Rubble was always extremely helpful, never refusing to help anyone. If old Mary from downstairs came to him asking to take out the garbage, do the shopping or look after her cats while she prayed for the Smolensk victims with her haunted friends from the local parish, he never refused.
On the one hand, I even admired him a little, but this idiot let himself be used by anyone perfidiously.
Half of this year's master's thesis came from his pen, he saved the ass of practically his entire class. Even the saleswoman in the liquor store stopped giving him change after telling him fairy tales about how poor she is and has eight starving children. And the idiot not only believed her, but also offered himself as an unpaid babysitter. Well, fuck. Nevertheless, it was only him who suffered from all this, so I didn't give a fuck about it.
But recently he's outdone himself. His mother called him and in a tearful voice announced that his aunt, whom he had seen once in his life, by the way, at the age of five, had left the hospital and had nowhere to go, and she did not have the heart to send her to an old people's home. So she had the brilliant idea of having Auntie come live with us for some reason before they and my father figure out a humane way to get rid of her.
I could hear the whole conversation clearly, Rubble had his mum on speaker because he was shaving his beard, so I immediately began to make it clear to him that taking some demented old woman into our studio apartment was the worst idea in the world.
However, he probably misinterpreted my waving arms and violent head shaking because he agreed to his mother's plan with a smile, moreover, he said that they don't have to hurry to find her a new place because we have perfect living conditions for three people.
He forgot to add that we have one fucking double bed, and there's not even room for a mattress on the floor, even if you get rid of that year-old layer of beer and soda cans.
Later, he explained that he did not want to worry his mother, he assured her that it would not be so bad. In a way, he was right, it was even worse than anyone could have expected.
This crazy old woman came to us on Sunday, I remember because I was just coming back from an afternoon meeting with my homies in the city when I ran into Rubble under the cage.
He immediately comes to me and says that our guest has already arrived, but there is a problem. I was already at a fairly advanced stage of considering moving, but decided to hold off for now and not get kicked out of my own apartment. Well, maybe not entirely your own, but whatever. Anyway, pretending to be excited, I ask my roommate what's going on.
It turned out that the poor old woman has something wrong with her hip and she can barely walk anyway, so getting to the third floor where we lived is beyond her capabilities. Still trying to keep the corners of my mouth up, I ask how he wants to solve this.
He was a bit confused, but finally he managed to say that I actually have to bring her there because he has problems with his spine, an orthopedist, things like that, and there is no elevator in our block.
At first I thought he was joking, but it wasn't until his serious expression that I realized that the idiot really expected me to drag his infirm aunt up to the third floor.
- You're fucked up. I say, and he starts to roar that he promised his mother and he wants to help blah blah, the rest of it was hard to understand, the boy started to cry.
I sighed theatrically and picked him up from the ground, asking where his aunt was. After the third pack of tissues, I found out that he left it with a neighbor so that she wouldn't freeze in the cage. I left him there to sort himself out and entered our block.
Pretty embarrassed, I knock on Mary's door and say I've come to pick up Sara, that was the witch's name.
She opened it in a fraction of a second and almost in tears told me to get the devil out of her apartment. It didn't surprise me too much, Mary had a tendency to call everyone that she didn't see at Mass on Sunday, or caught drinking vodka outside the block during Lent. However, it didn't seem like Aunt Rubble did any of those things after all, so I'm asking what happened because it looks like someone told her that she ate meat on Good Friday.
- TAKE HER! she tore, and I entered her apartment a bit worried looking for the devil she was talking about.
I found her in the living room, sitting with her feet up on a small table, watching today's service, which Mary had already downloaded to DVD and had probably watched several times.
Honestly, the first impression wasn't so bad, just a slightly fat old lady, around seventy, in clothes that were probably all the rage in the 1950s. A classic maroon beret on an almost bald head, a face so wrinkled that her eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of their sockets, an aquiline nose and a horizontal line of her mouth from which the tips of her last teeth protruded timidly. Plus a pretty neat old-fashioned coat, an ugly skirt, and some prototype version of boots on her feet. Quite inconspicuously. I smile with all my might.
- Good morning, my name is Marshall and I'm Rubble's friend. I've come to take you upstairs with us. She looked blank and went back to watching mass, the priest was saying something about sacrificing for others and prioritizing doing good.
Fuck how perfect for my situation. Being a helpful person has already made me sick. A good quarter of an hour passed before I convinced Mary to help me carry Sarah out of the apartment. She took her by the legs, I grabbed her arms from below, and somehow we managed to get her out onto the cage.
Before I could say anything, our dear neighbor slammed the door and locked herself with all the locks, and I was left alone with the devil in the stairwell. I mean, I didn't call her that then, and I gave her that nickname later. Nevertheless, the situation was not colorful. Rubble ran away somewhere, I couldn't count on my neighbor's help.
The only thing left for me to do is bring this carcass into the apartment, where I will finally have peace with it. I grabbed her tighter and started to drag her up the stairs, which must have looked quite comical because the old woman weighed a lot and her skinny legs were bouncing limply on the next steps.
Halfway through, I was seriously contemplating suicide. I took off the hoodie I was going to come back for later and with the last of my strength hauled this body up to the third floor. I rummage in my pockets and realize to my horror that I have no keys. Hopefully, I start knocking on the door, but of course Rubble is not there, probably still crying on the bench in front of the block.
I sit Sarah against the wall, tell her not to move anywhere and that I'll be right back. Sweaty and extremely exhausted ... no sport and only fast food ... I run down the stairs and pretending to be asthmatic, I run in front of the block. To my dismay, Rubble is nowhere to be found. I walk around the block. Nothing. Monopoly. Nothing. Fuck.
With the last of my strength, I crawl back to the block, on the way planning in detail the murder of the bastard who condemned me to such a cruel fate. Rubble probably went out for a drink in town, bursting with pride at how well he'd tricked me.
I'm almost to the cage when I see a familiar figure on the horizon. He was about to open his mouth when my fist made closer contact with his teeth.
- Where the fuck have you been? Do you know what I went through here? I yell at him hoarsely
- I went to pick up her luggage, which she left in the taxi. He begins to sob ... as it turned out later, this suitcase was completely empty ... which finally calms me down.
I lie down next to him and we lie on the sidewalk like two homeless people, one looking like he's about to spit out his lungs and the other crying so hard that even Mary opened the window for a moment to see what was going on.
- Where she is? finally asks Rubble.
- I left it at our door because I forgot my keys. I tell him.
Rubble got up in a split second.
- Are you crazy?! She's about to fall down the stairs! he started screaming so loud that the whole block closed the windows.
Such a state was quite unusual for him, so I pulled out my phone and started recording the whole situation to remind it on his birthday. Pissed, bloody and crying, he started climbing up the stairs, and I followed him, still clutching my prehistoric Xperia. Halfway there, I heard him scream
- I KNEW IT WOULD BE! Suddenly my strength returned and, putting the phone back in my pocket, I made it through the next floor at the speed of light.
In the middle of the aisle, between the apartments, Sara lay covered in blood and urine. It looked like she had tripped on a step and hit her head hard against the concrete.
Rubble hovered over her and was about to begin CPR when she opened her eyes. She looked at us indifferently and, as if nothing had happened, got up, scratching her head, opened the door to our apartment and squeezed inside.
Then I realized that I had my keys in a sweatshirt that I took off on the way. I looked horrified at Rubble, who was as surprised and scared as I was. He looked like shit, his whole face covered in blood and slime, his clothes dirty with dirt... We entered our studio, dazed.
Sarah was dozing carelessly on our bed, drooling my pillow and staining the sheets with the blood that kept flowing from her head from her close encounter with the concrete. The whole room stank of urine so badly you could barely breathe.
We were both so exhausted that we closed the door and curled up on it , going to sleep hoping that when we wake up it will all be just a bad dream. Well it wasn't.
When we got up, all sweaty and still very dirty, Sarah was lying on the bed with her eyes wide open, staring blankly at us.
- Fuck, so it wasn't a dream. sighed Rubble, who finally realized what a big mistake he had made.
In general, since that fateful day, he became very vulgar, which was completely unlike him.
- You understood it in time. I tell him and get up off the floor.
We went to take care of ourselves, in the meantime remembering about our new roommate's broken head and bandaged her, washing the wound with the rest of Friday's booze and wrapping the whole head with toilet paper.
She looked scary, but at least she didn't pierce us with those blood-curdling eyes anymore. We sat on the chairs and started to think what to do next. That is, how to throw her out of our apartment in the least brutal way possible.
I told him to call his mother and tell him he could take her, but the angel said he'd be stupid to wait at least a week. And I, an idiot, agreed to it. Thus began the worst week of my life so far.
Let's start with the fact that this old woman pretended to be paralyzed in front of us, and as soon as we let her out of our sight, she did some wild actions. On the very first day of her stay with us, she made rounds of all the apartments in the block with her head wrapped in bloody toilet paper. We only found out about it two days later from Mary, who almost had a heart attack when she saw her through the peephole.
And then, as if nothing had happened, she returned to the apartment, where we found her after returning from the store where we stocked up for this hard week. She was lying in bed watching something on a portable DVD that Rubble had borrowed from one of his buddies, because of course we couldn't afford a TV.
Another situation, we once went out to some party, making sure that the doors and windows are well closed and our tenant can't run away.
When we returned, we discovered that she had somehow managed to force the lock and leave the block. We found her halfway to the pharmacy, where she wanted to replenish her supply of ibuprofen, which she ate like candy. Then she explained in a broken voice that they had kidnapped her and left her on the street.
Speaking of ibuprofen, that fucked up old woman was addicted to it. It's basically drugs in general, but ibuprofen was her fucking favourite. She poured packets into a glass and ate it like chips, staring at one of the movies Rubble had rented along with the DVD.
And when we tried to snatch them from her, she poured the whole thing into her mouth before we could do anything. After a while, we gave up, silently praying that she would survive. When she couldn't see the full package in sight, she screamed so loudly that the neighbors wanted to call the police more than once to get her away. We barely managed to convince everyone to last a week.
We learned two things never to leave her alone and always have a supply of ibuprofen on hand.
The second night she stayed with us, she woke up around 2 and ate all the supplies we had, then started screaming that she wanted more.
Unfortunately, both Rubble and I were so drunk that we totally ignored her wild cries and took a nap on the floor right by the door, just in case she went mad and wanted to come out in the middle of the night.
When she saw that we weren't impressed by her screams, she took the phone and called 997, roaring into the receiver that she was out of ibuprofen and wanted more.
Fortunately, they thought she was a prankster and told her to fuck off. I mean, I don't know if it's completely, fortunately, because she got so pissed off that you could hear her all over the estate, I know, because a guy who lives two streets away later told me that he heard a bear roar in the middle of the night.
We lifted our heads and watched the unfolding of events in a daze.
She started jumping around the room, screaming and waving her arms. She smashed the chair and the DVD, for which Rubble had to pay a hefty sum later, and then pounded on the glass with her hands for a good few minutes after seeing how well guarded the door was. Fortunately, her arm must have hurt because she gave up quickly.
Instead, she had another idea. she started to piss! All over the room. Bed, table, walls, all in urine. Then she seemed to calm down a bit and went to sleep.
As we were putting together all our flashbacks of what had happened that night the next day, we all agreed that it was a good thing we didn't have to see it after all.
The whole room looked like a fucking battlefield, there were splinters from the chair everywhere, of course it stank of urine so badly that we didn't close the window for the next six months, and on top of that, a damaged DVD came out. And Sarah sat smugly on the bed and stared at us with that look of hers. Even Rubble was slowly getting fed up. And that wasn't the end.
The real fun was with the food. Sarah turned out to be a real French dog and our diet, consisting mainly of fast food and things from the microwave, did not appeal to her. She was only satisfied with food from a local restaurant, where we bought a weekly subscription for dumplings. Admittedly, she had a good appetite, she ate twenty dumplings a day. I mean, we thought so, because as it turned out later, this fucked-up woman was hiding some for later.
She literally squeezed it between the folds of fat, hid it in her pockets, generally stuffed these dumplings everywhere she could. We still find them to this day, stuffed behind the back of the bed, wedged under the mattress, stored on the outside windowsills.
It was unfortunate that I had a date at the time. So I tell him he needs to stay with his aunt because I'm going on a date. He tells me that he had plans too and he can't really change them. In desperation, we went to Mary.
When she heard our pleading request, she slammed the door, saying she was going to a rosary circle meeting. We looked at each other and smiled.
Half an hour later we left Sara in the church, asking the parish priest to keep an eye on her if possible, and we went our way. Date didn't work out because that stupid cunt completely forgot, so I went for fast food.
I knew from afar that something was wrong. I deduced this from the two ambulances and four police cars in the church parking lot. I bumped into Rubble on the way and we went inside together.
The parish priest was standing in front of the policeman with a notebook, explaining something. Sara's guardian was also covered in vomit, and what looked suspiciously like urine mixed with blood. When the parish priest saw us, he started running screaming at the top of his lungs.
- IT'S THEM! THIS LITTLE DEVILS!
The policeman told us to go home, assuring that they would accompany our ward. Sara actually came back with the creepy smile we're used to and a few boxes of her "candy" .
To this day, we don't know what that fucked-up woman did there, but there was no mass in the church until some exorcism was performed. They wrote about it in the newspapers, but they didn't write what exactly happened there. Mary also suffered, who, thanks to us, was traumatized for the rest of her life, and has not spoken to us to this day.
The day has finally come. Rubble looked with bloodshot eyes at our apartment, filled with countless ibuprofen containers, at the pissed walls and ceiling, at the taped window and the door in which we added an extra lock. He looked at me sadly, and I bet he was thinking about Mary, who is now traumatized for the rest of her life thanks to us. He reached into his sweatshirt pocket and tossed out two lost dumplings, then pulled out his phone. He looked at me questioningly. I, in turn, turned to Sarah, surrounded by those dumplings that didn't fit anywhere anymore and, of course, several dozen packets of ibuprofen.
She didn't even need bedding, she slept buried in them up to her ears.
It looked pretty scary, but at least we didn't have to look at her, we even forgot she was there.
I looked at Rubble and nodded
He lifted the phone to his ear and, looking at me with a smile, dialed his mother's number.
