not have been worse. We found ourselves staring into the pinnacle of Mrs. Oad’s latest and greatest binge. She sat perched in her tree, like a sentry at a bipolar nudist colony, babbling something about Germans again. After Tom stopped laughing and got up off the ground, we each drew imaginary straws. Our strategy was simple: The three of us would slink onto the property and take turns running into the building like wasted commandos on some secret recon mission. We hoped to avoid any confrontation, and with hands full, desired to bolt out the front door with as much of my belongings as we could carry. I’m not sure what was worse, the threat of seeing an approaching machete or Mrs. Oad’s prune-like naked body with breasts jiggling at half-mast. The circumstance nurtured in me, apart from the potential risk for retinal scarring, a rock-solid appreciation for older women who wear support bras. We’d just finished loading up the van when police arrived. In my opinion, six months too late. Mrs. Oad held the machete in her hand with her eyes locked on the approaching news helicopter while she clung screaming from her tree. Caught up in the pandemonium, I suddenly heard my landlord’s booming voice. He’d just pulled up behind the gathering crowd, seen all my belongings in Tom’s van, and realized I was moving out. As a bargaining chip, I said he could keep my deposit in exchange for early termination of my lease. I also promised not to walk over to the news crew and tell them about his many code violations. Although initially annoyed, he quickly accepted my proposition. Smart man. We ended the transaction through a quick handshake. With a firm grip, he wished me well over the windy effects of the chopper and sporadic bullhorn shouts from police. He even said he’d give me a stellar reference. In many ways, I often think of that moment as my first step toward a higher credit score. From the front passenger seat of Tom’s van, I now saw Mrs. Oad on the ground in the fetal position, her naked body tangled and sedated in a police net. A tranquilizer dart protruded from her cellulite riddled ass. I took one final look back at my $300 apartment. Immersed in the bittersweet dysfunction of it all, I sensed my residency there had come full circle. I realized someday I would hold a different perspective and have to laugh … maybe even write a story. --- T.H.Cee has had other short stories published in Black Fox and New Praxius. He also had another story that will be published this month at Oddville Press. --- Show your love for Horror Sleaze Trash by following us and checking out the links below! --- Facebook . Instagram . Twitter . Patreon . HST Merch!