Need help with a Title!

I'm posting this in two parts because it's a long short story! It is untitled as of yet and I really would love suggestions for a title if you have any! They would be so appreciated.

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I never knew Hell walked on two legs, chewed Green Apple bubblegum and sported a unibrow. But there she was, standing outside my apartment with her plump, stubby legs poking out the bottom of a blue velvet robe glittered with silver stars banging on my door at three in the morning and yelling something completely incomprehensible. Gertie’s voice was deep for a woman’s and clearly unmistakable as hers. Somehow I knew that great balls of fiery wrath awaited me on the other side of my door but I still, for some reason, felt obligated to answer it.

“You been asleep all night?” she wanted to know. As if my touseled hair and half opened eyelids didn’t give it away. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

“‘Til now.” I leaned against the door frame and scratched my balls, dreading looking at her face for fear of not being able to prevent myself from slamming the door on her, running to the window and plunging to my death. I kept my gaze steady on her enormous tits instead, that bounced and heaved with her every breath like two boulders on a giant trampoline. That Green Apple smell from the bubblegum she constantly chewed curled up into my nostrils and I had to hold back the urge to vomit.

“Haven’t heard or seen anything suspicious?” The last word produced a spray of spittle and I cringed with disgust as the majority of it landed on my bare chest and stomach. Damn the person who came up with the word suspicious!

“Nope.” I bit back a smart assed comment because I just wanted her to go away.

“You sure?” Now I couldn’t help myself.

“Unless you file a flamingo pink-haired Weeble Wobble dressed in something that looks like it ought to have come out of Merlin’s closet, rapping on my door in the middle of the night as suspicious, I’m sure!” Waiting for her red face to spin around on her shoulders like a top, shooting smoke out of its various holes, I was very surprised and even a little disappointed when it didn’t. Whoever said there was no water in Hell is lying because Gertie burst into tears just then, releasing a flood so great even Noah wouldn’t have survived it in his Ark.

I was more than a little bewildered at this break in the dam for all the years that I’ve been living next to the ugliest Miss Piggy impersonation I’ve ever seen, not once have I seen her cry. I almost felt bad about what I said, but it wasn’t the worst I’ve thrown out at her and so I knew something else must be wrong.

“Okay, okay, that was rude of me,” I mumbled through gritted teeth, knowing full well she didn’t believe a word that escaped my lips and didn’t give a damn how rude I was to her.
Normally I’m a nice guy, but I couldn’t even bring myself to touch her even in her obvious time of need. “What is it?” I asked hesitantly, backing up two steps as her rosy bee’s nest moved dangerously close to my stomach as if she wanted to bury her face against my six pack. No chance of that while I’m alive.

“My boy’s been murdered!” she screeched, raising her head so quickly I didn’t have time to shield my eyes. A splotchy green face dove into my view, the puce color of her skin showing in spots where the cucumber mask had been wiped off, her swollen and squinty eyes filled with panic and devastation bugging out farther from her fleshy lids than I ever thought they’d be able to get. All I could picture was those twin smoky gray orbs popping out of the sockets and rolling down her lumpy cheeks to nest in one of the rolls of her many chins. To this day I can honestly admit I haven’t seen anything so hideous, even in my most horrific of nightmares. If I had had a full stomach when I went to bed that night, I might have shit my pants. I was so taken aback by the terrible sight, that what she had screamed still hadn’t registered in my brain yet. Stumbling away from her, nearly stricken blind, her words finally found a neuron or two and took root.

“Murdered? Robbie?” For a time, I couldn’t comprehend it.


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“Just to clarify, you were at Rosa’s until eleven at which time you walked home, took a beer out of the fridge and fell asleep watching reruns of Yogi Bear?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I nodded like a bobblehead, my mind elsewhere. Suddenly, the little Budweiser magnet on the fridge that I had been staring at came into sharp focus. I jerked my head up. “How the hell? I didn’t say all that, just the part about Rosa’s.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Officer Ben Thornton said tapping the end of his pencil against my forehead. “I was your roommate for three years! I know how you operate.”

“Oh, right.” I finally knew what a “space cadet” must feel like.

“Only you’ve switched to Yogi and Boo Boo from He-Man and She-Ra I see by the looks of your tv.”

“Yeah, they don’t play the good shows as much any more,” I complained. Ben grinned a familiar grin and I wanted to punch him square in the face. How could he smile at a time like this? He must have realized what I was thinking; that son of a bitch always could tell what I was thinking, for the sides of his mouth drooped to a stern frown.

“I’m sorry this had to happen, Spence. It’s a real shame.”

“It’s a damn shame!” And I slammed my fist into my already wobbly coffee table.

“I know, man.”

“Look, thanks for getting here so fast,” I said because I felt like I owed him something. Could be I never paid him back for that last month’s of rent a couple years back, but I don’t remember.

“I’m glad I was in the area. And if there’s anything else I can do....”

“Not for me....”

“Yeah, but I dunno what to do for Gertie. She’ll make it just fine, that woman’s tough.”

“You’re tellin’ me. You aren’t the one who got hoisted over her head and thrown down two flights of stairs just for being too loud one night!” That memory still made me grimace. I couldn’t walk right for months after. With a pang I realized that it had been Robbie who had helped me up that night and bandaged me from head to foot, even where I didn’t need it. He had only been a little booger then, barely into the double digits, but I already knew that kid was headed for something mighty big. Brilliant, he was, a friggin’ genuis.

With a quick but meaningful handshake, Ben was gone and I was left alone in my apartment. But that’s nothing unusual, I’m always alone in my apartment. For some reason though, I felt it more tonight than I ever had.

Poor kid, I thought. What had Robbie ever done to deserve this? The boy had had nothing short of a terrible life, one that would have made a lesser person go insane at a very early age. I couldn’t imagine being raised by something like that and immediately felt guilty at thinking such a thought. For all of Gertie’s faults, she had loved her son.

I could hear her blubbering down the hall at a neighbor’s even now and for the first time in my life, I had an inclination to join her. Instead, I turned on my stereo and sat down on the floor in front of it, my ear inches away from the speaker. My inclinations never could be trusted.



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The following afternoon I got a call from Ben. The police had ruled the crime as a murder, which wasn’t a surprise. After all, Robbie had been found with bound hands and feet and two butcher’s knives sticking out of his back in a dark alley a couple blocks away from the complex. I knew he had been murdered from the moment Greasy Gus had told me what he had found outside his pizza place. I had to help translate what he said to the police because there are few living souls outside me and Robbie who could understand Gus when he talked. And now, I thought grimly, there are even fewer.

No one was suspected yet in the case and the police (as they so often are and which I never fail to remind Ben over and over) were baffled. Everyone who had known Robbie seemed to be nothing but fond of him. The kid didn’t have a single enemy, not even a roach or a spider that wanted revenge on him for killing one of their kin. Robbie, who had been known rather to take roaches and spiders in from time to time, couldn’t sit in a chair without feeling bad about how much pain he had caused it.

I hung up with Ben feeling even lousier than I had before. And perhaps, even lonelier. I didn’t live in the best place in town, but Robbie was the last person who I thought would die before me. He had been like a younger brother to me; but thank God we hadn’t really shared a mother.

Speaking of, I heard some loud sniffling outside my door and knew it must be Gertie. I took a deep breath and pulled open my door. Sure enough, there was a round orange-robed figure standing on the landing, her pudgy fist poised to knock. She was chomping away and I reminded myself to breathe out of my mouth so that I wouldn’t have to smell the bubblegum. Her unibrow sagged so low over her eyes that I couldn’t see them.

“How you holdin’ up?” I dared to speak first. Gertie never lifted her head.

“How you think?” Even with the recent tragedy and the forlorn expression, she had lost none of her cattiness. If events had been differently, I might have laughed at that. “I need a favor,” she went on shakily. I raised an eyebrow. Well, this was interesting. But I knew I would do anything to help her out now. I would just think it was for Robbie.

“My ex husband and daughter are coming into town tomorrow and I was wonderin if they could stay at your place for a couple nights.” Ex? She had an ex? Well, of course she had to have, I scolded myself. I had just never thought about it before and Robbie had never mentioned a father.....or a sister for that matter. Oh man, what was I about to do?

“Sure, I have an extra room that’s not being used.”

“I just can’t deal with either of ‘em right now,” she said in explanation even though I had asked for none. But I understood more than she would ever know. My family wasn’t the best to have around at times like these either.

“Okay, well, I’ll be here when they get here.”

“I know, you always are.” I wasn’t sure whether she was teasing me about my recent workout gym going under and me finding myself unemployed or not. Either way, I didn’t retort.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll go get the rooms ready and uh, make sure I’ve got enough blankets and all.” I ran through a mental list of how much I had to do to get ready. My apartment had turned into a disaster area the past couple weeks.

“Thanks, Spencer,” she said and I watched her backside swoosh from side to side as she hobbled away. If I had been in a different mood, I would have thought it looked like a giant basketball being dribbled between the deft fingers of a Harlem Globetrotter. But I was panicking inside about the idea of having Gertie’s ex and daughter in my apartment for who knew how long. Would they be anything like her? Oh, shit, what had I gotten myself into?

The next few hours went by fast and I found myself grateful to have a task to do instead of sitting around thinking. My apartment was decent looking by dinnertime and with a sudden realization that I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, I left to go grab a bite. I met Greasy Gus as he was taking out the trash from his pizza place and stopped to chat with him. He asked me how the “invetergashun” of “Rubbie the buoy with the bluey eyes” was going and I regretted telling him there was still nothing to go on. A few blocks down I was buying a cheese steak and wolfing it down in a handful of gulps. I didn’t feel like going to my apartment yet, so I turned the corner and headed to Rosa’s. I got sick at her place, cursed myself for wasting four bucks on a cheese steak and fries and then throwing it up, and remember drifting off with my head in Rosa’s lap while she played a sad tune on her beat up keyboard that she dedicated to Robbie.


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I woke with a start, my stomach rumbling and my head pounding. I glanced at the coffee table of empty liquor bottles and whispered a “damn you” to a snoring Rosa on my way out her door. I walked as briskly as I could back to my apartment, dreading the horrors that were probably awaiting my arrival. I took the stairs two at a time and even over my stomping I could hear Gertie’s loud, deep voice booming away, though still filled with sorrow.

I came into view of the fifth floor and nearly fell all the way back down the last flight of steps. As I steadied myself, I knew only one thing in the whole world was certain. As little as I had known about Hell, I knew even less about Heaven. No one ever told me Heaven had hypnotic midnight blue eyes, silky, cream-colored thighs and a dimple that would suck any man in faster than a black hole. And no one ever told me Heaven was Hell’s daughter.

“Where the hell have you been?” Gertie was asking me, her face suddenly dangerously close to my own. But her words lacked their usual punch and I was too distracted to answer her. “You said you’d be here,” she accused and I pushed my way past her up the rest of the stairs. By now, I still hadn’t noticed that the hallway was filled with people, as my eyes were focused on only one.

“Spence, if you don’t mind, could we conduct the other interviews in your apartment?” Leave it to Ben to be the only one to break me from my reverie. I looked at him and nodded dumbly, tingling from head to my big feet as I brushed past the small mob and unlocked my door. A crowd followed me inside.

“Have a seat,” demanded a fellow police officer and I obediently sat, even though the request had not been intended for me. I heard Ben shut my door, but my eyes were once again glued on the young, dark-haired girl that perched herself on the edge of my couch. An older man sank into the cushion beside her but I barely noticed him.

“Full name, please,” the officer said in an indifferent tone. The girl lifted her head up high, giving me a picture of her profile, perfectly shaped with full lips, a small, slightly up-turned nose and long, dark lashes protruding from beneath her brow.

“Rowena Lillian Stewart.” My brain cells danced at her melodic voice, the sound of her name. Rowena, Rowena.

“You?” The officer prodded the older man who I knew now to be Gertie’s ex husband.

“Nelson Robert Stewart.”

“I understand you to be the father of Robert James Stewart?”

“Yes, I am.”

“But you have not been a part of Robert’s life for a long time?”

“Not since he was four,” Nelson replied. His voice sounded tired but as I was still gazing intently upon Rowena, I didn’t pay him much attention.

“And, Miss Stewart, you haven’t seen or heard from your brother since you were that same age?”

“I haven’t seen him, no. We have written to each other quite a few times though.” At Rowena’s statement, I heard Gertie gasp. Evidently, she hadn’t known that her children had been corresponding with each other.

“You have written to each other.....” the officer repeated, scrawling something on his notepad. Ben hovered over his shoulder and when I glanced in his direction, he gave me an encouraging wink. “You didn’t bring the letters with you by any chance?”

“I did.” A gasp from Gertie again. Nelson was watching her from where she stood by the door.

“May I ask to see them?” Not ten minutes later and Ben and the other officer were leaving, Rowena’s letters tucked safely in a Zip-lock bag to be taken back to the precinct for further scrutiny. A quick scan had not shown them anything unusual however.

Gertie had gone across the hall to retrieve a big crock pot which she tossed into my arms with instructions to heat it up and eat it for supper. She made a hasty goodbye to all of us, then she followed the police officers back to the station in her own car. This time I didn’t feel quite as lonely.

“Thank you for letting us stay here,” Rowena broke the silence after my door had slammed shut. I smiled a little at her, keeping my mouth closed as I knew I had the morning after breath.

“Sure,” I mumbled. “Here, you can sleep in here,” I mumbled, leading the way to my room which I had planned on giving her father but changed my mind once I had seen her. I lifted her suitcase for her and dropped it on my bed. “Feel free to uh, use anything,” I added, gesturing to my bathroom. She nodded and I reluctantly left her to go back out into the living room.

Where before I had disregarded Nelson’s very existence, I now could study him without distraction as I took him to the other bedroom, the one that had been Ben’s. Gertie’s ex was a thin, sallow and beaten man. He looked like he had tumbled with Hell a few times before and hadn’t come out the better for it. He never met my eyes as I showed him the room and the other bathroom that he could use and told him he was free to anything in the apartment, as little as there was. The only sound that came out of him was a squeaky “Appreciate it” and I left him in the room only to come back out to find Rowena standing behind the couch, peering at a poster of stick figures in about a hundred different sexual positions. Shit, I had forgotten to take that down. The poster was left over from my college days and I felt embarrassed to have something like that in my apartment now that I was in my early thirties.

“Heh, sorry about that,” I stammered and she whirled around, her loose curls flying up and over one shoulder. She was stunning. I’ve never been good with descriptions and I could never do her justice, but let me try. Rowena had the kind of beauty you only dream about, but never actually believe is out there. Her dark chocolate locks framed an ivory face and those eyes! They were just inviting me to go swimming in them, so deep blue and sparkling. She looked very young, very sweet, and as I took a step closer to her, she smelled even sweeter.

“It was uh, my former roommate’s,” I said some more, making an excuse for the inappropriate poster. She didn’t say anything but turned her eyes downward. I thought I glimpsed a blush creep into her cheeks and I reached up to take the poster down.

“You can leave it up,” she said and I froze, my arm dangling in mid air. “It’s....interesting.” Perhaps the blush had been my imagination. I bowed my head at her, then swung my arm back down to my side.

“Do you, uh, want anything to drink?”

“Please, that would be nice.” She followed me into my small kitchen and as I stuck my head in the fridge, I could feel her eyes on my back. It made me shiver but I blamed it on the blast of cold air from the fridge.

“You like Snapple?” I asked as casually as I could and at a yes, I hoisted one out for her, opened it and set it on the table. She slid gracefully into a hard, wooden chair and I lifted Gertie’s crock pot, put it on the stove and set it to low to begin heating it up. I knew dinner was a long way off, but I thought Rowena and her father might get hungry before then.

“You were close to Robbie?” she asked softly when I had turned around and leaned back against the counter.

“Well, I don’t know what you mean by close, but we were buddies, yeah.” I hesitated because I’m scared to talk about him already, as if I should give him time before I go reminiscing about our adventures, though time for what, I don’t know.

“He was my twin brother and I never knew him.”

“I’m sorry for that, he was a good kid.”

“I found this address in my dad’s wallet. I sent him a letter, hoping Gert wouldn’t get it, and even though I never expected a response, I got one within a week. That was six years ago, we’ve been writing to each other ever since.”

“He never mentioned he had a sister,” I said. I watched one glittering tear squeeze itself from beneath long lashes and roll down her cheek. She was not hasty about wiping it away. “I wish I knew what happened,” I went on for I was always uncomfortable when women cried. “I wish I knew who would do such a thing.”

“Me too. Maybe there was a jealous person at one of the schools? Jealous because he was so smart?” Rowena’s guesses were as good as mine but I didn’t think these were right. Robbie, good natured and friendly as he was had never had ill will taken against him, at school or anywhere else. If he had, he knew he could have come to me to get the bullies to back off.

“Maybe.”

“I wish he had written to me about someone threatening him!” she cried so unexpectedly that I nearly slid off the counter. “Anything to help find out who did it to him! I know the police will find nothing of value in our letters, he never mentioned anything!” Her delicate hands balled into fists and I realized she had yet to touch her Snapple. I started over to the table and sat down on a chair next to her.

“I know, honey. I wish he had told me that there was someone bothering him, too. I could have protected him.” This was all becoming so real to me now, Robbie was gone and there was no one as of yet to blame for it. My own strong fingers dug into my legs as I sat there, next to Rowena, as she cried. I felt helpless. The worst feeling in the world is being so angry that you could rip someone’s throat out but not having anyone to do it to. I was at a loss for words until Rowena rubbed her eyes, sat up straight again and took a deep breath. I hadn’t thought to go get her a tissue.

“You’re in good shape,” she said and the statement was so random and out of the blue it took me awhile to answer.

“Thanks. Uhm, yeah, I used to own and run a gym.”

“Used to?”

“I got run out of business. Too many big chains anymore.” For some reason, I wished I could have been a police officer just like Ben, though I had never had that desire before.

“Oh, yeah. So you’ve lived here for awhile?”

“Twelve years.”

“Oh. How old are you?” I blinked. She gave me a half smile.

“Thirty three.” She tinkled with light laughter. I cocked my head to one side, confused. She gave no explanation as to her giggle. I was about to ask her what was so funny when Nelson walked in. I got up and offered him a drink, deciding that I had to be a good host for awhile.