Fuckhead
On the tail end of a lazy weekend, lost in a story on P.L. Nunn’s Bishonen Works, a shrill beeping brought my head back to reality and my hand out of my pants.
WTF?
Investigation led me to the bedroom. No, not as loud here. Back to the living room, Yup. Louder here. Then to the kitchen, Just as loud here.
An awful thought gathered.
I grabbed the phone and stepped, barefoot, into the icy rain. Louder here. From our shared fire escape I looked in the neighbor’s kitchen door.
Smoke.
I dialed 911 and went back inside to begin preparations for—what? How do you prepare for what you don’t know will happen?
Phone clamped between my cheek and shoulder I explained the situation while I put on socks, found shoes, and filled my pockets—meds, passport, wallet, USB Flash Drive backup thingie—strapped on my backpack and prepared to pitch computers out the window into the night. Never shut them down, just yanked cords out of the back, Sort it out later.
The fire department arrived a grand total of maybe three minutes after I initiated the call. The neighbor’s door was unlocked, Doesn’t this guy ever lock his doors?
They entered, blew out the candle in the neighbor’s pumpkin, brought it to the sink and opened all his windows.
Fuckhead.
This is the same fucktard with the dog over 4th of July weekend. The same noisy son of a bitch who can’t seem to close a door—either exterior or kitchen cupboard—without shaking the walls, whose stereo, X-Box and TV have tested the limits of my tolerance for months.
I got to meet his neighbors on the other side. At least they have a hallway between them. We chatted out on the fire escape after the firemen left.
When fuckhead came back at precisely 10:00 as usual, I called to him as he mounted the stairs, “Hey [insert fuckhead’s name here] , ya hadn’t oughta leave your punkin’ burnin’ when you leave. Had the fire department here and everything. Sorry about the invasion of privacy, but the fire’s out now.”
I came inside and stood down from general quarters and listened through the wall while fuckhead’s other neighbor, who’d followed him into the apartment, read him the riot act.
Nice to have other people to do the dirty work.
