The House Next Door

John Fogarty 3635 Chateau Lane Indianapolis, IN 46226 E-mail: [email protected]

2700 words All Rights © 2007, John Fogarty

The House Next Door by John Fogarty

I

t was during my third attempt at a suntan this afternoon that I decided to break into the house next door. For one thing, it was an eyesore. (Not me sunbathing, dammit, the house). A two-storey

“crackerbox” from the Sixties, it had long since slipped into decrepitude: all the windows were broken; the aluminum siding hung in strips from its upper story; and its overgrown lawn was messy, matted and brown. It was a vagrant of a house; a homeless house. A crack-house. I was sure of it. During the past two years, I’ve seen all kinds of people—black, white, purple, pink and puce—break in, fumble around, then stumble out again hours later, grinning and cackling like hyenas. Whatever they don’t smoke, they break, smash or cover with graffiti—at the decibel level of a 747 at take-off. None of this mattered anymore. I’d long ago given up getting a good night’s sleep. Instead, another idea had moved in: the floor of the house next door had to be covered with scrabblings.

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You know, dropped or spilled cracklets. One night’s farming in there, and I’d bring home a haul. Couple of grams, at least. But what would I do with it? I couldn’t sell it: I’m too old and white—no crackhead would even talk to someone who looked like me. What was left but to . . . smoke it myself? All more reason, then, to ditch my plan and get back to work on my suntan, right? Wrong. I mean, really. How could anyone with my bold, adventuresome soul lay out all day, barely inches away from the treasure trove, and not break in? Besides, the sun was playing hideand-go-blow-yourself, as usual, and I was bored. So, I folded up my chair and I moved to Beverly. Hills, that is. Crackhead house, scrabbling zone. Well, the next thing you know, I’d gathered up my tools: magnifying glass; tweezers; matchbox; crack-pipe, brillo pad, screwdriver (for “pushing”) and lighter. A grill lighter, one of those long, wand-shaped things. Now, I knew, sure as I’m sitting here today in my spacious, new accommodations, that I’d have only a few minutes in the house next door, before hoodlings, cops or someone else bumbled along. I mean, it’s the old “broken window” syndrome, right? A house with broken windows attracts criminals, just as a rotting corpse attracts blow-flies. That’s why neighborhoods on the edge go downhill so rapidly: a few houses with broken windows and bingo it’s slum-time. The bombed-out hell-zone that is the Bronx, in New York, all started with one broken window.

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The house next door had a dozen broken windows. So many, in fact, the place had its own crime rate. All of which meant I had to work fast and get the hell out—there would be no time for sampling the findings. Thus, I left the ol’ crack-pipe and its accoutrements at home. Armed now with only a flashlight, magnifying glass, tweezers and matchbox, I crept from my back porch to the fence I shared with the non-residents next door. It, too, was bedraggled, with rotted wooden posts and gaps in the planking like the missing teeth of a grinning skull. I slipped through one of these gaps and made my entry. And heard them: Rats. There were rats in the yard. Bigguns, too. The property was infested with ‘em, thanks to an old tool shed that had fallen into neglect. The rats made their nests in it, and no doubt had tunnels leading to and from the house. All the more reason for me to make a quick surgical strike and then get the hell out. The sliding balcony door was off its tracks, its plate glass long since smashed. The shards protruding from the frame prevented me from simply stepping through the window, so I pushed the door aside and entered. And I was in. Finally. What decay! What squalor! What a princely palace of malice and mayhem. The bloodstains spattered on the walls in the dining room, where I stood, had long since turned a coppery color—the better to match the gang graffiti and human waste that dotted the place like potted palms in a mall. The stench was all-powerful, and the reek of urine was so strong it was as if someone had sprayed me with ammonia. This place was right off the charts. Like some hole in Calcutta’s lowest privy.

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Once my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom (no electricity, ya see), I got down to business. This meant—sickeningly enough—getting down on my hands and knees amid the forest of filth, feces and urine with my flashlight and start farming. Hunting for stray bits of crack. What I call “scrabblings.” Usually, they’re pretty tough to find. Not so in this place. There were millions of ‘em. Like breadcrumbs in a bakery, little clumps of yellow-white scrabblings covered the floor. In my shock, it took me a moment to tally up the potential numbers: there had to be at least six, possibly eight or nine grams’ worth here. Sold on the street for $80 – 100 per, I ‘d be at least $480 to the good, and probably more like $900 – 1,000. Which would buy a very serviceable sunlamp.

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*

A buddy of mine once told me that crack “costs more than it costs.” Meaning, the money spent was just the beginning of the expense: the toll on the body, the brain, the fingers (singed flesh, mangled fingernails) simply came with the territory. But what really ate one up was the insane, frantic, fiending for more—always more—and to hell with the cost. That’s what my buddy meant. And, believe me, I understand now. Anyway, I got down on the floor, with my little flashlight and magnifying glass, but I didn’t need the latter: the floor was spackled with scrabblings. Didn’t need the tweezers, either: the carpeting was long gone, leaving only the bare floor—which meant finding and picking would be a snap. I went to harvest the first of my loot—a good-sized scrabbling, enough to get two or three people off. But it wouldn’t budge.

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Odd. I got one tong of the tweezers under it, leveraged the thing, and . . . Still wouldn’t budge. Very odd. With all the strength in my fingers, I jammed the tweezers under the scrabbling and tried to pop it from the floor, hoping I’d be able to follow its bounding progress across the room. Hell, anything to get the bastard up. And now things started going beyond odd . . . Things got mega-odd. Stranger than strange. ‘Cause now I saw, just as the scrabbling lifted a fraction of a centimeter off the floor, a tiny pair of green hands yank the thing back down. I guess I should mention here that, yes, I did take acid as a teenager. But, that was many, many moons ago, and I’d never had a flashback. I wasn’t having one now. There really was a pair of tiny, green hands underneath that scrabbling. I’m sure of it. Still, I had to have another look. I shifted my weight from my knees to my toes, so I could get closer to the floor. Only my knees wouldn’t move. They were stuck to the floor. Just like that scrabbling. And I didn’t want to see what stuck them. But I had to. So, I shoved myself backwards with all my might, lunging back on my toes, lifting my knees as I did so. And there, I swear to Joseph, Mary and Jerry Springer, they were: Hundreds of tiny, green hands. Clutching at my knees.

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Pulling them back down. Thunk! I was stuck there. I was trapped in the house next door.

*

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I had to figure out how to break their hold on me, the little green men (they had to be males; females don’t clutch at me so tenaciously). No one would ever believe me, so I couldn’t look elsewhere for help. The most optimistic end would be a cop finding and arresting me for Breaking & Entering. And I wasn’t even sure a cop could get me off the floor. And, by now, they’d attached themselves to every part of me that was touching the floor: toes, knees, left elbow, and thank God that was all . . . I was just toying with the idea of screaming for help when I heard the sound. You know the sound I mean: the furtive, scuttling, flumping sound. Of rats. Big, fat, Norwegian rats. Rattus Norvegicus. Brown, stinky, 10 inches long, with a tail also of 10 inches, the males weigh anywhere from 350 – 500 grams, though some have topped 2.2 pounds, a kilo (these were the only grams and kilos that mattered to me now). Omnivorous, they are voracious eaters, and were once used to torture and kill heretics during the Inquisition. You know, pop a starving rat into one end of a bifurcated cage, then strap the other end to a human’s face. Then release the panel that separated the two, and . . . nose soufflé for the hungry, questing rat. In most cases, the damned thing would tunnel right through the victim’s head, gnawing and tearing all the way. And the stories out of the Bronx, Brooklyn—all over the Big Apple—of rats eating infants in their cribs, are legion.

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Now . . . they were coming for me. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. The only weapons I had were the flashlight, tweezers, magnifying glass and matchbox. Heh. Lotta good those would do against a two-pound rat. Or a gang of two-pounders. The scuttling, flumping noises were coming closer now, and there was no longer any doubt: it was a swarm of rats, not just one. And they didn’t seem concerned about stealth or secrecy anymore: they knew they had me. Rats are a lot smarter than people think. Faster, too. As they came scampering in from the backyard, the kitchen, and various other nooks, I realized I had maybe a minute at most before the chewing began. Death by rats is slow, unless they hit a main pipe. And I knew I wouldn’t be that lucky. No, they’d probably start in on my face: the lips, ears, nose — you know, the tender, juicy bits. Then the eyes . . . and I was not looking forward to that. So to speak. Now, here’s where the story gets a little weird. I dunno about anyone else, but I used to get picked on as a kid. Schoolyard bullies. Beat the hell out of me sometimes. Mostly, though, they just intimidated me. All the time. Until my old man found out. Pops had been a boxer in the army, overseas. Pretty good, too, or so I’d heard. He’s been dead a long time now, my pop, but he was a great guy. Taught me a lot, too.

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But the most valuable thing he ever taught me was that bullies were really pussies. And if you stood up to one and belted him square on the beak, he’d spazz out and leave you alone. And you know what? He was right. It wasn’t until I was in the fourth grade that I finally stood up to the biggest one (a sixthgrader, and a damned big one, at that). This kid used to walk up to me and prod me in the chest, while berating me in the unkindest terms. He’d prod me real hard, pushing me backward step by step as he told me what he would to do me if I didn’t give him my lunch money. Now, this went on for over a year. I don’t know why, but finally one morning, in coldest February, when the snot’s freezing in your nose before it can run, I snapped. The bully walked up to me, real menacing-looking, as usual, and started prodding me in the chest really hard, pushing me backward. Again, as usual. But then something popped in my forehead. And before I could even think about it, I just balled up my fist, feinted with my left, and shot the right straight home — smack on the beazer. He cried like a little girl and ran away. Never bothered me again. That’s what was going through my head as I crouched there, stuck to the floor by both knees, both sets of toes, and my left elbow. Trussed up nice and pretty, like a Christmas turkey, for the rats. And the biggest one was coming right at me. Right for the nose. I watched him, his black, beady little eyes, the snout sniffing frantically at the treats that lay in store. Now I knew how all that blood got on the walls. And from the faded, coppery color of it, the last offering had been some time ago. These suckers were hungry. So hungry, in fact, that they just flew right at me, the biggest one in the lead.

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The biggest, baddest bully rat on the block. I waited, letting him get close, then, when he lunged for my nose, I whipped out the only appendage I had that wasn’t stuck to the floor: my right hand. I grabbed him, looked him right in those beady little eyes, and bit his fucking snout off. All the way off. Rat blood jetted into my eyes, but I didn’t care. I was on it. I just kept biting, gnawing and tearing away at that fat, questing bastard, chewing and swallowing all the while. I only spit out the fur (foul stuff, the fur; it smells like . . . well, like rats.) By the time I’d chewed off most of his face, and swallowed it, the others had stopped in their tracks. One or two made half-hearted lunges for me (always questing, the little bastards), but I just dropped big, bad daddy-rat and scooped up the next one, bit his nose off, and ate most of his face, crushing his skull with my molars and wisdom teeth (never did get ‘em pulled— always knew they’d come in handy one day). Then I grabbed the next one. And the next one. I was just reaching for my fifth rat dinner when they finally broke and fled. The police arrived shortly thereafter. Seems someone saw me break in. They caught me red-handed, ya might say. Rat-Man.

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That’s what they all call me here, in my new accommodations, at Longview State Mental Hospital: Rat-Man. Some of ‘em even sing about me, to the old “Batman” theme: Da Da da da na na

da da . . . Rat – Man!

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Kinda cute, really. They’re never letting me outta here, I know that. Eating the heads off four rats was bad enough, but when I told the cops about the little green hands, well . . . that sewed this old boy right up. But that’s OK: I hated working my life away just to pay bills. Now, I have a new goal in life — no, a mission. I overheard a couple janitors the other day, talking about . . . well, about life’s little problems. Seems the hospital had a big problem. On the first floor. In the kitchen and storage areas. A rat problem. We go down there for lunch every day at noon. And the stragglers who aren’t at the front of the line get lost in the shuffle. Some of ‘em even wander into the kitchen and storage areas at times. One guy disappeared down there for over two hours last week; they finally found him in the walk-in freezer, stuffing his face with frozen meat pies. I think I’ll be last in line today. But not for the frozen pies. I like my meat raw. And questing . . .

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