NSFW with language and some brief descriptions of sexual situations and violence against furniture.
I found myself wondering about my dad’s life while standing in the most unexpected place and time. It was my 23rd birthday and I just returned to the house I shared with two housemates staring at a couch that had been sliced into puffs of stuffing and strips of ribbons all over my living room. Complicating things was the stranger sitting in the chair next to the decimated sofa, a chef’s knife in her lap. She looked disappointed when she saw that I wasn’t who she expected.
I was wondering about my father as probably a way to avoid the moment. When he was 23, he had already been to war. He had been stabbed in a bar fight in San Francisco and shot twice outside Saigon. He survived a helicopter crash while being extracted from the battlefield. He courted and later married the nurse who helped him pull through. From there, dad bought the company he worked for upon his return home and raised a big family outside Dover, Delaware.
Me? I just spent my birthday being dumped by a woman who didn’t think I had much of a future. I was dumped on my birthday at a pizza shop surrounded by screaming little leaguers. To top off the night, I returned home to a shredded sofa and an armed stranger in my living room. My mind needed time to process things, so I wondered what my dad would have done in that situation. Most likely, he would have pulled the gun from the table by the door and taken care of business. Not me.
“I don’t want to jump to any conclusions here,” I said in a neutral, measured voice. “But I assume you’re responsible for trashing my couch.”
The evidence extended to the fluff sticking to the woman’s hair and wool sweater. She was thin and pale, like a body freshly dredged from a river and made up to sit in some psychopath’s menagerie of corpses. The knife lay across her lap and both hands gripped the arms of her chair so I didn’t fear a stabby-stab right away. She took her time looking around the room as if the voice came from the ether and not the guy who made a production of entering the room moments earlier. She looked at the sofa and then found my gaze eventually.
“Who are you,” she asked.
“The owner of the couch.”
“I thought it was Ben’s couch.”
Ben was one of my two housemates. He worked a lot so I didn’t see him often. When I did, he was always bitching about the kitchen, its lack of cleanliness in particular. Or he was complaining about something else that had nothing to do with me, his life, or how the world didn’t fit his expectations yet again.
“Nope,” I said. “Did…did my sofa offend you?”
“Ben and I had a fight. He stormed off, so I took my anger out on his - your – sofa. Sorry.” She anticipated my next question. “I thought this was his house. Again, sorry.”
I realized I hadn’t even dropped my saddlebag or taken off my coat. I wondered if that was a wise course of action. I considered the amount of energy needed to tear up the furniture so thoroughly that only the frame remained intact. I hoped whatever that took wore this weirdo out but I had no idea how long she had been sitting there alone regaining her strength.
“It’s a rental,” I heard myself saying. “Six more payments of $50 per week.”
“That’s a shitty deal,” she sneered.
“That’s bad credit and limited liquid capital,” I said. “Any idea if or when Ben will be back? I kinda have an issue with this.
“I’m Kelly, by the way.”
“Okay. Anything else I should know about? Did you shit in the cereal box? Spike the OJ with Clorox?”
This jump-started her rage engine just a bit. “No! Just the shitty blue couch that didn’t go with anything else in this fucking room.”
She wasn’t wrong. The other stuff in the room – the chairs, tables, and shelves, didn’t fit well with the navy blue hard wedge arm with easy-clean cotton blend fabric. Ben mentioned this, too. I told him what I paraphrased for Kelly: I had the pick of any discontinued display sofa in the clearance area and the one I picked had the bonus of four sturdy legs.
Plus, fuck you. It’s my couch.
I added, “Would you mind putting the knife back where you found it? Or on the sink so I can wash it?”
Kelly tensed, giving her cadaverous look an even more emaciated appearance. The muscles in her neck stood out and her natural blush finally outshone the funeral home makeup slathered across her cheeks. But she did as asked. A spry wafer of a corpse, Kelly stomped across the floor with the knife in her hand and disappeared into the kitchen.
I considered how dad’s plan would have played out and it would have likely involved Kelly being hog-tied and on the carpet awaiting the cops. In his day, though, he could have had ten times the amount of weed in his home that I had in my room and the cops wouldn’t take notice. Bringing in the local po-po at this point would have been a bad idea.
I also wondered how my dad would have responded to being dumped on his birthday. One thing we had in common was our love of drink, which reminded me that I still had a half-case of Keystone Ice in the fridge. That thought sent a warm blob of happiness through my heart and up into my brain.
After a few minutes, I noticed a cool draft crossing the living room. Looking into the kitchen, I found the back door open and the screen door gently resting on the latch.
Kelly bounced.
At the time, I didn’t have Ben’s cell number so I waited for him to call me or come home. I cracked open a ‘Stone and followed it with three more before hearing Ben jingling his keys at the door. When he entered, he looked around for the girl who ghosted him.
“Kelly?”
Ben was a six-foot-three beefy ginger of a man with a love of rugby shirts. He wore shorts even in the winter. He was also a self-absorbed twat goblin who ignored anything that wasn’t in his immediate need zone. He overlooked me several times sitting right in front of him before he recognized the ruins of the couch.
“Fuck me. What happened to your sofa?”
“Funny story, Ben. The sofa is what Kelly wanted to do to you before she peace-d out the back door. Where the fuck did you find her, the Tom Savini Museum?”
“Where did she go,” Ben asked, barely processing what I’d said.
“Where do bloodless shrews go when they need to rest? Fucked if I know. She’s your problem, not mine. So’s the couch, by the way.”
Ben actually looked sincere when he replied, “How is that my problem? Lawyer up and sue the bitch. I had no control over her.”
“No shit. You let HER run YOU out of your own home. Pretty irresponsible, I’d say.”
“Well, when you get this shit cleaned up, we’ll talk about it.”
“When I get it cleaned up? Grab yourself a dustpan and Shop-Vac, Ben. Your guest – your problem.”
With that, I made a theatrical-level stager exit up the stairs to my room, regretting it when I realized I wanted more beer to assist with the onset of sleep. Reluctantly, Ben did the right thing and took care of the mess, even going so far as to take apart the frame and lug it out to the side porch for disposal on trash day.
--
Ben escaped any further conversation about the sofa by not being around for the next two weeks. His job put him on the road a lot, so it was just more of an annoyance when I had to phone in my next two payments on a couch that was just a pile of rubbish the trash folks refused to take away. However, my other roommate, Anton, decided to buy a couch to fill the big hole in our living room. While he felt bad for my situation, it was more so he could have guests over to watch football without having to use the four beanbag chairs I pulled out of storage. Anton bought a cheap, practical pull-out couch with space enough for five.
It wasn’t worth mentioning earlier, but the week leading up to my birthday had its own sampler pack of stupid starting with work. I not only wasted my time campaigning for a promotion but I was called into a meeting with my supervisor and some soulless dink from HR to discuss my declining energy and absent positivity in the workplace. I was warned to smile more and put more effort into the weekly TPS reports if I wanted to even be considered for a future within the organization. To this end, I was “volunteered” for a project – a great opportunity that amounted to twelve-hour days twice a week for six months so I could dazzle those dickheads with my newfound motivation not to be fired.
Because of this, I often returned home tired from beating down the constant urge to commit various felonies on the persons and property around my office cube. The memory of Kelly and her sofa-cide faded a bit over the following two weeks until the night before Ben was supposed to be back in town. I came home to find her sitting in the same chair, no knife this time, staring into space.
This time, Kelly wore a leather mini-dress with full sleeves and a high collar. She traded her post-mortem face painting for something you might see at a BDSM makeover party. She amped up the pale foundation and contrasted it with bright red lipstick and gothic levels of eye shadow. The fishnets and heels were a nice touch, though it made me think of two skeletal marlins caught in a trawling net. She held a matching clutch purse in her lap like something inside might try an escape.
I spoke directly from my inside voice. “Fuck me, what now?”
Kelly looked up at me and frowned. “Ben won’t be back until tomorrow. We’re supposed to go clubbing tonight but he’s not back tonight. I called him and he sounded like he was out clubbing without me.”
I sat down on the new sofa, falling a little harder than expected. I let this new information process a bit and looked her over one more time to make sure she wasn’t armed. Finally, I said, “So you decided to just come in and hang out? Or did you destroy something else I should know about?”
Kelly went into her clutch while my asshole clenched. Instead of a knife or a gun, she produced a roll of bills wrapped in a rubber band. She tossed it gently in my general direction. I had to stretch over the far side of the sofa to get it.
Meanwhile, she explained, “For the sofa. It’s $500. All I can spare at the moment.”
The humiliation of telling her that the couch, while retailing at about $600, cost me about twice that with interest and “facilitation charges” kept me from going any further. $500 cash in hand was a good thing on most days, so I was gracious in my thanks.
She went on. “You didn’t, like, yell at me that night. You didn’t make me feel bad about it. I thought that was really…” She stopped there as though the word she had in the chamber wasn’t right when it came time to fire so she let the sentence trail off hoping I would understand.
“Yeah,” I said. “We all go a little mad sometimes.” I shrugged, hoping it would earn a smile or at least relax her shoulders. It did neither so I continued. “Ben is a pair of old clown shoes sometimes…most times. I’m sorry you got your dates mixed up.”
“I’m laughing in my head because my medication keeps me from doing it on the outside. I’m actually feeling really good, especially now that you’re here. I want to ask you out to the clubs. Is that wrong of me? I don’t know, sometimes.”
With lots to unpack, I went for the least offensive behind the nature of her relationship with Ben, the apparent lack of self-esteem that caused her to overlook our total lack of chemistry, and the fact that I did not find her in the least bit attractive except as a Halloween decoration for the front yard. “I’m really tired and busy. I don’t really ‘club’ either.”
Kelly nodded as if accepting a serious medical diagnosis and fell silent.
To be fair, it wasn’t as if I had better prospects. A potentially crazy person with a history of using cutlery on furniture and trespassing wasn’t “beneath me” so much as ill-advised. Looking back on my life, my typical girlfriend material was a woman who was just one bad night with me away from realizing she was a lesbian. I wasn’t sure of the good night protocol with Kelly. Would a kiss under the moonlight near her crypt be appropriate? I had no idea about courtships in the underworld.
“So it’s time for you to go,” was the thing to say next. But I didn’t. I let the thought bounce around my wet meatspace hoping the uncomfortable silence would give her the clue. But nope. A few minutes of that later, I stood up and wished her a good night before heading upstairs to change into loser-casual attire for my long-awaited but inevitably pathetic weekend.
Twenty minutes later, I came downstairs and Kelly was gone.
--
Ben didn’t come home the next day as he told us. It didn’t surprise me as he was a grown man without any obligations to me or anyone else. I should have realized that Kelly would not take the news so well.
The five Red DogsI pounded the night before kept me asleep until late in the morning. I woke up to whining and bleating from some news program, the feeling of a full bladder, and the sight of Kelly staring at me through the front window. The look on her face mixed frustration with desperation and I’m sure mine met hers with naked annoyance. Too late to pretend I didn’t see, I rolled off the sofa and to my feet, arms spreading in the universal symbol for “What the actual fuck, creeper?”
She dropped out of sight, reminding me that she had to climb up on the foundation ledge a few feet to see into the window. By the time I got to the front door, I was fully prepared to tell her to get off my fucking lawn and threaten her with police or a stern taunting. However, by the time my best body shaming cuts were locked and loaded, Kelly was starting up her Honda Civic headed back to the laboratory or wherever.
Ben returned home about two hours later looking like he was nearly fucked to death by a team of horny gymnasts. He breezed by me on the couch without so much as a greeting and dropped his two travel bags in front of the television. This was his staging area prior to doing his laundry, of course, so it smelled like a fecal and musk sorbet for the remainder of the afternoon.
I called after him. “Dude. Your girlfriend has been breaking into the house and peeping into the windows. Can you do something about her, please?”
“Who,” Ben called from the kitchen.
“Kelly. The sofa slayer. She was here last night because she thought you two were going out. She came by this morning to watch me sleeping on the…”
“Kelly?” Ben stared at me like I’d mentioned Chuck Cunningham to Howard Cunningham after the first season of Happy Days. “Who are you talking about?”
I described her briefly and that jogged his memory. He made a face like a child waving off a serving of steamed vegetables.
“I left her a message and told her to fuck off. I don’t have time for her bullshit.”
“She did not get it or she didn’t understand it. Either way, she’s let herself into the house twice now and I don’t have time for her bullshit, either.”
“Nice couch.”
Ben was a cunning master of debate.
“It’s Anton’s,” I said before shifting back to the subject of intruders and potential stalkers. “Apparently, she is very much into you, so… maybe it’s time to get on the same page?”
“I don’t have time for this shit. I just got home. I’m tired. I’m hungry. You can tell her to fuck off next time you see her.”
“I was going to have the cops do it, but I wanted you to have a chance to give her a soft landing, you know? Can you talk to her?”
I gave up on Ben at that point. There’s an Irish proverb about teaching pigs to sing. It says not to because it just annoys the swine and wastes your time. I mentioned this situation to Anton when he got home from his parent’s house and he suggested changing the locks or at least making sure we were using them. Anton was the only housemate who locked his room, but he lived in South Philadelphia so – enough said there. Ben dismissed any responsibility for leaving anything unsecured even though Anton and I knew that Ben would leave the front door open in winter if he had more than two other thoughts running through his head at the time. His only contribution was that he refused to pay to change the locks, so we left the conversation there and parted ways.
That night all three of us were home and so we did what we normally did on those rare nights – we stuck to our bedrooms to avoid conversations about rent, utilities, and politics. I listened to Pink Floyd and caught up on some fetish websites as I do sometimes. I made good use of my mini-fridge and resumed my nightly ritual of drinking myself to sleep until the hallway outside my door filled with screaming.
I recognized Ben’s low grunts and indecipherable gibberish that grew louder when the other voice – a human belt sander, it seemed – tried to interject. I left my computer and made sure I had on pants before opening my bedroom door.
There were Ben and Kelly in the hallway. Kelly wasn’t concerned about not wearing pants. Or a top. Her pasty skin nearly caused her to blend in with the naked Chantilly Lace-painted walls. Ben stood tall, looming over her in his tight whites. Until that night I’d never seen such a hairy ginger, like a molting sasquatch defending its den. Kelly hit him across his barrel chest with a single red rose that blew pedals across the floor on impact.
Anton peeked out of his bedroom door and advised, “Shut the hell up!”
Ben cycled into a chorus of “Get OUT!” on a loop, pointing in the direction of the sky instead of the stairs.
Kelly’s high-pitched sounds were lost on everyone.
“Get her some clothes before you kick her out,” I shouted over it all. Kelly shook and shivered in the hallway, mainly from the situation as the house was always a little too warm for my taste.
“Jesus Christ, guys. Take it somewhere else!” Anton stepped out of his room, thankfully dressed. He moved to get between Ben and Kelly. The only good thing about her nakedness was that there was nowhere to hide a chef’s knife.
Anton approached the situation with the kind of leadership and command typical of a Texas Roadhouse Assistant Manager. “Who the fuck are you? Why are you naked? Why are you two screaming at each other in my house at…what the fuck time is it?”
Ben, quick to exploit the silence, said, “I was going to sleep and she came into my room! She took off her clothes and got into bed with me!”
Kelly didn’t deny anything but the way Ben explained it made it sound the way it was: like a creepy stalker move by someone who was incapable of understanding “NO” unless it was expressed so simply. To be fair, Ben was also incapable of expressing those kinds of things so simply. Kelly tried to move past Ben and Anton but they briefly blocked her way.
“Let me get my fucking clothes!”
They let her pass, leaving the three of us staring at each other in the hall for a few moments.
She returned to the hallway making like a shoplifter to the exit. She wore black leggings and a black hoodie with black track shoes – the kind of outfit one chooses for stalking a red sasquatch in his home close to midnight. She raced down the stairs and out the front door, letting the screen slam shut behind her but the door itself open wide.
I didn’t notice Ben going back into his bedroom until I heard him call out. “She left her fucking panties on my pillow, god damn it.”
Anton laughed, face bright red. “You know, if I had a dollar for every time that happened to me…” He turned toward his room. “I’d be dead broke.” He shut the door behind him.
Ben slammed his bedroom door and either locked it from within or moved his dresser across it.
Of course, this meant I had to go down, shut the door, lock it, and check all the doors and windows to make sure we were secure. Passing the kitchen counter that held our prep tools, I noticed the cutting block was missing its chef’s knife.
Weird thing to take as a souvenir.
That was the last “fun” encounter with Kelly. In the morning, Anton called the police and gave a statement which, of course, led to other statements from Ben and me, photos of the couch that still lay in pieces on the carport, and a promise that little could be done to prevent another unwanted visit. The police got her address from Ben and said they would talk to her but advised him to look into a Protective Order which they also advised would not stop a certain type of crazy no matter how well-worded.
Ben rode out the remainder of the year lease and packed up a month early to prepare for life with his new fiancé. Anton and I agreed to stay on with a month-to-month considering new housemates to share the load until we could each find out forever families and pass the place off to a new generation of young squatters. Once or twice I spotted a familiar Honda Civic on our block but tried not to stare at the person behind the wheel. Kelly just vanished from our lives in a small town where it was almost impossible not to stumble over someone every so often. Having lost touch with Ben, there was no one to question about how she got along after except that a few years ago I was watching CSPAN (don’t ask me why) and I spotted a woman seated behind some loud ginger Congressman. She bore a striking resemblance to Kelly. If so, good for her. If not a crypt, then a zoo is a good place to keep her caged.