Thursday, March 20, 2003

Melissaphobia (Part 4: Welcome Home)

It's 1:15 on a Sunday morning. After a two-day bus trip at the culmination of a three-month spoken word tour, I had decided to take a trip to my local venue for a surprise appearance. People were surprised. I was happy. I drank. I was tired. I was writing in short, choppy sentences.

My friend Joycee drove me home from the venue. I pulled my bags out of her trunk, walked up to my door, turned the key in the lock and...nothing. Fuck.

I rang the doorbell, but I had witnessed Melisa sleeping through me banging on her bedroom door when she had blocked our neighbor's driveway with her car. She probably slept through the sex she had with all The Midnight Men. They were probably just a bunch of crazed necrophiliacs (except the Coke guy, I'm sure he had no crazed fetishes).

I realized she had probably changed the locks due to a run in with one of The Midnight Men. Maybe somebody hit her, or maybe she had decided she was going to stick to only one married guy at a time.

When she hadn't answered the door to the apartment, and Gussy hadn't even barked at my knocking and doorbell ringing, I went around to the driveway to check for her car. It was there. While I was in the driveway, I realized that I could probably climb in through my window. I didn't remember whether I'd bothered to lock it. But the odds were that I hadn't. I hopped on to the ledge and ---

There was no furniture in my room. Bed? Gone. Bookcases? Gone. TV? Gone. Desk? Gone. Pile of films and porn? Gone. The closet was open and there were no clothes in it.

I decided that even if the window was unlocked, no good would come from climbing through it. Instead, I walked the couple of miles to Su's house and woke her up, explaining my unpleasant return. She thought I might have just been so tired that I mis-saw.

It was true that I didn't do an exhaustive visual search. There were no streetlights, no lights from inside the house.

At about five-thirty I walked back to the house where I had lived for the past year. Melissa was comingo ut of the house as I walked up to the porch.

"Hey, Insafemode." she beamed. "How was your trip?"

"It was fun. I got to see a part of the country I've never been to, amde enough money to live moderately comfortable, met some nice people. But when I got home the damnedest thing happened. My key wouldn't fit into the lock."

"Oh, yea. You don't live here anymore."

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/28964.html

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