T: My my hungry for more are we? Well then please do help yourself to the first course… but don't fill up too much because there is still much more to come
The Hole in the Wall
I hoping that at least you guys can enjoy this because it's certainly messed me up for life… it seems a lot more absurd as time goes by the past 12 days since I moved out of my apartment and back in with my mom… I just wanna get this out there so people can call bullshit on my story… maybe it'll make me feel better.
I've moved out all my stuff already, I've already call the cops… well I told my mom since she is a cop anyway and she took care of the rest… I informed my absentee land lord… I CeCe Jones have done all the proper things so there's nothing left that I need to do except share my little messed up… city living story
About 6 months ago, Rocky and I moved into our apartment complex just outside of Chicago… I know not that far from home but still it wasn't in our parent's place… anyway about 2 weeks in her dad gets into this horrible car accident and her mom asks her to come back and help out at home until he can get back on his feet… it was a horrible accident… he almost died… and since then she's been living with them as he goes through rehab… Because of that I've been living in our one bedroom apartment for the past almost half a year… It's a beautiful place, newly remodeled, double pan windows, great insulation… the best a couple like Rocky and I who were just starting out could wish for… It's not perfect… there's a couple of weird things about but… it was our first place… anyway there were only four units in the building… on the second and third floors… and one on the top floor… the first thing we noticed when we first moved in was that the walls were paper thin… we could hear every single word of our downstairs neighbors at all times… we heard when they took showers, when they'd eat… when they'd fuck… everything… as well as I'm sure they could hear the same from me and Rocky… it was weird the more info we knew about our neighbors, the less we wanted to get to know them… they moved out 6 weeks ago… then the other two units shortly followed… it was really weird… but also awesome… I could finally stomp around, crank up the music, play games at full volume… do pretty much whatever I wanted… but about 4 weeks ago it got real weird… it was about 1AM… I was about to go to bed when I started hearing this noise from the empty apartment downstairs… it started off really quiet at first… it sounded like a mix between a hushed conversation with just one person talking… and a small motor running… It startled me at first but then I rationalized it had to be some sort of plumbing or the refrigerator from the apartment downstairs… something I hadn't heard because of our neighbor's snoring and… other activities… I learned to live with it as it would rise and fall every evening… but then soon after it started… a small… tapping sound started in with it… I know it sounds really weird but when you hear it every single night… you start to make excuses for it… then I started hearing boards creaking… well its spring, my first in the complex so I just assumed it's the old boards settling into the new drywall… but then one night as I was brushing my teeth there was a loud, dry thump right behind me… I scared me so much I almost stabbed myself with my toothbrush… I stayed very still until I was sure there was no one in the house… then I went and turned on all the lights… it was then that I noticed some peculiarities about the remodeling… on the other side of the bathroom, where I heard the thump, is the hallway closet… I go over and open it up, turning on the light… expecting to see a box or something had fallen of the shelf… but there was nothing of the sort… I tap on the wall between the closet and bathroom… and it sounds oddly hollow… as I look more I start to realize that… the closet isn't as wide as it should be according to how big the bathroom is… I pace it out with my feet… then I use a tape measure to make sure and sure enough… there's about 30 inches of space between the two walls that I thought were adjacent… Rationalization time… surely there isn't extra insulation to keep the bathroom warm… or maybe walls are thicker than I imagined because I have never built a house… so in this one thick wall some huge rat must have taken a tumble and it freaked me out… ok… ok no big deal… I felt a little better after that… even better when I didn't hear the weird noise, for the first time in a while, that night… So everything's fine…
Until last Friday night… it was around 2 in the morning I had just gotten home from hanging out with some friends… wanting to get some sleep before I went out to go see Rocky… for some reason I'm wondering if I remembered to start the dryer before I left to make sure I had some clean clothes for the weekend trip in the morning… one thing sticks out at me as I climb the stairs up to my apartment… the door to the apartment under me is closed… it's been open since the neighbors left… I got used to seeing an empty mirror image of my place every time I walked past it… I guess the landlord was showing it to some people today and… rationalize, rationalize, rationalize… I grabbed laundry bag and head down the back porch steps to the laundry room… which is really just part of the garage but the staircase is on the outside of the building and gives each room a bit of a shared porch… anyway I get down to the small laundry room and start bagging my clothes into the big duffle bag… two things you should know about me… I always turn off every light when I leave a room… I've gotten way too many lectures from my mom to not do so… and I also lock the door every time I go through it… first thing I notice as I ascended the stairs to my apartment is that the light in my bedroom is on… and there is a silhouette against the closed blinds… I just about peed my pants when I saw it and I got chills all up and down my body… and then the light went out… all of this happened in less than a second but still 30 seconds later I'm still standing in the same stop, frozen, trying to figure out if what I just saw what I thought I saw… the rationalization part of my brain shorted out… thank god… I quietly snuck back down the stairs and through the garage… I called a cab then stood across the street as I waited for it… looking up at my living room window… a few minutes before the cab got there the blinds parted slightly for a few seconds… like someone was looking out… watching me
I went straight to my mom's house from there and spent the weekend with her and Rocky… then when I decided to come back I asked Ty and Deuce to come back with me to see how much stuff had been stolen… but when we got back and checked everything… it was all there… my laptop was still charging, our new TV hadn't been touched and the doors were locked… I decided then to move everything out while I still had Ty and Deuce with me… and plenty of daylight
Before I left I checked out the downstairs apartment… the bathroom closet had the same oddly thick wall that mine did… only someone had hammered through this wall… a big, round, jagged hole… exposing the crawl space between… and in the space… flat between the wall… was a cheap hardware ladder… leading up into the darkness… to the space in between the wall in my apartment…
I don't know how he got into my apartment… maybe through the heating vents or something… I really don't give a damn… all I care about is never seeing that damn building again… I mailed my keys to the landlord, told my mom the whole story and she made the police report on it… I quit my shitty job… which might be the only good thing to come of this… anything but dancing to me is a shitty job… I'm recording this at my mom's place right now… Rocky and I are looking for new apartments and she plans on staying with me this time since her dad is now able to start back at his job… we're looking for places closer to our parent's places but truthfully I want to get as far away from Chicago as I can… more so that apartment complex than our parent's homes… thing is… I haven't told Rocky what happened… I made Ty promise me he wouldn't say a word of it to her… she doesn't handle stress well like he does and I didn't want to stress her any more than she already was with the situation with her dad… All I told her was that the landlord went crazy and kicked me out… I don't ever want to live in an apartment ever again… I used to like my mom's apartment but ever since this experience I still can't sleep in my old room… I don't ever want to hear the sound of people moving above or below me… or on the other side of the wall… never again