“Goddamn mother fucking storm. I swear, it rains half an inch and suddenly life becomes Quest for fucking Fire.” William had a tendency to comfort himself stringing together expletives when no one else was around; it’s almost a hobby of his.
Fumbling around his drawers, pushing discarded corks and half empty cigarette packs out of the way, William finds a book of matches and strikes one. He chuckles as he reads the matchbook. Marymark Laundromat. The fact that a laundromat has its own matchbooks amuses him. He lights a cigarette from one of the crumpled packs in the drawer and then a small red candle that he keeps next to his bed. Pocketing the rest of the matches, he blows out the match just as it starts to burn his thumb.
The small candle, while diligent in its efforts, doesn’t provide much light. It doesn’t matter anyway; William doesn’t need the light. His bedroom glows dark amber from the flame and long, malformed shadows cascade the walls. His apartment was old. Too old for his taste. His ancient one-eyed landlady once told him the history of the building when he moved in two weeks prior; she told him how construction started in the early 40s but was stopped because of the war and how construction was later managed by four different contractors because the first two died in Europe, and the third, her husband, died on site in some sort of freak accident. The old woman’s story didn’t interest William, though it did explain why the brick walls and the wood of the floors didn’t match from room to room, and maybe even why the hall closet door was impossible to open. William hates that door.
Stifled from the lack of circulating air, William draws open his curtains to open the window. Bricks. William shakes his head at his lack of a view, bites down on his cigarette and begins pulling up on the closed window. He spits words through his teeth with every pull: “How. In. The. Hell. Did. They. Build. These. Fucking. Buildings. So. Fucking. Close. Together?” His hand violently slips off of the ledge. “Fuck! Nothing works in this fucking place!”
Irritated, William stubs out his cigarette, grabs his candle in a swipe and charges out of his bedroom. The only other window is in the kitchen on the opposite side of the apartment; William knows that opening it won’t remedy the temperature in his room, but he is determined to find something that works in the apartment. Walking down the long hallway leading away from his room, William tries to make sense of the design of his new home. On his left, several feet from his bedroom is the front door which would not open all the way because the width of the hall could not accommodate the entire width of the door. Further down, on the right is another long hall. There is no bathroom. The second hall puzzles William the most. Nothing is on either side of the hall, only the inoperable closet door at the hall’s end. As he passes the opening to the hall, a stream of hot air hits him nearly blowing out his candle. William pauses only for a moment, and mumbles under his breath before continuing towards the kitchen.
The kitchen offers William no reprieve from the heat. Even the touch of tile under his bare feet feels moist and lukewarm. The second window sits above the sink and looks out onto another brick wall; however, the window is far enough away from the adjacent building to allow a small sliver of sky to be seen. The rain rushes down the pane of the glass and William pushes it up, ignoring the raging torrent outside. He watches the rainwater pour into the house. “Fuck it, at least it’s cooler.”
Taking pause in the cool night air, William grabs a glass off of the counter and goes to fill it in the sink. He turns the faucet on. Nothing, just a moan from the struggling pipes. “Son of a bitch, this thing worked, like, three fucking hours ago. Why did I even move into this hellhole?”
With a loud groan William slams the glass down onto the counter and starts out of the room grabbing his candle in a huff. He walks through darkened hall towards his room but a sudden loud crash from behind stops him. He starts and scurries back into the kitchen. The window has fallen shut with such force that the glass had broken, leaving only a few long, tooth-like shards hanging, the rest of the glass was spread about the floor. He stares at his now wrecked kitchen. He takes a deep breath. “Fuck.”
As he turns to retreat into his room a torrent of light bombards his eyes. The power’s back on. “Oh Jesus, thank Christ” he breathes as he looks down at the floor waiting for his eyes to adjust. He blows out the candle and starts down the hall. As he walks, he glances down the second hall and sees, for an instant, that the door at the end of the hall is open. Before he could register what he saw, a flash of blue light floods the apartment and he is left, again, in total darkness.
William quickly pats at his pants looking for his pack of landromat matches, and finding them, relights his candle. He holds the trembling flame towards the end of the hall, revealing that a closed door. Nervous, William begins walking down the uncomfortably narrow hall.
“HA! Fuck you, buddy! I’m not going anywhere.”
... Nervous, William begins walking down the uncomfortably narrow hall.
“What part of ‘fuck you’ did you not understand? Your curiosity isn’t getting me down that creepy ass hall.”
Wait a second, what is going on here? Go down the hall, you do what I say, I’m telling the story here.
“Yeah, and I’m living the story here, and I know that when I go down that hall towards your little mystery closet you’re just going to have some ghost or corpse come out and scare the piss out of me. Is that it? Is that your game, you sick fuck?”
Well, I wasn’t sure yet, I was going to have you get dragged into the dark closet just as you get towards the end of the hall and sort of figure out what did it later.
“You were going to fucking kill me and you don’t even have the decency to tell me by what?! Look, it’s bad enough that you have shacked me up in the idiotically shitty apartment, but now you’re just being dishonest.”
I’m not being dishonest!
“Horseshit, you’re using me to fulfill some weird fetish you have in seeing people killed by something that you have grown to fear in your childhood. Is it going to be a doll? Are you afraid of dolls, you enormous fucking pussy?”
Look, you little... Alright, it’s part of the plot. You’re that unlikable character that gets killed off early in the story to set up the more likable main character moving in and getting tormented by the weird things happening, which ultimately leads up to a scary, dramatic climax!
“I’m not even the main character? You suck. You know that? You really suck. I bet the main character is going to be some cute girl in her early twenties who researches the history of the building only to find out that the landlady murdered her husband and stuffed his corpse in that closet, and now it’s haunted by his vengeful ghost.”
Well, you know that’s pretty good!
“No it isn’t, you idiot! That’s a fucking horrible plot!”
Come on, it’s better than anything I could come up with! I can make you come back from the dead near the end and attack the heroine. You would be all bloodied and dead; it could be cool!
“Hm. So what you’re saying is that if I go down the hall and get killed by your little closet ghost, monster whatever the fuck, I get to come back as a zombie and torment people from beyond the grave?”
Sure.
“Can I eat anyone?”
How about I give her a boyfriend that doesn’t appreciate her enough, he’s cheating on her, gets drunk all of the time, you know a real bastard like you, and you can eat him, thus freeing her from her restrictive relationship?
“I like it. It’s sort of an anti-hero type of thing. I’m hated, but I sort of save the day in the long run by eating her prick boyfriend. Alright, fuck it, I’ll do it. I mean really what else can I do in this shitty world you’ve created for me?”
Sitting in the dark, complaining and swearing a lot for the rest of eternity is essentially your only other option.
“Fuck it. I’ll do it. I guess you can continue where you left off.
With the nervously walking down the hall part?
“Yeah, but don’t say I’m nervous, it makes me look like a pussy.”
Fine.
“Alright, go.”
Curious, William begins walking down the uncomfortably narrow hall. “Better.” Thank you, now shut up. “Dick.” I said shut up! The hall is narrow to the point where William has to walk at an angle. Reaching the end of the hall, William grabs the doorknob and turns. “Why is this taking so long?”
I’m building tension, give me a couple more sentences.
“Fine, Shakespeare, I’m just ready for some fucked up zombie action.”
God, I can’t believe you are a child of my mind. Anyway. William grabs the doorknob and turns. Nothing. Frustrated, William begins to turn when the door suddenly flies open. Several long, white spectral hands reach out and grab William by his head, and drag him into the closet. As his frantically kicking feet pass into the darkness, the closet door slams, muffling the screams emanating from within.
The end.
“The end?! You asshole! What about the girl and the asshole boyfriend that I eat?”
I lied.
