Power. Passion. We had these.
Maybe we had too much, or we just didn't know our strength (collective and individual). That argument is invalid because the certainty of either is illogical and impossible to tell or figure out coherently much like this sentence that you'll finish reading right now.
What was certain was this: we were standing in a pool of blood that belonged to our neighbor. Streaming and gushing from his head which now looked like an oatmeal cookie does after a child takes an eager bite from it and hurls it to the ground after being disappointed by the fact that it's not a chocolate chip cookie. A real mess. Undeserved? Well, there are consequences for every action. Had he not tried to kill us, he would have been enjoying his oatmeal cookies in the comfort of his own home. There was really no problem with his "you don't belong here" ramblings: it was stupid and fluff. But that's all it was: talk. If given the opportunity, we wouldn't have rented out whatever "here" was since it meant so goddamn much to him. Since it meant so much to him that he was annoyed by our presence.
"Here" was an old apartment building in serious need of repair. Doors were falling off their hinges, stairs could crumble beneath the weight of a grain of rice, the pipes leaked liquids other than rusty water, and so forth. And the basement was the home of some humanoid creature with a set of horns that resembled a crown. We couldn't pronounce his name correctly but he allowed to call him Marwood. Marwood was prone to seemingly random acts of violence and aggression (whenever anyone stirred up trouble) but generally stayed out of everyone's way: a task easily accomplished since all he really did was stay in the basement, save for his sporadic appearances outside the confines of his room.
What nobody wanted to admit that he was among the nicest creatures in the building, despite the outward appearances of intense rancor and a physically unattractive appearance. What made him nice was the fact whenever somebody was in trouble, he would always manage to turn up at just the right time and save the situation. Or he'd bake you a pie or some other pastry if word got around that you were falling on hard times. I found a tray of brownies at my front door after people noticed me walking with a limp. The brownies didn't fix my twisted ankle but they did taste great, so that helped a bit.
He was the oldest creature in the building, too, having built it with his bare hands... and the help of his family who had long fled back to their home dimension. They left the portal open for him in case he ever changed his mind. This was about 120 years ago. He refused to return because he wanted to die with the building.
Still, Marwood was often the butt of many jokes and pranks. Such as attempted arson, rabid rats being set free in his basement, bad puns on his adopted name, and so forth. It's tragic how often we forget that things are built from the ground up. And it's disappointing how often we mistreat those who have helped us.
This building was in need of serious repair and Marwood did his best with the situation though it was beyond his capable hands. The same way that she and I were in way over our heads in dealing with a corpse.
This corpse, when living, absolutely despised us. There was no logical explanation for his hatred. We were just normal human beings. As far as I could tell, there was really nothing out of the ordinary about either of us. Well, she was a crazy woman. She had a relatively sane name, however. Mary.
The corpse, when living, always went out of his way to make things difficult for us even after Marwood stepped in. This didn't matter to the corpse whose real name was Donald. He would still knock against our wall while we slept, arrange for embarrassing things to be delivered to us like mannequins, adult toys, rare exotic animals that were illegal in our country, and octogenarian male strippers with some surprisingly good dance moves. Then there was the time he hit me over the head with a lead pipe. Marwood threw him out of a window for that but as luck would have it, Donald survived.
We live on a top floor, well above the 5th. To be thrown from the 5th floor is already certain death especially since the ground is nothing but concrete and abandoned shopping carts and various other very hard items- cinder blocks, abandoned big screen televisions, big wooden bureaus and dressers, abandoned cars, and so forth. And several rusty broken jagged pipes sticking out of the ground. By several I mean way too many. Marwood threw him against a few walls first and broke a few bones. He was going to leave it at that but Donald rose to his knees, took aim and spit on Marwood's face.
Marwood reacted very slowly.
A large blot of crimson adorned the space between his eyes (which remained opened and furiously stunned) and crawled down to his cheeks and met at his chin only to drip off drop by drop. The silence between Marwood and Donald was broken by each tear of blood hitting the ground with a moist thud. Thud. Drip. Thud. Plip. Plip.
He produced a handkerchief from his coat's pocket and wiped off Donald's blood. He took a long hard look at the blood stained handkerchief and threw it to the ground. Donald make the mistake of having stood up by now. If Marwood hurt you, and you stayed down, that was it. He wouldn't dare kick anybody who was down no matter how bad that person was or had been. However, if you stood up and continued to defy him, you were in trouble, depending on his mood. Donald had done himself no favors by getting to his knees and standing up (though he was leaning on a wall). Marwood marched to Donald and punched him in the stomach so hard air escaped with blood. He took him by the collar of his shirt and belt of his pants and heaved him out of the nearest window.
Witnesses say Donald landed on his feet and cried in pain. Others say he landed on the hood of an old Chevy, others say he landed on a tree stump, and there are many more reports. What is for certain is that he was left in a body cast for a month or two (lucky bastard) at which point he was back on his feet, though moving slower, and antagonizing us.
She slapped me. She did this to get my attention. It wasn't working. Well, it was but it was also annoying me more than anything. I tried to remember things again. Like my name. My name wasn't more interesting than Mary's. I actually forgot my name temporarily. This tends to happen when you're in shock, trying to take control of a messed up situation, and having a woman shriek at you at the same time. Roy.
She slapped me again. Now, I was a bit more aware of the situation. Donald was dead and had bled a river. Mary was hysteric. I was confounded. I had to try to remember what exactly happened that day.
Donald knocked on our door and Mary opened. He slapped her, she pushed him and he hit his head on the doorknob of the apartment across from us. I was already in a bad mood. Donald stood up and the back of his head was bleeding. He slapped her again, she called out for me. "It's Donald," she added. He shouted something hateful, yet again. I walked to them.
"Donald, what do you want? If you say something about us leaving, I'm going to have to break your face." I said, slowly, deliberately, angrily.
Without missing a beat, Donald replied, "Fuck you and everything you stand for. You're trash and so is she! Get the hell out of this place."
I rubbed my eyes and walked up to him. "Donald, do we really have to go through with this, yet again?" and before he could answer, he was tasting fist. Repeatedly.
Of course, it wasn't enough because he clawed at my feet while he was down. I dragged him out, or tried to anyway. But he stood up.
"Goddamn it, Donald, my knuckles hurt like hell! You've got pretty sharp teeth, man. Just go home."
Mary took a frying pan and hit Donald in the back of the head with it. He collapsed and hit his head on the floor pretty hard. And out poured the blood.
"Jesus Christ, Mary-" I started.
"and Joseph" she cut me off. I knelt down and checked Donald's pulse. Nothing. I checked again a few seconds later. Nothing. I kept my hand there and goddamn it. There was no fucking pulse. Mary pawed at me the way she did when she wanted some intimacy.
"Not now, Mary. You just killed a man!"
It surprised me how she could be in the mood for anything considering she just got slapped around and had just killed a man. And the sight of blood. Bizarre aphrodisiacs.
She burst into tears. Surprising, given she rarely shows this much emotion or humanity. I questioned whether she would keep crying like a normal human being or try to rip my clothes off. Of course, I couldn't question these things further because I was trying to figure out how to clean up this mess. Not just the blood but the fact that a man had been murdered in my apartment. Sure he had tried to kill me before but he was still human, a despicable human but still human.
She slapped me again.
"What are we going to do?" she shrieked at me. The eternal unanswerable question. Or the question that has many answers. Prior to that day, I had never actually dealt with death. Extreme graphic violence, yes. I'd seen my share of graphic violence through a screen and in person. Torture, yes. I'd always been the one who was stretched or submerged for information and savagely beaten and so forth. But death was as strange to me as television would be to Socrates. I couldn't concentrate with her sobbing and trying to feel me up.
"Oh, what are we going to do?!"
I loved her, I really did but sometimes I just wanted to bash her beautiful brains in with my fist, or a blunt object.
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