Floored

By: Hank Kirton
September 11, 2008

Eddie Lowe left work at four-thirty and proceeded to get blind drunk at Ramon’s Bar and Grille.

The regulars weren’t around so he sat alone, drinking warm Jack Daniels from a beer mug (Ramon was an old high school buddy of his dad’s so he let Eddie drink whatever the fuck he wanted).

By the time he got home he could barely walk and spent a good deal of time swaying and stumbling, trying to navigate from the parking lot to the front door of his building.

The owner of the building, Patty Klondike (nosy old bitch) once told him it was the oldest building in the city. It looked it. Peeling wallpaper revealed rotted wood beneath. The plaster was crumbling and he often heard rats crawling and nibbling behind the walls. He mumbled a slurred Cagney impression, “You dirty rats...” and climbed the creaking wooden steps to his splintered, battered door. It was a minor miracle the whole disintegrating monstrosity hadn’t collapsed by now.

He managed to unlock the door and turn on the light. Cockroaches scattered from the sudden flare.

He found a beer in the fridge (praise god) and stumbled into the living room to watch television.

That was when he noticed the hair.

What the hell?