Floor Two

The room is dim and the windows are blinded by towels pinned to the wall. There is a faint odor of a spicy scent that you don't really notice until you can taste it, but that could just be the restaurant downstairs. 

“How long you planning on staying here?”

I shifted my gaze up from the rotting wood floors into the mans eyes. He wore an apron with dark crimson tainted into the material. He was the butcher.  He was also the owner of the restaurant and the two extra stories above.

“I plan on staying for about three months.”

“Three months? What kind of business are you in, Mr. Alluni?”

“I was a correctional officer stationed on Alcatraz in fifty five. I left after a few years.”

The butcher lit his long pipe packed with moist, dark tobacco and puffed clouds out of his face. It reminded me of the warden, a fat bald man who nourished off of cigars and spaghetti. 

“Alcatraz, you say? I had a pal over there once, but he got out.””

The grotesque Italian man walked over to the window and pulled back the pinned towel and looked outside. The light seeped into the room and illuminated it in a vague way, and I saw the shadow of someone lying on a near bed.

“I don't really like to talk or think about Alcatraz, Mr. Cuoco. I like to focus on what I do now, and that  is write. What's write is right, I like to say.”

Cuoco pinned the towel back into place and the room grew dark again.

“You write books, Mr. Alluni?”

“Yes. Short novellas, actually.”

“What the hell is a novella?”

“It's a long short story, Mr. Cuoco.”

“What are you a funny guy?”

I took a step back. I gripped the cool, metal doorknob. 

“No, Mr. Cuoco. It wasn't my intention to be comedic, I was merely trying to imply the fact that a novell--”

“Never mind, Mr. Alluni. Lets talk about our business. Now you will be staying here for approximately, you say, Three MONTHS? CORRECT?”

I released the doorknob and paced around the invisible room. I floated around the deep, penetrating voice of the butcher. 

“Yes. Three months.”

“If you want to live here Mr. Alluni, you'll be sharing this flat with my father. I live upstairs.”

“Your father?”

“Yes, he is very old, but he should be no trouble. He has been blind for forty years and and deaf for thirty.”

“You say your father is blind and deaf?”

“That is exactly what I am implying to you, Mr. Alluni. In addition to living with my father, I will have to charge you six hundred dollars. Does that sound like a good deal, Mr. Alluni?”

“Six hundred dollars? Well, I guess I am going to have to say yes.”

“Excellent. Now you will be sleeping in this room here, the door to the right as soon as you walk in. There is a lamp in that room, the only lamp on this floor.”

I heard him open the door, showing me a room I couldn't even see into.

“Your father doesn't like the light? Why would it bother him?” I laughed.

It was quiet after that for a minute or so, and then he said,

“Another thing, Mr. Alluni. Keep the blinds shut.”

“May I ask why?”

“Some other time, Mr. Alluni, I can smell my meat burning. I must tend to my main business. You pay me soon, yes?”

“Of course, Mr. Cuoco.”

“Very good.”

He grabbed my hand and shook it fiercely and said, 

“Do not mind the old man. He barely even exists. He is an invisible man, and you will just be a ghost to him.”

Cuoco disappeared out the door and left me alone in the dark room. Indeed the room was tainted with a black smell, possibly from years of kitchen odors resonating the ceiling and seeping into the floorboards. I stood by the window and pulled back the matted towel. There were bars on the window. I hadn't noticed them before, the outside light was too great, it must have obscured them from my view. I tugged on them and heaved on them and then shut the blind.

Outside the door were three of my suitcases, and I brought them inside and walked into my bedroom, the door immediately on the right. The room was the size of my bedroom growing up in Marin, the house on the cliff of a rocky mountain crumbling off into the sea. I threw the cases onto the bed and opened one and the smell of the warm Pacific engulfed me. I grew nauseous and turned on the lamp sitting in the corner of a desk. I opened the other case and pulled out my typewriter and placed it in the middle of the desk. I shut the door and turned and faced the illuminated room for the first time. There was one bed, one desk, one lamp, one closet, and one blinded window. The only lamp on the floor. 

I walked over to the window and pulled back the blinds. It was a mirrored image of the other window. I tugged on the bars and to no avail fell on the mattress of the low bed. I opened the other suitcase, the oldest one with the most scars, the bruises of my childhood. I took out all of my writing material, sketching and painting necessities, and placed them on and in the desk. The lamp light was warm, and I sat at the desk for an hour just baking my hands.

The clothes were in the closet, the cases under the bed, the canvas set near the window. The typewriter sat alone on the desk top save for a notebook and  pencil. The notebook the brain of my writing, the pencil the hands, the typewriter the mouth that I can speak out of.  Seeing the words, actual typed words, inked on the page, scarred on the paper, the words become alive, organic. A tangible production of my thoughts. I sat down and typed away.

I woke on the bed, under cold sheets and no pillow. The moon was exactly alined with my window and I looked at it from the bed. I felt a pressure in my stomach and realized I had to urinate and got up and robed myself. There was a box of matches in the desk and I took them and opened the door. The living room of the flat was a dark void, literally what the moon floats in. An endless black space. I closed the door and opened the box. The dead darkness was suffocating me and I sparked the sulfur stick and the room appeared. Like a glowing picture. I saw the entire room for the first time.

The man was sitting upright on a couch in the far corner of the room. The father. A beard hung from his face and his eyes were open. He was looking right at me as if he could see me. The match went out suddenly, the last thing I see before the darkness swallows me is the old man standing up from the couch. I struggle to light another match and freeze when I feel the footsteps on the floor. His feet vibrating the floorboards, he can probably sense a change in the feeling of the floor against his feet, a heaviness lying in the center of the living room that was never there before.

I light another match and the man is standing three feet away from me. The fire glows in his blank eyes, staring at nothing. He wears a dark robe that cocoons him; thin legs and arms branch out, his fingers dead twigs. The old mans eyes are ice, frozen for a millennium. Here is a frozen man that will never thaw out. His eyes are ice cubes pressurized by time and disease.

There is a small desk under the blanketed window and the old man continues past me on the ground. The smell of warm decay wafted by and I coughed aloud, but the man did not hear me at all. He stuck his hands out in front of him and  felt for the desk and once he had found it he opened a drawer and revealed a small stack of envelopes that looked fairly new. In the glow of the match I saw the stamp on the front envelope, a very new and very recent stamp. The old man turned away from the desk in broken slouch and grabbed a cane leaning against the wall and crept back to the corner of the room. The match went out.

I was on the pier this afternoon and I saw my literary agent. He was fishing near the end of the pier and I was enjoying a brisk walk in the cold sea air and eating a sour hot dog. I noticed him fishing but I didn't say hello. I continued past him and stood at the very end of the pier. I tossed the end of the hot dog into the sea and took a drink of the coffee I had bought. The coffee felt nice and warm and full of energy. I had not had coffee in a year and I thought to myself why the hell did I stop?

I hear the sound of my agents voice, a familiar masculine greeting, a deep questioning tone. I turn around and switch the coffee cup to my right hand because I don't feel like shaking hands with his fishy palms, and instead I say, “Howard, how the hell are you?”

Dean Howard ceased what was in the first stages of becoming a handshake and smiled, crossing his arms. “I'd rather not reveal any information on my current state of being, so instead I'm just going to say that when the ocean is full of fish, it is a good day.”

I sipped on the coffee and stared past his head at a blonde with a small poodle. She had long legs and long wavy hair, and --

“So when are you going to finish that book?”

“I'm working on it.”

“Did you ever find a sufficing living complex?”

“Yes, I moved in last night actually.”

“Oh really. Where at?”

“Fifth Street.”

“Oh really, huh? Fifth Street. My mother lives on Fifth Street.”

“That's fine.”

“Huh?”

“I said that's fine.”

Howard wore a long trench and shuffled the fishing pole to his other arm.

“Well, I guess I should be going, Dean.”

“Alright, then. Finish your product, Alluni. We're all looking forward to it.”

“Of course.”

Dean Howard walks away, the wind ruffling his black hair. He picks up his fishing gear and moves to a different location on the pier. I think about the book. A seagul lands near me and I think about how I am going to end the book. What words would be sufficient enough for the ending of the book? I head toward the end of the pier and and think about writing the book on the second floor. Typing my words on floor two with that walking vegetable lurking in the shadows. I step on a postage stamp stuck to the wood and ponder the old man and his letters. Who's sending him letters when he can't even read them? I exit the pier and see a small little bird with a broken wing stumble around a trashcan, crying out little squawks of pain. No one consoles him. I walk back to the apartment above the restaurant, thinking, What is the proper ending for the book?

Author's Note

Not finished, just the beginning of an idea

Reviews

[FlatLineBeauty]

This was a good chapter and I'd love to read more as I get through my read requests. I didn't really see anything to point out, but maybe just a little bigger font to make it easier on the eyes. I personally space through dialog, but that's just me. :) good job! Xo Winter

[Chadvonswan]

Thank you for your ever so lovely commentary, Miss Rose!!(:

[FlatLineBeauty]

You're very welcome xo

[Raymond Federle]

Excellent idea though! Please continue this. I would love to read more. Well done Chad. :)

[Chadvonswan]

Hey thanks for the enthusiastic commentary, I appreciate it!!

[ZackOfBridge]

That was a good beginning, when i finished I was confused because i thought i had missed something. I have some ideas for the story, but i of course only want to offer them if you would like to hear them. Anyway, I liked this Max, it seems like a serious piece.

[Chadvonswan]

I appreciate you reading this, and of course I would like to hear your ideas! Just send me a message brah,