I Used To Live With A Gone Girl

I feel like I need to start this story off with a clarification: Marissa and I were roommates, not lovers. We wouldn’t make any sense as a couple. To tell you the truth, we didn’t make any sense as roommates either. But I was desperate for a room and she was desperate for the other half of rent, and Craigslist was helpful enough to complete this doomed equation. And just like that, a very, very bad living situation begun.

Like any bad living situation, the fault lies with both parties. I was at fault for neglecting to tell her beforehand that I was absented-minded and messy. And she was at fault for neglecting to tell me that she was fucking insane. Once we both found out about each other's faults, we tried to treat the situation maturely like adults.    

But somewhere along the way, we declared war on one another. I will spare you the details, because it’s not all that interesting and I fear I would become a far more bitter narrator than I ever care to be.

The story I do want to tell you, however, takes place during this war, over the course of one night, when we were forced into a period of peace. It was during this period that I discovered that I wasn’t just living with an unstable person, but an actual Gone Girl. If you have not read the book, or seen the movie, I suggest you do so at this time (or at least check out its wiki page). Go ahead, I’ll wait.

OK ready? Great. Now like all stories of this nature, this one begins with a series of loud THWACKS.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

“RANDY! Randy are you there! Please help! Let me in! He’s after me! He’s after me! Let me in!”

“Aaaaaah!”

(Another quick clarification, that last bit of dialog, that “aaaaah!”, that’s coming from me, not from the voice pleading for help. As I’ve explained in the previous story, whenever I am awoken by a loud noise, a let out a surprisingly feminine cry. But I digress…)

THWACK! THWACK!

“RANDY! PLEASE HELP ME! HE’S AFTER ME!”

Like a frightened toddler, I swivel my head up to my bedroom window, the direction where the screams are coming from. That’s when I discover my roommate, Marissa, standing on our front porch, her face smushed up against my window, begging for help while her hands continuously slap the glass.

“Ma-Marissa?” I sputter.

THWACK! THWACK!

“Randy, you gotta let me in!! He’s coming!!”

Instinctively, I jump out of bed and rummage through my pants pockets looking for my keys, but I can’t find them. Meanwhile, she keeps on thwacking the glass and pleading for me to unlock the front door, as if I’m unaware that the situation is serious.   

At last, I find my keys and run out of my room and straight to the front door to unlock the deadbolt. I try my best to get the key into the key hole but I’m so full of nerves that it takes a humorously long time to do so.  

THWACK! THWACK!

“Randy! Open the door! He’s after me!!”

Finally, I get the key in and unlock the door. Immediately, the skinny frame of Marissa bolts into the house and she jumps into my arms. This is all very weird for me, as Marissa has refused to talk to me in the last three weeks, much less touch me. (Which has just been fine with me, interacting with her at all made my skin crawl.) And yet here we are in this moment, with her shivering in my arms, thanking me profusely. 

“You just saved my life! You just saved my fucking life!” She repeats this over and over again. Naturally, as I hold her, I peer out the door window, waiting for some boogey man to suddenly start rampaging towards us. But no one comes. Eventually, I get Marissa to calm down enough to let go of me and take a seat on the couch. 

Three minutes later, Marissa is clutching a cup of water, muttering to herself, as I sit next to her wondering what to say. Luckily, I end up not having to say anything, as she suddenly dives into the whole story, or at least, her version of the whole story.

 She tells me that she was at work (she works as a bartender at this dive bar in Midcity… yeah I know, enough said) when her ex-boyfriend came in and started harassing her. Then the manager tried to get him to leave and they got into a fist fight, then the cops show up and the ex-boyfriend hightails it to the back patio where he hops the fence and disappears. Then Marissa gets a call from a girl who says she is her ex-boyfriend’s new girl and she’s going to beat her up. This freaks Marissa out so she leaves work and walks home. That’s when the ex-boyfriend finds her on the street and chases her all the way to our house.

“Holy shit.” I say, when she finishes. “That’s insane.” I find myself actually feeling sorry for her, wondering if maybe I’ve been too hard on her, if this is what she’s been going through. But then a thought hits me.

“Wait… don’t you work like three miles away?”

“Yeah.”

“So he chased you for three miles?”

“Yes! I’m telling you he’s fucking insane! He wanted to kill me!”

Obviously, this sounds all kinds of weird to me, but before I can pry more information from her she excuses herself to her room so she can lay down. She tells me goodnight and thanks me again for ‘saving her life’ and then disappears into her room.

So there I am, alone in the living room, in my underwear, wondering what the hell has happened in the last twenty minutes. And then, of course, there was a knock on the front door. A loud, aggressive knock.

It’s him! I thought. It’s the boyfriend! He’s come here to get his revenge!

A grab the closest thing around me that could be used as a weapon, the plastic blue broom leaning up against the wall. If the image of me in my boxers, armed with a broom, walking towards the unknown while my crazy roommate hides in her room sounds too much for you, don’t worry, I felt the same way. I promised myself once this night was over I would start looking for a new place to live.

I open the door and am greeted by the sight of two stern looking police officers.  (For those keeping score at home, yes, this is the second story in a row where I answer the door in just my boxers only to find the police staring back at me. I guess it’s just my thing). 

“Sir, we know you’ve been in an accident. Come with us.” One of the gruff cops says.

“Accident?”

But before the cop can explain further, a voice chirps up behind me.

“It was me officer, I was in the accident…” Marissa says as she walks nervously towards us.

I give her a quizzical look, but the cops whisk her away into their patrol car before anything is explained to me.

The last thing I hear her say to the cops is: “Am I in trouble?”

Now it is three in the morning, and any hopes I had of getting some sleep that night are completely dashed. Instead I lie in bed wondering what really happened with Marissa. What kind of trouble had she gotten herself in now? Would I ever see her again?

An hour later, I get my answer. Marissa returns home. I go out to the living room to meet her. This time, she’s all smiles, completely calm. I am beyond confused. After I press her a little she gives me the story, the real story.

Apparently, she didn’t walk home from the bar. She got a ride from some guy she met at the bar, she tells me. They were drinking together when he offered her a ride back. He was pretty drunk, but he told her he was fine to drive. So they got in his truck and headed towards our house. Somewhere along the way, he managed to drive into the neutral ground and run straight into a tree, causing his truck to flip over. They both crawled out of the truck and ran off in different directions. Marissa headed to our house (but not before leaving her purse in the truck, which is how the cops found her at home), the man ran somewhere into the night. And that’s how it happened to be that she came banging on my window.

So all that stuff about the boyfriend chasing her and trying to kill her was totally made up. This never made any sense to me... until I saw the movie Gone Girl. Then the dots connected. A delusional woman angry at a (ex) lover and wanting him to pay so she tries to stain his reputation and make him seem evil? The truth became evident. And the truth is, I’m lucky I’m still alive, cause I was living with a freaking Gone Girl.

The End

*also, Marissa is not her real name, I’m not crazy enough to take that risk.

Neutrons Protons Article: I Was a Ninja Turtle at Coachella!

Hey everyone,
   one of my stories was published by Neutrons Protons. This is a hilarious story (if I do say so myself, remember I have to be my own hype man here!) about me at Coachella dressed as a ninja turtle, and you can only read it over at Neutrons Protons. So click on the link, and be happy!

LINK

SWAT Team Alarm Clock

As I mentioned in my previous story, I don’t live in a great neighborhood. There are obvious disadvantages to this (also mentioned in my previous story) but there are benefits as well. Here is an example of one of those (well, sort of)…

I went to bed happy the night before, because I knew I was flying home in the morning. I would be leaving this swamp (a swamp that I do love very much, but still a swamp nonetheless) and heading to the redwood mountains that I loved as a child. It was this image of nostalgic warmth that lulled me to sleep. And there I stayed, until…

BANG BANG BANG!

I woke up with a yelp of fright (I mean this literally, I have this weird thing where if I’m awoken unexpectedly by loud noises I unleash a pitiful yelp for help), and scanned the area for danger.

BANG BANG BANG!

No danger in my room. I realized I was okay. Then I checked the time. 6:20 am. Shit. My alarm clock was supposed to wake me up twenty minutes ago. I proceeded to fumble with my stupid clock, cursing its incompetence while trying to find the reason why it didn’t go off. 

BANG BANG BANG!

Fuck. I had set my alarm clock for PM not AM. The classic blunder!  I thanked God for whoever was making that infernal banging noise. If it wasn’t for that, I might have slept right through my flight.

BANG BANG BANG!

Who the hell was making that noise though, I wondered. Perhaps it was my roommate, locked out possibly, trying to get me to hear his knocking from all the way in my room.

Figuring that was exactly what it was, I go to the door in just my boxers, so I could surprise him with the sight of my hairy, pale/red body.

BANG BANG BANG!

I opened the door to find a team of SWAT police facing me. Guns at their sides, bullet proof vests on, the whole bit. And judging by their facial reactions I could tell they were just as surprised at the sight of me as I was of them. “What the hell is this white boy doing living in this ghetto, and why is he so hairy and pale and red?” they seemed to be asking.

After this initial awkwardness passed, the leader of this pack, a square-jawed, fit man who slightly resembled an older version of Deputy Junior from Reno 911, stepped forward and threw a picture in my face and asked me if I recognized the man in it. The picture was incredibly grainy, but despite that, I could still clearly see that this was a picture of my next door neighbor Emil. I could even make out the tattoo tear drop on his left cheek, a tattoo that always made me wonder about him. He seemed like a nice enough dude, but wasn’t that tear drop tattoo strictly for those who had killed someone? Is that why they were here? To arrest a murderer??

           

The SWAT LEADER repeated his question, had I seen this man? But all I could do was think back to the past encounters I had with Emil. He was always good to me. I recalled this one time when my brother was in town and he gave both of us a beer as we were heading into a taxi. I also remembered that he was usually a very horny young man. Whenever a girl came to the house, he would pretty much interrogate me later about if she liked to get down and if she had any friends. That always made me feel uncomfortable.

Now I was getting interrogated by this SWAT leader and felt even more uncomfortable. If I identified the man in the picture, would that make me a narc? Or even worse, a snitch? Wait, is a snitch worse than a narc, I wondered? I wasn’t sure… I knew that snitches get stitches, but what do narcs get...

“Hey man,” Deputy Junior interrupted my thought process. “if you know this guy and you want to do the right thing, just tell us.” He was using the good cop strategy on me, and it was working. Why shouldn’t I be honest with this cop, he’s just trying to do his job. On the other hand, I didn't want to die... with one foot firmly over each side of the fence, I responded: “Well, he might be this guy that lives next door, maybe you should knock on his door and see if he’s there…”

           

 I needed to hurry. My wake up call and interaction with the New Orleans’ Finest had left me with just 15 minutes to pack before my cab was going to pick me up from the airport.  I grabbed my suitcase from my closet, opened it up and then pulled out my list of things to pack.

As I looked at my list, I could hear the SWAT Team playing bad cop with the apartment next door. 

            -A week’s worth of socks.

            “Where is your brother, asshole?!”

            Check.

-Sunscreen/hat

“Fuck you, I want my lawyer!”

Check.

- T-shirts, casual. And a few dress shirts.

            “Where is your brother? Just tell us where he is!!”

            Check.

            -  Hiking boots, Chapstick

            “I’m not telling you anything!”

I’m not sure exactly when, but at a certain point I no longer felt like I was packing for a vacation home, it felt more like I was fleeing for my safety. I had pointed the finger at the neighborhood criminal element, and now I was going into the witness protection program.

           

As I threw in my good pair of jeans on top of the haphazard mess that filled my suitcase, another worry hit me. What if they hadn’t found Emil. I knew Emil lived with his brother next door. Was that his brother they were talking to, or was it Emil himself. What if it was just his brother, and Emil wasn’t at home? If his brother wasn’t the one they wanted, would they just leave him at his house, unarrested? If so, would he see his brother later that day? If he saw his brother would he tell him that he thinks someone put the finger on him? That someone in the building pegged him as the outlaw they were looking for? Would they put me in that group of suspects? If so, would they want to talk to me, maybe give some much earned stitching for snitching?

I zipped up my suitcase and waited for the honk of my cab, trying to ignore the escalating anger occur just beyond my thin wall.

“Do you want to be in a world of shit?! Because if you don’t tell us where you’re brother is, you will be in a world of shit!!”

Two minutes later I was throwing my suitcase in the back of cab, trying with all my might to use my peripherals to see if it was Emil they had in handcuffs, as I dare not look directly at the situation, that might have been enough to convince Emil or his brother of my guilt.   

The cab sped away to the airport without me ever confirming whether the cops had found their man or not. As we drove out of my bad neighborhood, the driver looked back at me in the mirror and asked:

“So where you going, buddy?”

“anywhere but here man, this place is just too hot right now.”

I Am Not a Mosquito

Mental insanity is no laughing matter. Neither is drug addiction. Nor is losing your keys. And yet, when you combine two, possibly three, of those things together, I think you’ll find that they make for quite an amusing story. But I’ll let you guys be the judge of that. Here is my story of getting in all sorts of trouble in a dangerous area that I like to call home. Enjoy!

My troubles began when I was jogging. Or rather, when I had just finished jogging. For that was when I discovered that the keys that I had put in my mailbox at the beginning of my jog were no longer there.  To say this was disconcerting would be putting it mildly. You see, as I eluded to above, I live in a bad neighborhood, the kind of neighborhood where many of its residents would be deeply interested in someone else’s apartment and car keys.

Now you might be wondering at this point why I would leave keys in my mailbox if I live in a bad neighborhood. To that I ask you, have you ever ran with keys in your pocket? It’s very annoying.  They weigh you down and brush up against your leg. Ugh. Why go through all that when you can just take a huge risk that could totally fuck up your life? 

Anyway, once I realized my predicament, my first hope was that my roommate had come home early from work, checked the mailbox, found the keys, and took them inside with him. But this hope was dashed when I scanned the area and realized his car was nowhere in sight.

Around this time, I could feel the strong sensation of panic crawling around in my belly.

No, I said to myself. You will not panic. You must remain logical. Your keys are missing. That sucks. But be logical about it. Start by inspecting the area. 

So I did. My inspection involved checking my mailbox again, then looking at the gravely ground directly below it. While I did find a good deal of broken glass and various litter amidst the gravel, I found no keys. Then I checked my mailbox once again, and then five more times after that. But still, I found no keys.

 I could feel the tips of panic tickling my belly again.  

Knock it off! Remain logical. Finish  your investigation. Look around for witnesses, perhaps someone saw something.  

But witnesses were in short supply. To the left of me was an empty street decorated with potholes and the occasional stray cat. To the right of me was the filthy intersection just in front of my apartment building. At first it appeared this intersection was empty too, until I noticed a figure that appeared to be female standing in the near corner, facing away from me.  

That’s a potential witness. Go to her.

I began to do just that, when I noticed something that gave me pause. This person appeared to be swaying from side to side, as if listening to music. But I was close enough to see that she had no earphones in. Remember, I live in a bad neighborhood, so this kind of odd behavior could mean a lot of things.

What choice do you have? Do you want to be a keyless son of a bitch for the rest of your days? It’s time to take action! Go to her!

“Excuse me.” I called out to her in a genial but determined tone.  She did not respond to this. She just continued to sway, as if lost in her non-existent music. I took a few steps closer and repeated myself.

“Excuse me.” 

This time she did react, but not in the way I had hoped. She pivoted away from me, literally giving me the cold shoulder.

Ooh, she doesn’t want to talk to you. That’s suspicious. Get the truth from her!  

 “Excuse me!” I said again, this time while courageously tapping her on the shoulder. “ I had some keys in that mailbox and-“

But that’s as far as I got. Because she suddenly whipped around and stared down at me with eyes that haunt me to this day.  They were wide, fiery eyes that burned hate into my skull.

“FUCK YOU!” She roared. “YOU KICKED MY DOG DOWN!!”

Now of all the responses I had anticipated at this moment, being accused of kicking her pet was near the very bottom of the list. I mean, I have never kicked a dog ever, why would she say that?

“YOU KICKED MY DOG DOWN, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” She repeated with hot anger, this time taking a step towards me.

At this point, that panic that I had been trying to keep down in my stomach was now clawing it’s way to my heart.

 Stay strong. Clearly this lady is crazy and hates you for what you did to her imaginary dog, but at least we have a motive for the crime now. Get the truth from her!

“Listen, all I want-“

“YOU KICKED MY DOG DOWN AND CUT THE WIRE!”  She said again, this time adding more details to my alleged crime, suggesting that not only did I kick her dog down but that I then cut its wire.  

What the hell is a dog’s wire? Is that a thing? Be careful she might stab you…

“Look…” I said, trying my best not to stammer. “If you took my keys just give them back, and we’ll forget the whole thing?”  Yes, good, let her plea bargain.  

“I’M GONNA CALL THE COPS!! YOU GONNA BE IN JAIL TONIGHT!!!”

Here’s a fun fact, I live about two blocks away from the city jail, and it was actually in my line of sight as I was talking with this woman. I couldn’t help but stare at the jail and imagining myself inside it, explaining to the other inmates that I was in there for cutting a dog’s wire. What would they have made of that, I wonder?

YOU MOTHERFUCKER! I-“

“Look!” I finally erupted. “I don’t have to take this! I’m done with you! Forever! Goodbye!” And then I walked away in a huff, thankfully she did not follow.

Wait, you’re leaving? Where are you going to go? You have no phone, no keys, no wallet, and you don’t know anyone in the area. And you have work in less than an hour.

I stopped walking at this point. Shit. I was screwed. What the hell was I gonna do?

As I pondered my next action, I heard the vile thief shout from behind me:

“KEEP WALKING YOU MOSQUITO LOOKING MOTHERFUCKER!”

Now I’m sure if somebody told me I looked like a misquito today, it wouldn’t affect me much. But after everything I had just been through, losing my keys, getting accused of being an animal abuser, and just generally feeling like I was going crazy, the last thing I needed to hear was that I resembled a misquito. And so, I kinda lost it.

“I DO NOT LOOK LIKE A MOSQUITO! YOU’RE JUST A CRAZY BITCH! AND I KNOW YOU TOOK MY KEYS!”

 And here we come to the point in the story where I participated in one of the most inane debates in the history of the world. In this debate, I argued my two points ferociously. The first being that I don’t look like a mosquito, and the second being that she took my keys. And of course, she argued her two main points as well, the first being that I do look like a mosquito, and the second being that I kicked her dog down and cut the wire.

I stayed in this seventh ring of nonsensical hell for far too long, feeling more crazy and desperate with each passing moment. But then, just as things looked its darkest, I saw my apartment door open and my roommate pop out.

Run to him. Run to him and be normal again.

And so I did.

Once inside the apartment, my roommate handed me my keys that he had found in the mailbox and pressed me to explain what on earth had happened outside. But I was far too busy on my laptop, google image searching mosquitoes. Sometimes you just have to be sure about these things. And after an extensive investigation, I am happy to report that I definitely do not look like a mosquito. Case closed!

POST SCRIPT TO STORY

A few days later, I regaled my upstairs neighbor with this story. After I had told her the whole thing, we had the following conversation:

 Her: Oh man, that’s why you don’t argue with a crackhead.

Me: Yeah, I suspected she was on drugs too.

Her: No, I know for a fact she was on crack. Her sister came and told me. They both live down the street. Apparently she has crack problem and relapsed recently. Her sister says it’s just better not to talk to her when she’s on that shit.

Me: Oh. Huh. Well, I still wonder what the hell she meant when she accused me of kicking her dog down and cutting the wire.

Her: Are you sure she wasn’t saying door, not dog, and you just misheard her?

Me: I don’t know… maybe. But that still doesn’t make any sense.

Her: Well, it kinda does, because, do you know Danny, that boy with the sleeve tattoos that I sleep with sometimes?

Me: Yes…

Her: Well, he let her borrow twenty bucks a week ago, and she never paid him back. So he broke down her door when she was gone and cut the wire to her cable.

Me: Oh…

Her: Anyway, you really shouldn’t be leaving your keys in the mailbox anyway, this is a bad neighborhood, ya know.

Me: Yeah. I know….

Hey! Here's A Story I Wrote For Another Publication!

Hey there, people.


I wrote this story for this publication site called Neutrons Protons. It's a New Orleans based publication and it's awesome! Check it out, and check out my story about me dealing with turning 30 and going to a beachhouse and having teenagers laugh at how old I am. It's a good read! So you should read it!

RIGHT NOW!

BEACHHOUSE

Called Out at the Library For Being a Poop Monster

For a long time now, I have accepted the fact that there are monsters in this world.  Monsters that roam around freely for one of two reasons. One, because they are very skilled at not being detected; and two, because people blind themselves from what they don’t want to see. This is just the world we live in, and I’ve accepted that.

What I didn’t realize until recently, however, is that sometimes the monsters themselves don’t realize they’re monsters. I might have gone my whole life without learning this, until a rather brutal run-in at the library.

This story takes place on an idle Tuesday not too long ago after a day’s work. I was reading a terrific book about a jewel thief in Manhattan and I was just enjoying the hell out of life. It was one of those rare moments where I was completely in my element and didn’t have a single complaint about anything or anyone.

Unfortunately, my bowels couldn’t say the same thing. For, about an hour into my reading time, my bowels pulled the red lever. You all know about the red lever, right? As any doctor can tell you, there are three levers in your bowels that are directly connected to your brain. The first is the green lever. This is an innocent lever that is attached to your brain by a nice silk rope. When your bowels pull this lever, they do so in a calm manner to politely inform you that that turkey sandwich you digested for lunch is ready to make its exit in the near future.

Then there is the brown lever. This lever is attached to your brain by a metal chain. When this is pulled, it is done so with a determined but professional ummph, to make you aware that the situation is coming to a head faster than originally anticipated, so it needs to be dealt with speedily but professionally.

The third lever, as you know, is the red lever. This lever is attached to your brain by rusty razor wire which is also wrapped around your stomach, and this lever is only pulled when your bowels are dealing with a situation that has caught them completely off guard and is forcing them to contemplate hara-kiri.

Suffice to say, there are few public places you want to be when that red lever gets pulled, and the public library is hardly one of them. And yet, that’s exactly where I was when I felt the razor wire cut into my brain and tear through my stomach.

Obviously, with that razor wire searing through your body, you have no time to think. So I didn’t. I jumped out of my seat and rushed towards the restroom and prayed I would find it’s one stall available.

Upon pushing open the heavy wooden door of the bathroom, I found my prayers were answered, the stall was empty, hope was within reach!

I slammed open the toilet lid and saw something that made me hesitate for just half a second. Apparently someone else had done their business in the stall before me, and hadn’t bothered to flush. At this moment of crisis, even taking the pause to flush the preceding waste seemed too risky, so instead I jumped on the throne and added to the nastiness.    

           

Once I had finished my business, I rose from the throne, and turned to flush it all down.

But that’s where I stopped. Because it was quite evident that the waste I had created, coupled with the waste that was already in the bowl, had created a  Frankenstein mud monster of unfortunate proportions. Suffice to say, it was obvious there was no way this monster was going down the pipes without a fight, a fight it would most likely win.

This left me with a moral dilemma. If I can’t flush it down, what do I do? The right thing to do would be to retrieve a librarian and confess my sins. But if that was the right thing to do, why did it seem so wrong? Did I really want to broadcast my foulness to outsiders…

At that moment, another option hit me. I could simply lie. I would still be doing the right thing, notifying the right people about the monster in the bowl, but I wouldn’t necessarily be confessing my crime. Perhaps I would even add a statement like: “I just walked in and found what some jerk face had left…”.

After giving it some thought, I didn’t like this option much either, not because of the deceitful aspect to it, but because I didn’t think I would get away with it. The librarian would take one look at my guilty face and cry out: “Don’t lie to me, you nasty sprayer of poops! It was you who has released this demon into our house!” Because librarians talk like that in my mind.

So I considered my two options, but just couldn’t come to a decision. So I washed my hands, hoping the answer would come to me there. But it didn’t. So I decided to exit the bathroom, hoping that entering the outside world would force the answer to present itself.

But no answer came. So I returned to my table and continued reading my book, figuring that maybe an answer would come when I wasn’t thinking about it.

Two minutes later, I had forgotten all about the mess I had made. I was in my element again. Life was good, and I didn’t have a complaint about anyone or anything…

And then it came. Directly behind me. A voice, a shrill, angry voice that I will never forget.

“Excuse me, did you just use the bathroom?”

           

Cue panic mode. Good God, someone found me. I don’t know how but they found me.   

           

 I looked up from my book and realized the other four people at the table were looking at me with wide, curious eyes.  The eyes rose up, above me, when the angry voice spoke again.

           

“Excuse me sir, I asked if you just used the bathroom.”

           

I put my book down slowly and turned to face my accuser. When I set my eyes upon him, I was a little taken aback. For one thing, he was small in stature. Despite the fact that I was sitting and he was standing he was no more than 4 inches taller than me, with an unfortunate hump on his slouched back. But his stature and hump were nothing compared to his face. His was a worn, angry, beaten face. As if life had been picking on him mercilessly since he was born, sucker punching him at every turn. His eyes told the same story, but they had a depth of anger that told me something else as well. They told me that I had been the final straw. He had to deal with a lot of shit in his life, but mine was the one that broke the camel’s back.

           

“Well.” He said, practically spitting the word at me. “Didja?”

           

It seemed pointless to lie, as his tone suggested he knew for a certainty that I had used the facilities.   

           

“Yes.” I said in an innocent tone, hoping that would suggest I had nothing to hide.

           

This answer prompted him to throw up his hands in the air with abandon, I looked back to the people at my table, who were still watching me, more curious than ever as to what exactly I had done in the bathroom.

           

‘You… don’t, um. understand,” I stammered out. “I just used the urinal.”

           

I could see the small man’s face twist up at this answer, and I was certain the next thing to follow was a series of expletives and accusations. But instead, he simply looked down to the floor, shook his head and muttered something unintelligible before disappearing down an aisle of books.

           

At first, I was relieved that the confrontation was over and that I had won, relatively. And then I felt anger towards that small man. What kind of person publicly interrogates a man’s bathroom actions? And then, finally, I felt what only could be described as a hard truth. This man was a hero. He had done what I had fantasized about oh-so-many times after walking in to an unholy mess in a public stall. How many times had I dreamed about finding the person that committed this outrage and rubbing their nose in it like they were a misbehaving pet? Too many to count, that’s for sure.

And yet I had never had the gumption to actually carry out this task, unlike this man. This man was a hero. A hero who had confronted his monster,  who was me. I was a monster.

           

All of this made me sad and confused at the same time, and I contemplated the unfairness of life. But that contemplation ended the moment I felt a certain lever in my body being pulled again. And then I felt razors being dragged across my stomach and through my brain. And then I couldn’t think anymore. I simply ran. I jumped up and ran right out of the library, I ran in search of a place where a monster would be welcomed, or at least, ignored.

            The End.