As I entered the hallway of Mrs. Miller's boarding house, I felt doomed, trapped. I felt a sense of claustrophobia. I couldn't breathe. I felt like I'd been stabbed in the chest, like my ribs had been crushed by the very walls of the place (like you see in bad old horror movies). I imagined what it must feel like to be Cecil, the pet rat in a cage on a grubby greyish-white plastic table, under a harsh neon light.
"We are not so different, you and I."
That stupid sentence crossed my mind, an unhelpful reminder of my financial circumstances. The difference is that Cecil didn't wear a suit and tie, nor work for The Man. He didn't even work for Mrs. Miller, the lazy fat bastard. Mrs. Miller remarked that he was the only tenant allowed to stay rent free. I suspect that she told that to every new tenant. I didn't point out that, like myself, Cecil didn't have much choice in the matter of his living arrangements. There was a creature in the Hotel California, but he showed no signs of being in a rush to check out.
Right then, I knew that I didn't want to stay here, with the mold on the thin grey-green walls like you'd find in a seventies hospital or nursing home, through which you could probably hear every moan, mewl and fart. (I'd certainly be testing that hypothesis later; you can be sure of that. My ex didn't call me Sir Fartsalot without good reason ... Besides, I didn't anticipate having much to do for laughs here, anyway, alcohol not being permitted on the premises and I'm not inclined to watch television. I couldn't afford either, anyway, not since 1989.)
From the kitchen came the smell of smoke (burned toast) and old grease. It wandered down the hall like a discontented and malignant ghost, then mingled with the fetid stench of rodent urine as Cecil relieved himself in a corner. I wanted to gag.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality was that I couldn't afford the rent anywhere else. This fly and roach trap was to be my place of lodging until I could find a better job and move to somewhere more upmarket. Pulp's Common People popped into my head, unbidden. Critically underappreciated and underrated though they were, the band that was part of my adolescence couldn't help me now, but it was all I could do not to hum the song tunelessly under my breath as I staggered along unsteadily behind Mrs. Miller, heading to my allocated room, trying not to fall over from vertigo.
Like Captain Kirk, I wanted to go back to the ship, but there was no ship to which I could go. I was here, stuck in the boarding house and struggling to breathe as I accepted the key to my door, white paint worn through or peeling off in places. There was no Mr. Miller to do maintenance, having had a few strokes before he popped his clogs about a decade ago. As for Mrs. Miller, she was a corpulent and rotund woman in no shape to do it herself, nor pay a handyman. Her children were grown and had gapped it for far flung corners of the globe. They were not coming home to a house that had fallen into ruin. Mrs. Miller (an old-fashioned matron whom would not permit her tenants to address her by her first name, which was Irene) told me this as she stood in the hallway and watched me haul in my battered green leather suitcases from my car, which I begin to unpack. Neither of us having much more to say, she left me to it after about two minutes of awkward and uncomfortable silence.
The room was tiny, maybe three metres by four, with an on suite bathroom that Mrs. Miller would get stuck in if she ever felt the need to enter it (which she didn't; I was to keep my quarters clean without help). One wall was occupied by a window and a shelf at just the right height for bumping my head if I wasn't careful when getting up from the rickety old metal desk and camp chair that would pinch the backs of my legs. With both doors open, there was just enough space between the cupboard and single bed for a thin person like myself to stand. (I had to supply my own cushions, curtain and bedding.) My first bit of renovating was to purchase a wooden board to erect between the basin and toilet, so that any spray and aeration wouldn't reach it. The second was a shower curtain across the bathroom doorway. Even though I'd not be expecting guests and likely wouldn't need it, it gave me a sense of some privacy. I hung some cardboard fruit trays from the cupboard doors, to serve as makeshift shelves. The room was cramped and in need of a new coat of paint, but I made it my own with what little money I could afford to spend on creature comforts.
I lived there for three difficult and dreary months, until the day robbers forced their way in through the rusty patio gate and ransacked the place, taking what little they could find. Mrs. Miller blamed the builders and workmen across the road. I blamed the lack of maintenance and state of the neighborhood in general, being as it was a stone's throw away from the bus stop (where vagrants loitered and partied) and highway, the noise from which could be heard all day and night. Ours was not the only place to be hit; the old hotel's bar was raided too. A few weeks later, some gung-ho men organised a neighborhood watch that put up cameras and motion-activated spotlights, but the damage had been done.
I got a promotion, a pay rise and a fancier job title. I moved on, thinking my luck had changed. Then COVID-19 became a thing, turning the world upside down. Staff were retrenched (including me) and everything went to hell.
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