Roommates Forever

ROOMMATES FOREVER

It was a strange relationship, to say the least. Jake was a mellow, down-to-earth kind of guy who enjoyed an occasional glass of wine after dinner. He had a lot of friends, was a sports fanatic, and he loved to tickle the ivories whenever he had a hankering. His grand piano took up a good portion of the living room, but it was small price to pay for his self-enjoyment.

Floyd on the other hand, was rude, crude, and flat out arrogant. He despised music, as well as sports, and as far as friends went, he had none, although he did consider Jake an ‘acquaintance’. He was also a certified dipsomaniac, but wine was not his choice of drink; he preferred the hard stuff, and rarely was the morning when Jake would wake up without finding an empty bottle of rotgut in the waste basket.

Yes, ironically they were roommates, whether they liked it or not, which they didn’t. But because of financial hardships on both their parts, as well the huge unemployment situation in the city, they had to settle for what they could. And unfortunately, that meant having to live together.

They had their own rooms, made their own meals, and hardly ever spoke to each other. It wasn’t Utopia, but it wasn't Gehenna, either.

Jake usually spent his days pounding the pavement in search of a job, while Floyd was more of a night owl. And because conversation was virtually nonexistent between them, Jake never inquired as to what Floyd did on his nocturnal excursions, nor did he care.

But if he had, perhaps things would have been different, for Floyd was a serial killer. On some of those nights when Floyd went out he would carefully hunt for a helpless victim, and then drag them into an alley and slice their throats from ear to ear. Eight women had been savagely murdered, and the cops didn’t have a clue who the killer was.

One morning, six months after moving in together, Jake woke up to find the apartment in shambles. Everything had been smashed beyond recognition. The kitchen was littered with broken plates, the furniture had been slashed, and his prized grand piano was practically in splinters, the ivory keys strewn about like broken teeth. At first he thought it was some bizarre dream, but he knew it wasn’t. And in the middle of all of the rubble was the lifeless body of a young woman, her throat ripped open from ear to ear, her bloody skull caved in with a large rock that Floyd had apparently used for some of his destruction. Taped to the rock was a note:

Jake, you know who did this.

Have a wonderful day.

And Jake did know. To his horror, he did know.

He went to the bathroom, the only room that had been spared from Floyd’s ruination, looked in the mirror, and asked himself, “Floyd, you psycho son-of-a-bitch! How could we have done this?”



(Originally meant for The Daily Flash Fiction Contest, but for some reason I thought I could use 500 words instead of 300. Duh! But I wasn't about to weed out 200 words from this!)