I don’t know how to start this. I guess I’ll just jump into what’s been on my mind a lot recently. There was this maintenance call I went on a while back. I don’t know why, exactly, but I think there’s a deeper meaning to… whatever it was that transpired that day. My mind always cuts to the part where things start to get weird…
“It’s unclogged now, ma’am” I told the tenant, carefully removing my latex gloves and placing them inside of a small plastic bag. She was a large girl, probably in her mid twenties, and had numerous food stains and smears along the front of her matching blue sweat pants ensemble. She grunted appreciation from her perch on the couch. She hadn’t said more than three consecutive words to me the whole time, hadn’t even gotten up off of the couch, not even to open the door and let me in.
If I hadn’t had the work order printed out by Mrs. Tina, the property manager, placed in my hand to outline the nature of the problem, then I doubt this opulent woman would have been able to coax forth enough words, much less string them together, to explain to me what was wrong.
She made for a glutinous sight, just sitting there…existing, with dirty bowls and plates occupying the spaces around her. She was watching her television, seemed utterly entranced by it. Her blank and slack facial expression told me she was somewhere else, far away.
“Oh and ma’am, I found this in the pipework” I produced a gold band beset with a multitude of small diamonds all positioned around a larger, more grandiose one. I’m no jewelry guy but it looked like an engagement ring, and a hefty one at that. “Is it yours? Did you lose it?”
She seemed torn between me standing in front of her talking and whatever she saw on the screen. A battle played out on her face before she finally gave me the larger portion of her attention. She turned away and looked to me, as though she hadn’t heard a word I’d just said. I repeated my inquiry before she finally looked down to what I was holding out toward her, as I had been the entire time.
“This yours?”
Her face soured. “My ex-fiance. It’s garbage” she croaked before swiveling back around to face the television.
“You… don’t want it then? Is it real?” I asked, much to her annoyance. She merely grunted, making an odd gesture in the process. She swatted her hand over her head, as if I were some bothersome fly entering her personal airspace.
“I guess that settles it then” I thought, dropping the ring back into my pocket. I had debated even bringing it up. There had been no mention of finding it in the work order, the call was about a simple clogged drain. I had decided to do the right thing by asking her, but in the end whatever was playing out on her television was far more important. She just continued staring away, slack jawed and unblinking.
While cleaning up my mess, I happened to notice a few of the pictures she had on her walls in the hallway. Most were of a cute looking couple. A rather handsome young man and the woman of his affection. I hadn’t recognized her at first, assumingly because the differences between the girl in the picture and the girl on the couch were considerable. Like -hundreds of pounds- considerable. That poor, happy looking girl in the pictures must have an unpaved road to hell to get dragged through to come out the other side looking like that thing in there on the couch. There didn’t even appear to be that big of an age difference between the two, so at least it was a short road.
“Poor fiance ran for the hills, if he was smart” I thought to myself, replacing my tools in their box.
On the way out the door, it took several attempts to regain her attention. When she reluctantly did tear her gaze away from the TV, I got her signature on the bottom of the work order. If you can call that a signature. It was nothing more than a quick scribble and flourish. Then as quickly as she could shove the pen back in my grasp, she was back to watching her TV.
I was curious what exactly she thought it was that she was watching. All I could see was a blank screen, I don’t even think it was turned on, it hadn’t been the entire time. That hadn’t stopped her from ignoring me in favor of the dark screen. Before walking out the door, I placed the engagement ring on the remote control for the television.
I couldn’t very well take it with me. To take the ring would be a big no-no. Taking things that don’t belong to you is a fireable offense at almost any job, but working here, it can very easily become a deadly one.
To take possession of something cursed is to invite that same curse upon yourself. Despite this indisputable fact of nature, there have been people that have worked here before that let their greed get the better of them. They took some trinket or bauble and ended up dead. I think one guy is possibly in an institution upstate, locked up but still alive at least. At any rate, it’s not a good idea. Even though the resident practically offered it to me, might have well have said “Just take it”, I know better. Never leave with more than you came in with.
As for that resident, I don’t know what ever really became of her. She moved out eventually, here one day, gone the next. She hadn’t taken much, by the look of it. Her apartment was still littered with dish strewn furniture and a closet full of clothes, most of them way too small for her.
In her refrigerator were the remains of a young male, carved up and separated into dozens of tupperware containers. Sorry, I should lead with that next time. It was eventually confirmed to be her ex-fiance, who had gone missing. The same one whose multiple pictures still hung on the wall, most with the arms of a skinny blonde wrapped around him in a happy embrace. She left it all, by the looks of it. Pictures, furniture, shoes, the only thing noticeable that was missing was in the living room. The faint outline of where a TV used to be against the wall.
Shit like this keeps me up at night. There’s just GOTTA be more to that story. There has to be more to it than just: man meets girl, girl meats man (M-E-A-T-S, you get it?) What happened between her and her ex-fiance that led her to cannibalism? What happened to her after she left, besides now being wanted by the law? Will they have trouble catching her? What was the hidden allegory between her unhealthy eating habits, and how she became a slave to something that in the end DIDN’T even have a core message, hell, it wasn’t even plugged into the outlet? Did she gain all of that weight just from eating ONE measly human?
Weird shit, I know.
Speaking of weird shit, there’s what happened to me and Daryll a few weeks back. Daryll, that’s the grounds keeper, had his riding lawn mower stopped in one of the alleys between buildings. I was heading back to the shop at the time, probably to go check the Manual or grab a part, when I came upon him, just standing there bent over at the waist. He was looking at something on the ground, something in the grass.
“What’s up?” I asked cordially when I got within his range. It hadn’t even warranted a response, as by the time he could say anything, I was looking down at it too.
It was presumably animal feces, though what KIND of animal feces? Well, the jury was out.
“And to think, I almost ran over it…” he said, falling to his knees in praise before it.
“What? What’re you…..” I trailed off, still staring down into the pile of crap. I blinked. I blinked again. I found it hard to look away, I COULDN’T look away. The harder I tried, the more beautiful the poop became. It was like witnessing a miracle, a true honest to god miracle. It’s fine sheen glistening and the way the light reflected off of it. It’s every indentation and imperfection seemingly speckled at random but paradoxically by design at the same time. The way it tapered off at the end. Perfection.
It was glorious, and in the biblical sense of the word, too. I swear I could hear little angels playing trumpets triumphantly off in the wings.
Before I knew it, I was down on the ground next to Daryll, in praise of this wondrous waste. It had us in it’s thrall. I remember feeling tricked by it, but only briefly. It had put a spell on me initially, but that spell had since worn off, and now I was refusing to look away of my own accord. I didn’t want to look away, it’s as simple as that. It was like looking straight into the heart of one of the universes’ great mysteries, and seeing more of the picture than you ever considered possible before. Pieces were aligning, others falling into place. I knew if I could just stand there and see it, really SEE into it long enough, then I’d have the answer to a question I never even asked, but couldn’t see myself living without.
Thank god Jason came along when he did. He’s been working here longer than any of us, has seen more than probably anyone. Apparently that wasn’t the first time something like this has happened, and he recognized the sight of two grown men staring into a pile of celestial dog shit as a bad one.
He DIDN’T HAVE to pepper spray us, though. The Manual states that merely breaking the sightline of the intended victim is enough. The pepper spray was a little overkill, but in the end I guess it worked. A little heavy handed, if you ask me. It got results, I guess.
When my vision finally came back around, Jason had taken his shirt off and had thrown it over the otherworldly scat. We got a shovel, and trying our best to be as delicate as possible, we scooped it up. Jason said maintaining the dookie’s structural integrity was paramount, so we scooped it up along with an inch or two of the dirt under it.
We loaded it carefully into a box, and put it in the back of Jason’s truck. I asked him “What’re you going to DO with it? Destroy it? What does one do with that… crap?”
I dunno what I expected his answer to be, but it certainly wasn’t the one he gave.
“Shit like this may be just another Tuesday afternoon for us here, at this god forsaken place, but out there, it’s rare. People put a price tag on rare. You never know when something as obscure as hypnotic shit may come in handy. Why, you could send it to your enemies. Next thing you know, they’re drooling madmen. I plan on putting this out on my property, though. Might catch a few trespassers. I figure so long as I don’t look at it myself, it’d be a welcome addition to my home security system.”
I gotta admit, he had a point. Also a good reason to never go to his house, though.
By this point, I was fully snapped out of it, not like poor Daryll. He hadn’t said a word the whole time, and he looked shook. He took some time off after that, and ended up coming back a completely different man. I’m not sure if that whole… episode… contributed to his current condition, but he doesn’t speak much anymore, and often when he does it’s with no more than a single gruff word here and there. Sad, that.
Almost as sad as what happened to the new guy. With whatever it was that had happened to Daryll, he at least walked away from it. Can’t say that about the new guy.
Management had hired him to do some painting. When he went missing for three days, I didn’t think much about it. Every apartment coming up due was painted, so I had just assumed ‘hey, look at the new guy go’ and thought the kid was just really gung-ho and getting ahead.
At a medium to large sized apartment complex, there’s always plenty to paint. We pride ourselves on our apartments being absolutely pristine when a tenant first moves into them. There is an ungodly amount of work sometimes when getting these apartments ready to achieve such a level of pristine. Painting every wall and ceiling plays a large role in that process.
With our specially blended paint, “Saintly White Satin” shipped straight from the Vatican at no small expense, it’s important work to seal everything away with AT LEAST one full coat. Whether or not it works with some of the creepier manifestations around here, we could debate all day. I can tell you it doesn’t stop them, that would be too easy. It does, perhaps, lessen their frequency or magnitude.
The act of painting in general is usually a pretty straightforward task. The act of painting one of THESE apartments, is a little more complicated. A series of runes must be painted first, all by hand and meticulously detailed. Now do it again on EVERY wall. Don’t forget the closets or the ceilings. Once they’re complete everywhere, then, and only then, may you paint the rest. Don’t forget, always paint from west to east, to signify the rising sun and the rebirth it represents, or some bull. Some kind of sealing ritual somebody in Management learned in Tibet or somewhere, I don’t know. It’s mandatory.
When our most recent painter screwed up somewhere on one of the runes, we found his still warm body close to a week later. He had slit his wrists with a box blade, and let’s just say he proceeded to ‘add a little red’ to the color profile. We aren’t sure what all exactly he was up to during that week he had been MIA, but we keep finding runes drawn in blood all over the place. Sometimes they’re small, and easy to miss. Jason found one drawn on the underside of a cabinet in a vacant apartment once. We found another on the wall behind the fridge. They could have been very easily overlooked.
We consulted the Manual and got the gist of what it was. Apparently it’s meant to weaken the barrier between this reality and the next. It goes without saying that paranormal activity is exacerbated in areas where one of these weakening runes is present or nearby. We’ve found at least a dozen of them so far.
Something had taken control of that new kid. Used his body to sabotage a few things and to set itself up for coming through to this side, and when it was finished with him, it cast him off. Used him like a damn skin-suit, and self terminated once its objective was complete.
Kid was too damn young. Didn’t believe any of us when we tried to tell him about this place. Poor kid probably thought we were hazing him. It’s always fun to mess with the new guy, but we never had to call the coroner over it.
His mortal sin was stubbornness. Completely avoidable. The kid didn’t go with that instinctual feeling deep in his gut. It permeates the air here. Since my first day, I’ve felt it, like somebody wringing my stomach and twisting my guts, and I still feel it to this day. It’s that feeling that something is just not right, and it’s kept me alive here.
He felt that same gut feeling, and he STILL chose not to take his training seriously and to cut corners.
This one’s for you new guy, I already forgot your name.
Hopefully the next painter doesn’t meet a similar fate. Management has taken more precautions, which now include checking in at the front office every morning and evening at the beginning and end of the day. Thanks to that new kid fucking up, no more slipping in late or dipping out early for the rest of us. Not to mention how now we gotta play ‘Where’s Waldo’ with those weakening runes, always popping up in obscure places. This place had enough problems already, before they hired that guy and he weakened the barriers.
It’s pretty safe to say that ‘phenomena’ was already pretty prevalent here, but in the apartments we’ve found those runes, it’s off the charts.
Someone’s refrigerator kept producing Tom Brady bobbleheads. The one we found the rune behind, matter of fact.
Yes, you read that right.
A woman, living alone in her apartment, kept finding Tom Brady bobbleheads in the back of her refrigerator, usually behind the milk. She had been calling and complaining about it for close to a week, before we finally got caught up with everything else enough to investigate.
She got a little angry when I laughed. When I questioned her about if she was sure it wasn’t just the same bobblehead, she produced a box with about a dozen of them. Their little heads just shaking in unison.
I have my doubts, mainly how she went off on me, listing his stats and how she ranted that he wasn’t even all that ‘great’ a quarterback. A ‘good’ one? Yeah, maybe. But a ‘great’ one? No! Not even close and here’s why…. Blah blah blah. According to her, she wasn’t even a Buccaneers fan. On the way out, I DID notice several Tom Brady posters hanging on her wall, oddly enough.
We’re supposed to be watching the game together next Sunday. The Buccaneers are in the semi-finals. I’m bringing the chips and dip.
Oddly enough, that’s not the first time something was ‘duplicated’ on the premises. Jason told us the story of another guy that used to work here, how he found a washing machine that some tenant left behind. He removed it from the apartment and brought it down to the shop, following all of the guidelines that the Manual laid out for doing so safely. The next day, there was another washing machine inside the apartment. He confirmed that this indeed wasn’t the same machine, though it matched it identically, down to the paint scuffs. Even the serial number was a match.
Not using his better judgment, he saw the opportunity to make a little extra spending cash and jumped on it. He’d sell one and another one would just appear. He ended up selling three of the damned duplicates to people on Craigslist. One of those being a tenant here at the apartments. That’s how they first figured out what they were doing to people.
One day shortly after, the tenant he had sold one to ended up dead. It was ruled a suicide after his journal told a tale of a man slowly losing his grip on reality. By the end, he had used the washing machine to kill his house pets, and then himself.
They found him crammed inside of it, his feet drawn up to his chest with only his head sticking out above the rim. He had the machine rigged up for something special. Halfway taken apart, and with a screwdriver wedged inside of the door sensor to fake it being closed, he had it stuck on spin. The way his head was hanging out of the open top and was thrashed around unceasingly for god only knows how long, well, there’s no easy way to put it. Eventually his head flew off from the centrifugal force. Pop goes the weasel.
There’s something wrong with that whole building though, if you ask me. The other day I was working on one next door when more weird shit happened.
The guy that lives there kept bothering the office, always something about his door. Incoherent phone calls, illegible emails, he would even flag any of us down when he saw us in the parking lot. He was always going on about his damn door. “We have to have a work order, so call the office” was what we were trained to tell them when this happened, “We’ll get to you when we can, but only if we have a work order in hand.”
Finally, Mrs. Tina in the office had had enough. She broke protocol and bumped his work order up. Usually we focus on potential emergencies first, prioritize the ones that have the best chance of being something bad. Somebody complaining vaguely about their door isn’t exactly a code red. He was very vocal and persistent though, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
When I got there, he couldn’t elaborate on the problem. He just kept trailing off when asked, mumbling and tripping over his own words. He couldn’t even tell me which door it was exactly that had the problem.
Putting on my sleuthing hat, I investigated. I couldn’t find anything wrong with ANY of his doors though, checking each one for alignment, squeaks and creaks, loose doorknobs, the works. I even checked his cabinet doors, just to cover all of my bases. It was only when I decided to count them that I came up with an anomaly. I had to check one of the empty apartments next door to be certain, but once I did I knew for sure that something was definitely amiss. He had more doors than he should have for that particular style of apartment. Exactly one more than usual.
The whole time I’m investigating, he keeps following me and mumbling about the damned doors. Asking me to fix them. We call people who hover over you while you’re trying to work ‘helicopters’, and this guy could hover. He looked mentally unwell, with all of his mumbling and scratching random itches all over his body making him look even more the part.
I figured if he was going to follow me, I might as well put him to good use. I finally found the extra door, it was in the back of his closet. I don’t know why it hadn’t stood out to me when I first saw it. An extra door in a closet seems like it should stand out as a red flag instantly, but somehow I had barely noticed it, despite it even being bright red in color.
With the resident tight on my heels I walked into the closet.
“Can you follow me please?” I asked him, knowing that he was going to follow me whether I liked it or not. I opened the extra closet door and stood beside it. “After you, sir.”
Not thinking, he walked through the door into what appeared to be an extra room. The room was filled to the brim with more doors. Doors with more doors between them. Even on the ceiling were doors. It was like a dimension of doors, or that warehouse from Monsters Inc. Nothing happened to him when he crossed the threshold, so I assumed it was safe to enter. I only felt a little bad about using this guy as my guinea pig, a canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Nobody likes helicopters, though.
“The doors… gotta fix ‘em…” he mumbled as he lovingly touched many of the doors, most of his ramblings after being pure gibberish.
This was new to me. I’ve been working here for a good while, and during all of my misadventures, escapades, and shenanigans- I had never stumbled across anything quite like this. I made the man follow me back into his bedroom, somewhat reluctantly on his part, and I bade him stay right there. Do NOT go back in there, I told him.
I needed to go scour the Manual, if there was anything like this written anywhere in its pages then I needed to know it. I don’t remember reading anything like this before, and if this was indeed some new undocumented phenomena, then it would be my first time making a contribution to the Manual. That’s kind of a big deal for us.
Many people have worked here for many years and never got to make any contributions this big to the Manual. It’s thought of as a milestone, one that many grizzled veterans never even get to reach. The last person to make such a big discovery was Jason, years before I started working here. Since I’ve been here, nothing new has been added.
Ready to break that streak, I hauled ass to the shop, calling Jason along the way. Most of what we run into here falls into a set number of categories. It’s mostly just variations of the same old things, manifestations, possessions, poltergeist, and the just plain weird. It’s never dull, but the excitement loses its luster after a while. This was unheard of, this was new, it could be anything!
Jason answered his phone. “I’ve got an unknown I may need a hand with” I told him.
A heavy sigh from his end. “What else is new? I’ll get with you after lunch, give you a hand.”
“THIS is new. It’s an unknown unknown. Do you want in?” I said cocky.
Silence from his end. Then finally, “Give me the details…” He was trying to play it cool, but I heard the undertone of excitement in his voice.
The truth is, everybody starts working here for the money. The money is amazing. Then you figure out WHY it’s amazing. When most new employees finally figure out the true nature of this place, what lurks here in the shadows, they bolt. Many refuse to come back to even collect their paycheck. Those of us who stick it out here, initially we stayed for the money. You work here long enough though, and eventually you end up staying for the thrills.
With Jason in tow acting as backup, I returned to the apartment. Strangely enough, nobody answered the door. We had permission to enter on the work order, so we went inside after several failed attempts to get anybody to the door.
“I told him to stay put. He was under something’s spell by the way he was acting, either that or he’s just lost it.” I said.
We cleared the entire apartment and there was no trace of him.
“He probably went back into the door. Let’s go get eyes on it.” Jason reasoned.
I led the way to the master bedroom. We stood there at the ready, looking at the closet door. “The extra door should be just in there, opposite the entrance” I acknowledged.
But it wasn’t there. Whatever it was, and wherever it leads to, it’s gone. I felt like somebody ran off with my prom date. It was gonna be MY discovery, damnit. My hopes, thoroughly dashed. Jason gave me a sympathetic pat on the back when it was all done.
“I had a few false alarms when I first started too. They’re frustrating” he told me. “We’ll add it to the Margin, maybe one day it’ll be a dedicated entry.”
The Margin was what we called the collection of loose pages haphazardly tossed into the back of the Manual. They all contained possible phenomena, nothing corroborated into anything definitive though. All the definitive stuff had dedicated entries, written inside the Manual itself.
The resident never returned. Mrs. Tina in the office was PISSED. Apparently he owed a good bit on his rent, and now that he is gone there’s little to no chance of him paying it. I’m glad at least SHE has her priorities straight.
I’m glad I took the time to write this out here. It feels liberating and therapeutic in a way. Ever since I stopped seeing my therapist a few months ago, I’ve lacked an outlet. It helps to be able to talk about some of these things, whether I’m believed or not. I may be back with more stories to tell, I’ve got a hundred of ‘em I wouldn’t mind airing out. Even if this only entertains a handful of you, then I must be doing something right. Until then, Justin from the Country Manor Maintenance Department, out.
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/100vr5i/maintaining_the_madness_2/