Chapter 3 – The Ghost Hole
Drip
Drip
Drip
I had that dream again.
My eyes cracked open at the dawn of twilight. The sweet orange color of sunset woke me up after a long night's sleep. Dammit, I slept 'til twilight again. But this wasn't the first thing that was on my mind. As I came into a half slumber I saw the gleam of metal in front of my face. My mind didn't give me thoughts about this immediately and they only came into my consciousness later. There were little tiny holes everywhere on this metal. And they seemed so big. Yes, this metal device was close to my face. My shock woke me up faster than usual. And could it be, a little stream of light came out of one of the holes. It was….water reflecting light. What was this? Then I smelled dirty cheetos, like on the hand of someone who eats like shit and never bathes.
"Good morning." I heard your voice.
A powerful stream of water burst forth from the holes and hit me directly in the face. I felt like I was drowning, I felt terror like I had never felt before. Millions, billions, countless tiny holes all blasting their own individual stream, all unified into a single torrent of terror. The assault eventually ended and all I could see was you, staring down at me like a kid having fun poking a lizard with a stick.
"Aw, you feelin' upset?" you said. Your face sickens me. Your hair color was so fake. It looked like you bought the dye at Ricky's and did it in an overly-graffitied bathroom at a death metal concert in the sink usually used for drug disposal or vomiting. I could never say these things to you. But I thought them….so much. Just then you reached your cheeto smeared fingers out and wiped them all along the front of my star pajamas."
"Hey man, why you do that!" I screamed.
"Cause your shirt was wet and I needed to wash this off. Besides, the orange stripes work with your star shirt. Now they're shooting stars. See they got little orange trails."
"What the hell, just put your fingers under the sink."
"I can't do that," you said.
"Why not?"
"Cause the sink is all the way in the kitchen. I don't wanna get water all over the floor. Man, everyone knows you never turn the faucet on when it's not over the basin."
"But you just freaking did! Also how the hell did you take the extended faucet all the way into my bedroom? It doesn't pull more than two feet."
"I pulled it. But this part isn't very bendy." You pointed to a giant rusted pipe significantly larger in diameter than the flexi-sink extension, which was only two feet long.
"Dude…that is seriously the wall pipe," I said, marveling at how you could possibly have dismantled my kitchen so thoroughly. "How did you get that out of the wall."
"I dunno."
"But you did it, shouldn't you know how it happened? I mean, physics man…the laws of physics."
"Fuck the law."
"But dude that's not like the police, you don't have a choice but to obey-" You cut me off.
"Dude—you just called it a law. If it's a law, I fuck it."
"But…"
"Law, right?"
"Yeah."
"Fuck the law." Then you opened another bag of cheetos and poured it into a milk carton and started drinking it. "This is better than cereal" you said. "It's part of my daily diet that calls for an infinite serving of doing whatever the hell I want."
It didn't take me very long to realize that that was my milk carton you were drinking directly out of. I recognize it because it has the missing person label on the side – 'Missing: Everyone. Please report to: Someone. Address: Twilight Town.' I was furious. "Why you gotta always be going in my fridge, every single time you come over here you open something I haven't even used yet and you put your mouth on it!"
"That's why I open it, because you don't use it," you said, taking a long sip from my 2% milk. Your eyes widen as something dawns on you. "Oh, speaking of which, I broke your fridge while I was breaking your wall. It's really bad."
"Holy crap, yeah…"
"I know, my spinny was lodged in the wall and it won't come out."
I ran into the kitchen looking to see what damage had been done. You really did it this time. There was a gigantic hole in the wall that looked into pipes with a giant space where the pipe was removed.
"Oh sh—I gotta call the landlord!"
"There is no landlord. There is no one."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Leave." Then you began to walk out. "You wanna come with me, I was gonna go out and look for an apartment. I do that every twilight for the past 10 years. Still haven't found a place."
"You know, I've been wondering where you live for a while."
"Shit man, I don't live nowhere, I just travel through the walls through those space-teleporty void things." You look at me with an impatient scowl and pick up a cake fork you see lying on the floor in front of the giant gaping hole in the wall. Sparks fly out of the hole and onto the floor from where you dismantled an electrical socket. "Floor's kinda messy," you say, placing the fork on the counter. "Come on, let's be roommates. I do the dishes. You're not gonna find another roommate who would do your dishes. In fact, you're not gonna find another roommate."
"Well, I guess I have no other options," I said and followed him out the door. We were wandering around for a few hours when suddenly I saw a shadow swish. It was a very lumpus shape. The setting sun made it stretch all the way down the cobblestone alley in a frightening way.
"Axel, what's that. I think there's a guy standing there outside that building sweeping."
As we approached the figure seemed to notice, but pretended not to, sweeping methodically in front of the building. He was balding and had hair only on the sides of his head, but it was unusually horizontally protruding. It seemed to be of a light orange color, just like the sunset. His nose was unusually round, as was his stomach, which pushed unpleasantly like a giant round ball from underneath his white undershirt in a way that said "I don't give a fuck."
I hesitated for a moment, but was propelled forward by you pushing me directly in front of this mysterious figure. "Yo, maybe he's the super or some shit," you said, in reference to the apartment building he stood before. "Ask him if he's got rooms open."
I walked up closer, so that I could have a good look at the apartment building. A wooden sign hung above the entrance. It was very worn down and had white paint writing that read "The Ghost Hole." The building didn't seem to have a number.
I approached him while you played paddleball. "E-excuse me."
The sweeping figure ceased, hovering above his broom with his face still looking down in an extremely dramatic and anticipatory fashion. Then suddenly it jerked up, revealing a face entirely painted like a clowns' with a big bright red nose.
"Hello, are you…" I began.
"An evil murder clown? Yes."
"No, I meant a superintendent?"
"What is?"
"It's the owner of a building who holds the keys to all rooms and gives renters a copy so that they can sleep peacefully in their beds lending all trust to the superintendent…who also has a key to the rooms and could easily enter them at any moment."
"Yes. I am this. I also give parties for children. Currently, we have open room."
"Fuckin' A. Which rooms?"
"All."
"Wow, that's pretty lucky. Hey Axel, come here, all the rooms are open!"
You shambled over. "How much is the rent?" You asked.
"Your life…savings."
"Dude, that's really expensive, but only for the first month. What is that sign up there? 'Ghost hole'? What the hell does that mean?"
"Ivan the Evil Murder Clown does not turn the radiators on until January. Bua. Ha. Ha."
"Well, that's cool man…" then I paused. "Haha, I just realized that that makes sense literally. Get it, cool, 'cause it's cold in January…haha…get it?"
Ivan looked at me gravely.
"Ivan only laughs at murder," he said.
"But you were just laughing about the radiator."
Ivan paused, thinking hard, and was surprised that he had to think so hard.
"Well that is because it was unpleasantness, which is mildly amusing, but murder is much funnier."
"Ok, so when can we get our keys?"
"Excuse me," Ivan said. He lay the broom down and shambled over to the sign that said 'The Ghost Hole.' He took it off the door post, broke it in half and then went behind the apartment building. In a few minutes he came back with a new wooden sign, which was new only relatively speaking, because it was also rotten and old. He then sat down on a hideous, cracked, yellow waiting room chair he had sitting outside the apartment building. There were stains of brown rings on it and cotton coming out. He dragged a white paint can up to him and began painting the words 'The Ghost Hole' on the sign.
I just stood there awhile. After about 15 minutes he was done and posted the sign up in the same place as the other one. It looked exactly the same.
"Go inside. You don't need key. Rooms are upstairs."
I walked inside and I was overcome by a musky, moldy smell. I felt an instant cold, damp breeze in there and it was very dark. The walls were pure concrete without any coloration on them at all and random words were painted on the sides in white paint. 'The Ghost Hole' was written over and over. Some of the writing was indiscernible, but one could still tell the tone, which was mad. Some of the other writing said 'Ivan loves a good party,' 'get out of my living room,' and 'the number 10,000 is amazing.' There were several rooms on the sides with molding, peeling wallpaper with stains of long removed frames. The wall paper was shades of pink and yellow, sometimes with little balloons or flowers, sort of like a children's nursery. There were balloons of all colors sitting silently on the tops of the ceiling. A destroyed teddy bear, some 'punch-me clowns', and other various play things lay around. But mostly in all these rooms were hundreds upon hundreds of broken wooden signs piled up on top of each other, that all said 'The Ghost Hole.'
"This sucks."