I had to stay with a friend once, when I was switching apartments. He was a longtime friend, and I assured him it would only be for two weeks, whilst the details of my new apartment were being ironed out. He forewarned me that his place wasn’t much, but I assured him it would be fine. After all, how bad could it be? It was February of 2015, the coldest one ever recorded. I crawled down the one way street, which was completely unplowed. There was easily a foot of snow that I was squealing through… I guess the town doesn’t worry about plowing out the ghetto. As I parked my car, I’ve never received so many dirty looks from street dwellers before. At the same time I realized that my buddy’s place had no off-street parking, which made me nervous. When my friend opened the door I was even more shocked. The apartment was actually a garage that had been renovated into a single bedroom home. The rental unit lie behind a larger house, we weren’t connected, but I was told our water supply came from the primary house. When I walked into the apartment a multitude of odors hit me in the face like a sucker punch. See, my friend was a bit of an alcoholic, combine that with his lack of employment… What is the saying? Idle hands are the Devil’s playground… The house was covered in filth. Sweaty clothes littered the floor, dirty dishes filled the sink. Grime was apparent throughout. The smell was the worst part. The stench was indecipherable, like a mixture of old meat, body odor, and… Saw dust? Yes, lumber was stacked all throughout the house. My buddy used to work as a handyman, so he took extra wood from the work sites. To complement the wood was a fully functional industrial grade scroll-saw… Yes, there was an electric buzz saw plugged in, ready to go. There was one bedroom about the size of a large closet. I stacked my possessions in it as carefully as I could, then bid my friend goodbye… I had to head to work. While at work that day I came to the realization that I simply couldn’t sleep in that house. I decided that I would use the place for storage for the two weeks, and after that just move on. My friend was happy to help me, and I even threw him a couple hundred bucks for his trouble. Luckily I was fortunate enough to be dating a chick at the time, so nights I just slept at her house. A few days later when I was at work, my phone rang. It was my friend. He informed me that we had been robbed! My blood boiled as I feared my expensive speaker set had been jacked, but much to my surprise, it hadn’t. The only item stolen was my friend’s t.v. It didn’t make any sense, that television had to be 40 years old. The damned thing look like a relic from World War Two. Futhermore, there were no signs of forced entry in the apartment. I ended up driving to the place that night to try to console my friend. He was pretty shook up about it, that combined with his drinking didn’t help things. As I asked more and more questions, an idea began to form within my head… In total, the stolen items were an outdated 20” CRT television, $20 in cash, and some old albums. I convinced my friend that we needed to get out of that place as soon as possible, and he agreed. Now here’s where things got suspicious… Later that evening my buddy received a text from one of his street dweller friends. After my friend told the guy that we had been robbed, the guy wrote
“Why do you care if your t.v. was stolen if it doesn’t work?” My friend had never told the guy that the t.v. didn’t work. We had found our thief. Police say that most of the time when someone robs you, they’ve already been inside your house.
The suspicious behavior continued the next morning when the landlord stopped by. She asked what was going on. She had no way to know that we had been robbed. My friend kept in touch with our thief, and eventually learned that he used to rent the house before us. Suddenly things were becoming clearer. The landlord let in the street dweller while we were gone, and allowed the t.v. to be stolen. My friend had been complaining that the landlord hadn’t cashed a month old rent check. Here’s when the idea of payback came into play. I fashioned up the idea quickly.
“Mike. First thing tomorrow you go to your bank and tell them to cancel your checks. Explain that you were robbed and your checkbook was stolen. After that contact your Landlord and tell her that you’ll be late with next month’s rent because they stole $500 cash too. We will use the extra money to rent a U-Haul and get the hell out of here.” The landlord knew that we were lying about the situation, but she couldn’t let on because she would have to admit that she was in on the burglary. She had to play coy while knowing exactly what we were up to. My friend and I were one step ahead of her next move. I told him to stay in the house no matter what, to not leave under any circumstances. I knew if he were to leave, the landlord would padlock the apartment door shut, leaving us shit out of luck. You can lock a tenant out, but you can’t lock them in! I bought new locks for the apartment doors, and my friend installed them. For the next 24 hours he put that lumber to good use, barricading every window completely shut with huge boards and long finishing nails. The little house was turning into a fortress. We would be burglary victims no more! Within a few days the landlord came over, fuming after her rent check bounced. Looks like we forgot to tell her that we cancelled the check… Oops! My friend spoke to her through the door, she screamed and yelled, but it was no use. She then tried her key, but the new lock put a stop to that. She fired back the next day when she shut off the water going to the apartment from the main house. She called my friend to insist that “the pipes must have frozen”. Yeah, bullshit. Little did she know I was bringing him bottled water to drink, and my buddy had no issue skipping showers. Now the only issue was flushing the toilet. Here is where our landlord really didn’t know who she was fucking with.
My friend had no shame, and this was war. He simply stacked shit in the toilet every time he had to go. With no water, there was no way to flush, he didn’t concern himself with that. He filled that toilet with inch after inch of shit over the course of several days. When I stopped by the house, the smell was rancid, putrid. The dishes in the sink had spawned hundreds of fruit flies. The old food in the refrigerator wasn’t getting any younger, and the shit-clogged toilet was a biohazard.
Finally the two weeks had come to a close and our move out date was upon us. We were able to load all of our possessions into the U-Haul relatively quickly.
With the house empty, the filth was all that remained. We even decided to empty out the exterior trash cans and bring the garbage bags inside. Something was rotten in that trash, which only contributed to the stench of the house.
By the time we left, there were a heap of dishes. To call them dirty would be a gross understatement, they were caked with filth. Mold and fruit flies covered them. The sink was a petri-dish of bacteria and stink. The windows were boarded shut, with finishing nails hammered directly into the door frame. The toilet had a week’s worth of shit in it, piled high. Sawdust lined the floors and counter tops. The food in the refrigerator was long-spoiled, only adding to the stench of death. We brought in a half dozen bags of garbage from outside, festering within the home. Oh, and at this point we owed 2 month’s back rent to boot.
After that we hit the road and spent the first night at my new place. We walked to a nice local bar and filled up on wings and beer, laughing at our escape. The next day my friend’s phone rang… It was her… He picked up. She lit him up like a Christmas tree, hysterically spewing every word in the book at him. We giggled as she ranted. One thing was for sure… You shouldn’t fuck with those who have nothing to lose. I felt like we had really taught her a lesson as we snarled with laughter, but the next thing I knew, my buddy’s smirk disappeared.
“Hey man, what’s up?” I asked. He didn’t respond, rather he just held his phone to the side of his head as I could hear the landlord cackling into the phone. Why was she laughing?
I started to hear a super high frequency squealing, like that of an old television turning on. My friend was now catatonic, frozen, while his phone just made this piercing buzzing tone. I could still hear her maniacal laughter, and my blood went cold. “What is she doing!?” I yelled, but my friend couldn’t respond. Smoke began fuming out of his phone. Soon I could smell the sickening scent of burnt hair. The phone was melting in my friend’s hand, simultaneously scorching his face. I screamed as I tried to pry the phone loose, to no avail.
I stood there helpless as I watched the phone burn into my friend’s brain. His face was half melted at this point, then he slammed to the ground, lifeless. His skin black with char. The only thing I could hear was the landlord, cackling away with that terrible laugh.
I can still hear it to this day.
Submitted February 24, 2017 at 02:35AM by Ckhaster http://ift.tt/2mhR4Xl nosleep
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