Divorced Dating and Damn Drama (9 page)

"I have a thirty dollar camera, I don't think it's what you need, and I don't shoot videos." I say bluntly.

"Oh come on, just do it." Marshal begs.

"Ok, ok. I'll do it" I say. Anything to shut him up.

The next day, Saturday, I'm suckered into meeting him at 8am in the smelly cesspool ally by his house. It has been raining before I arrived so there are small puddles lying about the ground. The cold air blows, and in doing so, blows the wires overhead and causes water to sprinkle on my head. There is surprisingly no graffiti on the walls and they look freshly painted. Freshly painted in blood, I think. Then take a step towards it. Nope, just painted in red paint. I touch it, still wet. Too bad the paint will just come right off, I remark. That's because you cannot paint when it is still wet out, or the paint will just comes right off. I know this being an avid house painter myself. The first house we lived in for six months was a cesspool and got tagged every night. So I had to learn fast how to paint. Once after saving for six months I was able to get a small loan and we purchased a rather large house from one of Henry's friends. Although it was large, it still needed a lot of repairs. So yeah, I am good at repairs too. I'm kind of a jack of all trades yet master of none.
So Marshal
finally shows up looking like a fool. I have no idea what he is going for, but he is in desperate need of a cowboy intervention. Large white hat, green snake skin boots and a skull head tie clip. He sees me and looks around, as if expecting someone else or something more.

"Are you Marissa?" Marshal asks, concerned. We have video chatted before, and I doubt I look any different from last night, but I will let this go.

"That's me all right." I say trying to smile cute.

"Where is everyone?!" Marshal exclaims. Sheer terror is showing on his face.

"It's only me, unless you invited other people." I said holding up my cheap camera so he could see.

"So you do not have wardrobe, a makeup artist, a vocal coach, or professional equipment?" Marshal asks as he grabs my camera and smashes it into the brick wall beside us.

"No, I brought my camera, that's all I have." I say astonished. He just broke my camera. My only camera.

"Man, I though you knew what you were doing, this is a joke." Marshal growls pointing his fat stubby red stained finger in my face.

"We talked about this last night. I never claimed to know anything." I say taking several steps back.

"Mark my words, this is unprofessional and I will end your career for this!" Marshal storms off, nearly smacking me in his abrupt twirl.

"What career?" I shout back. I mean, really. What did he expect? I showed up and brought my camera, like he wanted. Now look what happened. I can't afford a replacement camera let alone a new one.

I walk back to my car with my meal to go. What? I like eating out and yes I grabbed something on downtown Main Street. Anyways, as I stroll to my car, I stop in my tracks. Someone had written "Die" on my car with bold red spray paint. Really? Die. Out of all of the cars, they pick mine to vandalize. Why does everyone victimize my car? And this is broad daylight!
Why didn't anyone stop this felon from selecting my already run down and basically destroyed car?
Where is the sense of community, people? I touch the paint only to find it is hard as a rock. Already dried on. I wonder if Marshal could have done it. If he had done it after our run in, then I would think it would still be wet, then again I did go and get food so maybe it would have dried by then. I wonder how he knew what car I drove. I ponder about Marshal's stalker qualities as I get into my car and drive over to the Gossip Super Store. There I get some blue spray paint and go nuts. Right there in the parking lot, I'm spraying my little heart out.

"There!" I exclaim gasping for breath. I look up at the car. Perfect, I now have a blue blob where the words were written. I throw the used paint cans in the trunk of my car. Now I can finally enjoy the food I purchased. Aw its cold! I'm still eating it. What? People eat cold food all the time.

Since the local community college does not have dorms, my apartment complex is kind of like the dorm rooms. Its cheap and the landlord looks the other way because he reeks of laziness. So the college kids in my complex have a film festival coming up and I have been recruited as the dead body. It's one night of filming and I just lay there. So I'm really not doing anything and apparently everyone wants real roles in the film so I was the only one they could con into doing it. But lying down, I think I can do this. If this film goes professional I might even win an Emmy as the woman who lies down. Hey, that has a nice ring to it, I laugh.

They had me working on set on a Saturday night. I showed up at 9pm in Jessica's dorm room and after two hours of her and her roommate fighting over who ate the yogurt in the fridge, they finally got to work. Blood and gore everywhere. I really hope this is over soon; then again they have my lying on the couch covered in fake blood. They position me with my arms sprawled out and my legs are placed in awkward positions. I think for a minute. This is really comfortable. My back has never felt so supported, this is amazing. Maybe I could stay here all night. Well they have not asked me to, but I feel so good, that maybe I will. They direct me to close my eyes and I fall asleep. What? The couch was comfortable, and I'm a volunteer. You get what you pay for.

I awaken to someone screaming. I wish they could keep it down. I'm trying to sleep. The screaming proceeds and I open my eyes. What? They can always shoot my part again. I look around and the whole apartment is transformed. Plastic sheets everywhere and newspaper covering the windows. The lights were flickering and there was a weird humming noise. The sheets were splattered with fake blood. The college kids kind of went all out! Good for them. I lie back down and close my eyes.

I guess the college kids forgot me. But that's ok. I'm happy here. Why don't we have this couch? I want it. The main door leading from the hallway into the apartment slowly creaks open and a large man wearing all black and a hockey mask enters the apartment. He is holding an ax dripping in blood. For some reason he breaths very loud, it is distracting. Is this real? Because it seems highly unlikely. However, knowing my luck this badly scripted horror called my life is real. One of the college girls walked out of the bathroom texting on her phone. The masked guy runs to her and knocks her down, then proceeds to jam his ax into her back. He just killed a stupid blonde girl. I hate dead bodies, I just hate them. What if they come back to life? Oh my God, Zombies! No, no time to worry about Zombies now. I need to focus on the killer. As in any start of terror everything around you
slows down. You notice things you
hadn't notice before, such as the killer is wearing a pink watch. I have little time to ask about the watch and no time to think about it. He turns to me and starts walking towards me. My heartbeat falls in line with his steps. I am going to go ninja on him. Which means I will fight to the death, if it comes to that. Every step the masked man takes closer, the more ways I see myself dying. I would run, but I used up all my running trying to get the last pretzel at the pretzel cart at work. Going to work on a Saturday to get a pretzel
is normal. Anyways
, back to my doom. I stand up on the couch, in fight mode, ready to pounce. When he was within reach I pounced on him. I jumped in such a way that my gut was balancing on his head. I grabbed his shirt collar and held on wrapping my legs around his chest. He tossed and turned while I went on the ride of my life. I think my body weight was crushing his air space because he slowly went down gasping for air.

"I can't breathe!" He rasped. Then people come out of the curtains.

"Cut, cut, get off him." I got off the killer, standing confused. He rasped and gasped for breath. The dead college girl comes back to life running to the masked man. Oh my God, she is a Zombie, she is going to eat his face. Nope, I was wrong, she is asking him if he is ok. Oh, I get it. This was part of the movie. I told you this didn't happen in real life. They ended up kicking me out, but not before threatening to kill me. Apparently someone should put me out of my misery.

I am awakened in the middle of the night to something dripping on me. I touch my cheek and feel it. It's cold and wet. I put it up to my nose and smell. Eww, it's sewage! It's SEWAGE! I get up and quickly turn on the lights. As I do, a toilet comes crashing down from the ceiling onto my bed. Not shattering mind you, but toppling over and spilling its contents all over my room. I jump back in horror, yelling for someone to come quick. When Sara and Ruby enter my room they both burst out laughing. My whole room is covered from wall to wall in shit. I literally live in a CESSPOOL.

"How do you know it's poop?" Rudy says from her position of blocking the doorway.

"What?" I ask turning to Ruby.

"I'm just saying, how do you know?" She repeated.

"Because it smells like a cesspool, Ruby, that's how I know." Losing control of my emotions and yelling.

"Hmm, but how do you know for sure?" She said pushing my buttons.

"I don't know Ruby, you tell me!" I exclaim.

"Taste it." said Ruby bluntly.

"Why don't you freaking do that Ruby? I'm going upstairs." I shove past Ruby, trying not to touch anything and go to bang on my upstairs neighbor's apartment door.

I march up there and start banging away on my neighbors door. The landlord comes up, upset from being woken up, and unlocks the door. I enter and I'm accosted with the most vial smell. The landlord gasps then says a quick prayer before exiting the building. I hold my nose and walk into the lair. The apartment is covered wall to wall by stuff. Just trash really. Old newspapers stacked high, enough cans to feed a small army littered about the floor, if you can call it a floor. I swear I'm stepping in a foot of trash just on the ground alone. As I go deeper in, I finally see what the landlord saw. There is a dead body lying face down in the kitchen holding a pill bottle. Curiosity takes a hold and I can't help myself. I bend down to read the prescription "Gossip Next." This drug is a very powerful anti depressant, I admit I dabbled in it and as a result I almost jumped
out of the living room window. My apartment
building
is located on the fifth floor. If
Ruby had not grabbed me around the waist and pulled me back I would be dead by now. Sara should really stop handing out drugs like they are candy
. I'm just lucky I wasn't hurt. I turn around and leave the apartment, remembering to
close the door behind me. As I walk to the stairs I see the paramedics rushing out of the elevator. Maybe he is still alive, maybe they can still save him, I think. Knowing that he was long dead and already showing signs of decay.

The next few weeks were awful
. The building manager refused to
hire a team to fix the ceiling until all the poop was cleaned up. So how did a dead guy lead to my room being a cesspool? Well, apparently the plumbing stopped working upstairs and the landlord refused to have someone fix it until he cleaned up the apartment. And of course he didn't clean up the apartment, so naturally he didn't have a working toilet. He still had to go number one and number two. Number one he was able to save in bottles but number two as a bit trickily. He just kept going in the toilet, just hoping the plumbing would work and one day his toilet would magically flush. So the pile of human feces grew, and although he died a week before the incident, the floor was slowly giving way. So yeah, that's how I wound up with a toilet full of human feces trying to kill me.

I had to hire a team of professional cleaners who were far from reasonable. They snickered, made jokes and called me a walking cesspool. The ceiling got fixed and I got to keep my new nickname, walking cesspool. At least they aren't calling me Henry's ex. That's something, right?

You do not have kids so you do not understand. Who has heard that one before? It's a common phrase used by men on online dating sites. They, for some reason, think that because they have a child, that justifies every action they will ever make until they die. It's like alcohol to them. By that I mean they can say and do anything they want and if you get upset for a valid reason they say: "You don't have kids so you don't understand." I'm sorry I don't have kids, what do you want me to do? Go out, get pregnant, have a kid, then come back to you so then I will understand? Please, get off your high horse.

"I just need to be sure you are the right woman because I have a kid." states Randy. He is 25, lives with his step dad, has short light brown hair
and has a three month old baby girl. He posted a photo of her and she is adorable. I saw the photo and instantly fell in love with her. I'm not saying
I'm baby crazy but she is a baby and she makes me crazy. We met in the lobby of the hotel that he and his step dad are staying at. It's a nice lobby complete with nice plastic chairs. The heater is on and I position myself directly in front of it. Now there are exactly two hotels in the town of Gossip. One is located in the rich part of town and is very luxurious. However, the other one is positioned in the poor side of town and is just one citation away from being condemned. Let's just say this is not the rich one. I had almost slipped on ice getting out of my car due to the fact that not only is it cold out but the pot holes are not maintained to a point that it is like a skating ring in the parking lot, winter is fast approaching.

"That makes perfect sense, safety comes first." I respond with enthusiasm. I don't know about that, but is there anything sexier than a responsible father? Randy sits directly in front of me with some sort of beverage in a black mug. Coffee maybe?

"It's just really hard being a farther. I mean, I don't even have custody of my little girl, but it's still hard." Randy whines. He takes out chewing tobacco from his jacket pocket and bites off a reasonable size piece then begins to chew.