Drug den
When I left home, I rented a room in a very nice house in the leafy, middle-class area of town. Life was good, we all got on and took the piss out of the bunny boiler bird that kept hassling one of the other guys. Then the guy that owned the house fell off a roof and broke his back on a roofing job. Literally that same day, his arsehole ex-wife turned up, proclaimed the house hers and me and the other guy to find somewhere else to live within a week. So I was fairly desperate to find somewhere.
Ended up renting a room from a guy who seemed okay on the first meeting. He was a friendly bloke, smoked a bit of weed and was into the same kind of music as me. I moved in but within a couple of days I started to wonder why the fuck I had done so.
The house was permanently cold. There was never any hot water and I began to wonder whether my rent was actually going to the real landlord, my roommate’s grandmother.
As time went on I noticed things going missing. It started with food, then my Southern Comfort. One day I sneaked into roomie’s room and found discarded food packaging all over the floor. My food! More worryingly though were several empty tins of lighter fluid scattered about the place…
I took the day off work one day and was having a nice relaxing shit when there was a very authoritarian knock at the door. I went downstairs and noticed, through the glass door, a couple of people dressed in black. There was a long, heavy looking red thing about to make its way through the glass. I opened the door and was met with two officers of her Majesty’s finest with a battering ram. They were here looking for stolen goods. One of my roommates dodgier friends had been accused of passing on stolen goods and the rozzers had a warrant to search the premises.
Now I’ve never been in bother with the law and so let them in. They searched the place and asked how long I’d been living there, as well as what I did for a living. When they found out that I was a good lad that worked and paid his taxes, instead of sitting indoors all day smoking dope and inhaling lighter fluid, the male officer took me to one side and ‘advised’ me that I should look for somewhere else to live.
One day I got in from work and noticed that the telly had disappeared. Odd, I thought, and went to my room. My guitar had gone. My bottle of Southern Comfort had gone. A big jar full of saved coins had gone too. Immediately I packed up my computer and other valuable stuff and took it down to a friend’s for safe keeping. A week later I found somewhere else to live.
A few years later, one of the guys that used to call round there often told me that the arsehole I was sharing with thought nothing of getting pissed and doped up, nicking my car keys and having a bit of a midnight joy ride in my car.
Last thing I heard, he was living in Leeds. I hope the fucker ODs on something…
(Ghostlight, Fri 27 Feb 2009, 12:05, Reply)