I’ve got to tell you how strange my life has become.

I don’t work anymore. Car and apartment dirty. Filthy. Full of unnecessary things, copious refuse and random detritus. Grime. Disgusting. Can’t bring myself to care. Keeping an eye out for bugs.

They knock at the door all day. They knock and check the knob. All goddamn day. They rattle it. In the afternoon, they pound. They hammer and that upsets me. It suprises me. I’m startled and so I have to clean up. Clean myself up. I shave and shower. Bag some trash.

Sometimes I dust and vacuum.

I leave my toilet a mess.

When I look through the hole it’s always at the instant they are turning away.

I hate them.

Short blonde women, tall dark men.

Short blond men. Tall dark women.

I get angry.

At night they wear hoodies up.

Many wear a blue apron but I can’t read the logo or the slogan. I think there’s a pig on it.

It’s a fisheye parallax view kinda thing. Can’t make it out.

I either make people like me or I don’t. It’s simple so I just do it. Whoever you are, I can make you like me.

What do you think of that? It’s totally true.

Really mad. I get super pissed.

I have a unique view from my balcony. I leased the place sight unseen. I saw that it had twenty five to thirty feet of uniterrupted tiled deck outside and signed the lease. I can see three stories up. It’s like a canyon. Everything reverberates. The click of my lighter. My foot steps even in slippers. At night sounds multiply.

From the balcony I see common areas, like where the elevator spills my neighbors. One of three jacuzzis. I got a letter on my door today about the jacuzzis telling me they were to be replastered this month. Great. Can’t wait.

Sometimes I see them from my balcony on the floors above me not really talking to each other. Their lips move. They touch a lot. It’s subtle. They never look at each other.

They always see me. Always. They look right fucking at me. They don’t exactly point with their fingers.

It begins. A clatter, some rustling and then some random knocks. After that, pounding, rapping and bell ringing. So loud! I get angry and charge the eyehole. Sometimes I yell at them as they turn away. Sometimes just one. Often groups. I feel better screaming at the groups.

I pound at my door as they scatter.

I never open it. That would be crazy.

Sometimes, I peer out the hole in the middle of the night and they go by in boats, the hallway a rushing river. Torches burning. Backs paddling away from me. Hoods up. The water is violent and green. My feet are wet and river water splashes the skin of my feet and ankles.

I dream of portals and portholes.

Morning, there is no evidence of a river, yet I wake with rashes on my feet.

They leave things at my door. Minature boxes of cereal, deflated balloons and wrinkled party favors. Glitter. Plastic champagne flutes. Soggy candy cigarettes. The hallway smells like leather and the sea.

Weeds and insects.

Everyone I encounter that day looks like they’ve been swimming. Dry skin, red eyes, wild hair.

Fucking grasshoppers careening, leaping abberantly in front of me wherever I walk.

People don’t know what I know. They can’t see what I see.

Every time I go to the 7-11 after sunset, one of the bastards opens the door for me. I recognize them all.

Crazy is everywhere you look. Color outside the lines. Be creative. Kill people.

This last one was old and chapped. His face was ruddy and he moved rheumatic. I usually try to give them something. Who knows what power they have. I hate when I’ve got no cash and say as much on the way in but they still ask again on the way out.

I’ve been avoiding it lately. Always bugs in the condiments at The Hot Dog Buffet. Only buy stuff that is prepackaged. Always bring home mayo packets.

They mingle by the elevators. They whisper. They always drop a few Crackerjack prizes when they gather. On the floor in the common areas. Little red striped envelopes with a semblance of a sailor in blue. Like where the mailboxes are. Sometimes I pick them up off my balcony. That spooks me. What bugs me most is when they’re beside my car. Sometimes all around my car.

Dozens. That spooks me.

There’s always a guy who’s balding wearing corduroy with bad teeth. Sometimes tall, sometimes not. An elegant redhead in black who maintains her youth by eating nothing but grains and raw vegetables. Children in costumes. An over perfumed elderly fat woman dressed immaculately. A guy I can only describe as Karl, The Mortition, and a handful of others. From the girl at the drycleaner to the hairy guy in a stupid shirt at the mall who kept walking in front of me.

I see the goats and hear the monkeys. I never see the monkeys and hear the goats. Never.

There’s a window outside of my apartment, in the hallway, that opens onto my balcony. That’s how they’re getting in. I close my shit up before I sleep no matter how hot it is.

A woman in the elevator the other night had what looked like a hamster cage. It looked heavy but she still held it high. Yellow plexiglass, the smell of woodchips and sour rodent turds. There were tiny frogs inside. They kept leaping against the sides, making me flinch. They slid down, leaving smears. It sounded awful. Smacks and whisper moist scrapes. She had a moustache. Sideburns. Her dress was a smock of burlap somewhere between lime green and pastel robins egg. It was morbid against her skin and the simian coating of black hair on her arms.

Burping amphibians with huge eyes. A woman named Halgromson, moles erupting with thick and ropy whiskers.

Sheezus!

Once in a while I smell crazy. Smells like dust. Smells like rocks and rotting flowers. Penetrates everything. Sweet but cloying and dense.

Smells like cabbage boiling with a fair amount of porkfat. Get used to it. Come to Daddy.

Drinks for my friends.

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