Onetwo.

There was a strange man at the house.

He was returning up the hill, walking briskly while immersed in a world downloaded into his ipod. His stomach was full from a free steak meal and his senses slightly dulled from a pint or two. The restaurant had been, as he suspected, empty of all but the bartender, two waitresses, and the kitchen staff, who were found in a pitch battle with the evenings delivery of fresh arctic char when he arrived.

The Boss, a man of discriminating taste, was likely at home watching America’s Next Top Model, which he never misses an episode of.

He ate the free plate in the kitchen, leaning against the wash basin, a fork in one hand, his dinner in the other, and they collectively bullshitted their way through the better part of an hour, punctuated by idle threats of cartoon violence and a string of Glengarry Glenn Ross one-liners.

“Who am I? Fuck you, that’s who I am.”

“See this watch? This cost more than your fucking car.”

“You’re a secretary. Fuck you, and kiss my ass.”

He didn’t actually know any himself, aside from what he’d heard flying their way around the kitchen. It would be months before he saw the movie.

There was a strange man at the house.

Round and blue, appearing more like an anthropomorphic M&M from a distance than a man, standing just outside his door.

A company van sat parked on the other side of the shallow road.

Rental.

“Aw, fuck me raw-ways.”

Had the inspection been today? Yes. Yes of course it had. It couldn’t possibly be any other way. Otherwise the joke just didn’t work.

Already past any escape between the passing buildings, the candied-man had spotted him, so with much loathe and begrudgement, he walked the last block under observation.

“Alright my rotund fellow, and just who are you?”

Silly questions at least made the day pass quicker.

“Apartment inspector; you….?”

“No, I’m not him, yes I live here. Do please come in.”

He pushed the door open, astounding the jolly inspector who hadn’t once thought that a tenant would leave their unit unlocked, and so never bothered to try the door. The husky man’s feet hurt now, having been standing there for a good ten minutes in the summer heat, and with an extra person wrapped around his waist.

They stepped over discarded appliance boxes and large clear garbage bags filled with a month’s trash. The air seemed toxic now to both of them, having enjoyed the relatively clean breeze outside.

The chubby working man’s eyes started to water, and a creep went up his spine then refused to come back down.

The rug seemed to have scurried off.

“Okay, you pass” squealed Porky, then ran out the front door.

One.

He felt like a housewife, albeit with the motivation of a college sophomore to act on his more maternal instincts. An army of empty bottles, cans and compacted fast food takeout bags, what's left of their once precious combo cargo left to decay within, surrounded him on all sides as he sat in a near-ancient brown sofa-chair, upholstered a shade of god-awful brown that only sold during that wonderful moment in time between the fall of Nixon and the rise of Reagan when everyone wore tight pants and powdered their noses before even sitting on the can. From behind, the windowless bathroom sucked in all light and matter and hope, while slowly bleeding a smell that crept up your spine, got in behind the back of your eyes, and did something pretty un-Christian to your olfactories.

It was Suez. It was Ulster. It was Basra and Chechnya and the West Bank in once porcelain white, now a sickly greenish-yellow. Showering was only bearable once the steam clogged his nose, and the water was hot enough to burn even the dirtiest of nights off his body, let alone whatever monstrous bacterial miscreants made the small room home. A ring wound its way around the tub just above his feet as he stood in the bath, the result not of oddly intimate evenings with candlelight, candy and oils of many varieties, but a condition of the clog somewhere down the drain that meant for every minute under the warm water, his feet were submerged another centimeter under the collecting cloudy murk.

The toilet didn't flush. At least not proper-wise. At some point over the year, it had made a secret pact with the bowels of the house to only fully evacuate when something solid could be found. The typical soup that thusly resided most of the day in the bowl, which was promised to have been repaired months ago, was quite recognizably the origin of much of the room's unruly character.

The responsibilities of a Roommate... whose appearances seemed less and less frequent since the fall, when, tired of having to be awake for the arguably early hour of 3:30 pm, dropped out of the one class it was known to be taking, to master the lost ancient art of morbid obesity and tragic lethargy. How he loathed the Roommate. Although many would find themselves in the terribly cliche position of sharing room and board with the unethical and unapologetic, with the same stories of fighting over missing frozen pizzas and having friends over far too late into the night that everyone else had from living in student housing, he found himself in an inexplicably more bizarre situation, locked into an 8 month contract with the Immovable Object, one of the 7 Great Legends of the Undergraduate World. Aside from a back corner of the apartment where it spent much of it's time snoring anemically and the washroom thats doors were strung with police-caution tape for a very good reason, the rest of the apartment remained untouched personally by it's corruption.

He had force fed it an apple once, long ago.
The core quite possibly still sat rotting in It's room somewhere, behind the curiously horded garbage and copies of "Tom Clancy" novellas.
He could clean Its mess himself, he knew. In less than a day of intensive cleaning, assisted only with a full bottle of industrial cleaner and a complete selection of preventative shots for rabies and syphilis, he could turn the whole place around. But the nightmare of the toilet always stopped him short in his tracks. The toilet had been Its job, Its one job, and it had gone worse than Shelly Bryants last Halloween party (which, in all fairness, wasn't that bad once the rioters got it into their heads to reenact the last 30 minutes of Do The Right Thing).
No matter how pine fresh and spring clean the rest of the apartment became, the washroom's toxicity would simply overpower the newfound balance in a matter of days.
If he was going to feel like a housewife, he thought, then he had better start drinking like a housewife.

...

Some people and places are based on real folks and spaces, but every character is a little bit of truth, and a hell of a lot of fiction.

Cheers,
Michael Alexander