Saturday, November 27, 2010

A Landlord's Rage

Sorry for the delay, I had to spend some time apologizing to Diane. She hasn't spoken a word to me since our fight...

Anyways, I went down this morning to see the guy. He took me to the door, unlocked it, and I found myself in Paul's familiar old place... Without most of the furniture, of course. He was quick to tell me that he was soon going to give the walls a good painting, after the rest of the furniture was gone. He was even nice enough to offer me color choices if I was interested in the apartment.

I told him I wanted to look around on my own, and thankfully, he obliged. 

I didn't have time to check out the remaining furniture to see if there was anything worth taking a look at. As the landlord left to do some non-described business, I immediately made my way to Paul's old bedroom. As expected, the place where the hole had been was obvious. I knelt down and tapped the panel, to see if it would give away easily. It didn't. The excuse Shiloh had given me wouldn't work so well now that I had to take a fucking hammer to the wall. I grabbed the one I had tucked into my pants and took a deep breath. I didn't want to cause too much noise...

Honestly, it's impossible to smash into a wall without making SOME noise. It only took three hits to make a hole big enough for my hand... But I knew anyone downstairs would have heard some thumps. I quickly reached into the wall, and began grabbing for whatever may be back there. My first act of stupidity was to not bring a flashlight... Though, the hole was barely big enough to fit my arm, let alone see inside.

... Just my fucking luck, as my hand was grabbing around inside the hole, the landlord came back up. Like a dumbass, I had even forgotten to hide the hammer back under my shirt, so it's not like I could have told him I found it already broken.

But that would have still been a bad excuse anyways.

So he started swearing, asked what I was doing, and I was feeling pretty pissed that I had been caught. I considered excuses that I had planned to use, but I had none for if he found me digging inside.

But whatever, I backed off from the hole and started apologizing. He wasn't having any of it, he still wanted to know why the hell I had put a new hole in the wall. I'm pretty sure he was ready to punch my face in. I panicked. I didn't want to get into a fight with this guy over this shit, so I just decided to tell him the truth. I reasoned that he would at least humor me.

I told him that my friend, at some point, had mentioned to me that he had hidden secret notes behind that very hole. When he stopped yelling and started looking confused, I decided to add to my story. Paul's will, he had hidden his will, and his last wishes to me and his family behind the wall. He had left his place in a hurry because he was on the run from the law. He didn't believe he would be free for long. Paul desperately wanted me to find these.

Or so I said. I begged the landlord to at least let me have a look, and he told me to go ahead.

Reaching as far as I could, I felt my hands touch paper. Hell yes, right? I smiled and looked at the landlord.

"I think the papers are here!"

"Pull them out then!"

I grabbed them and pulled them through the wall. I fumbled them a bit, having to crunch them some to fit them through. The first note in the stack was scribbled all over. The only words visible were LEAVE ME ALONE. I looked at the second one, it had eyes drawn all over it.

There were quite a few of these, I would have needed time to look through all of them. But first, I needed this landlord off my back. I sighed loudly. angrily thumping the ground with my fist. In the most anguished voice I could muster, I said "They're nothing but nonsense!"

I got to my feet, shoving the picture of the eyes into the landlord's face. "He fucking lied! He told me he had left me something important!" Before the landlord could say anything, I tossed the notes into the air. Scribbled pieces of paper, fleeting messages, eyes, eyes, and more eyes. The notes were a likely window into Paul's madness. "I knew he was rotten. He didn't just skip town to escape the cops, he skipped out on anyone who made the mistake of caring about him. A wild goose chase, that's what this was. A petty prank."

The landlord was pretty goddamn confused, I think. He just stared dumbly at all the pieces of paper. I took out my wallet and pulled out a few bills. "I'm so sorry I wasted your time, and I'm even more sorry for deceiving you. I will give you any money you need to fix that hole again, and even more for your trouble."

Money will get you places, everyone. REMEMBER THAT. I had to borrow from some of Shannon's spending money, though, but she said it was fine.


... It was nuts getting these notes, but at least now I have them. As said, most of them don't say much, but I figure at least one of them will push me in the right direction. I don't have much time tonight to look at them all, but I'll get through them by tomorrow.

Heck, maybe I will get through them tonight. Danny doesn't fucking sleep anymore, does he?

6 comments:

  1. Sleep is for the weak and sickly is what mom always said.

    Then again, often I find myself weak and sickly without sleep. I suppose it's a self-fulfilling cycle.

    That was nicely diplomatic of you. And out of curiosity, was being all pissed at the random notes that much acting? I mean, it WAS unlikely they'd make sense now.

    Still, tell me if anything's off or cryptic or just post it. Crap like this seems to go code-like all the time and it's sort of irritating.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The pictures of eyes. . . Are they drawn in a sort of array? Like:

    o o O o o
    o O O O o
    O O O O O
    o O O O o
    o o O o o

    Except that the smaller Os are spread slightly different than this and make the entire thing look like a circle?
    There might be Xs through some Os, and a + through the center O.

    Or this:

    \ ▲ /
    o | o
    \▼/
    ◀-▶ (+) ◀-▶
    /▲\
    o | o
    / ▼ \
    ^

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry, my second picture messed up. I'll see if I can fix it like this

    ..\...▲.../
    ...o..|..o
    ....\ ▼ /
    ◀-▶ (+) ◀-▶
    ..../ ▲ \
    ...o..|..o
    ../...▼...\
    ......^

    The dots are the just place holders to make it work.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It could be as I let on. Paul could have led me on a wild goose chase... but for what reason? I'd like to believe that this will lead me somewhere. We are fucked, otherwise.

    Or he could just be insane and he neither meant to lead me anywhere or fool me.

    Ugh.

    And, uhh... Hello there. Some of the eyes do have various lines and shit over them but... There are quite a few, any of them could fit your little pattern, Faye.

    Can I ask the significance of it?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry, I've been reading your blog for quite a while but have refrained from commenting. . .
    The patterns are something I've encountered, and I just had a paranoia freak out moment when you mentioned eyes. Thank you for the reply, anyways.

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  6. I'm sorry, picturing the whole incident with the landlord gave me a giggle - you think quickly on your feet!

    Did you peruse the notes at all? I hope you actually did get some sleep, by the way. Hopefully your weekend has been an uneventful one. :)

    ReplyDelete