Mahogany Side

         Every good story starts with a protagonist that anybody can relate to, the everyman, the only normal guy amongst an entire group of whackjobs. I'm not the hero of this story, and I'm definetally not the every-man anybody could relate to. To put it plainly, I'm not right. My mind screams sometimes, and pours out of my mind in waves of sound.
         I woke up this morning at seven o'clock to the sound of my cheap digital readio/alarm clock. The radio was busted, so suddenly the room filled with the shrill shriek of static as my hand instantly and instintually shot up to slam down the little button thing what silences the peice of work. My bed is my only friend, and has been for quite some time, and I didn't want to remove myself from it's loving embrace. The matress was bare, and stained in ways unimaginable; the most recent of which was the result of a fift of whiskey drunkenly evicted from my stomach just hours previously; I wiped it up quickly with the sheets from off the floor where they'd fallen and flipped the matress over to fall asleep on the comparitivelly virgin side.
         Eventually I rose, my head hurt, but no more than usual, and I ghouled myself to the shower to prepare my toilet. After sticking myself in a dirty pair of underwear and the jeans from the day before, stained a sickly green all over by the dust and lawn trimmings that my work coats me in. My work shirts are laundered for me everyweek, seven in total, one for every day, I put on a frest shirt, it's navy blue and crisp but sharp. I pin my name tag to it, it says my name in pen, my last name atleast; Kalum, and in big green letters embossed into it as if it surpasses my name and my very existance the disgusting and stomach churning title I've gleened for myself from the world, it says proudly despite my shame; "Custodian."
         I don't bother locking my door as I leave at about seven-twenty, having something stolen from there would be like saving money from waste disposal, as far as I can figure. I live on the second floor, the first by the stairs, number seven of twelve, six being the last apartment on the bottom floor and next to the stairs and mine being above it and directly in sight of the swimming pool nobody but Mr. Bruce, my landlord, uses. Every summer morning when I leave for work he's outside in his swimming trunk skimming the water with that long net and preparing himself for a swim. He waves every morning and says some variation of "it'll be hot today" and I always say back, "it'll be hot enough!" and he laughs and I smile and I feel I have a friend. I like Mr. Bruce.
         He sometimes thinks about having sex with his daughter. He never says this, but I know he does. His daughter is seventeen and the ugliest girl within miles, she's got his sqaure face and red hair, and robust physique, but none of his simple kindness or nievity. She complains constantly, and during the shool term I see her pouting and moping and rolling her eyes down the street just far enough behind me that it's clear she doesn't like me while she strolls to school; the shool I work at, by the way, Sapiacha High, in Oklahoma. I know Mr. Bruce wants to have sex with her because he's so kind and compasionate the world ridicules him and discounts him as a fool and a worthless smiling ninny, just because he refuses to talk about how the nation's gone to pot and how oil prices are related to the presidency and that anybody could tell that things are getting worse every minute and on occasion when a man on the streets asks for a little bit of money for food, even though he's probably going to buy drugs, sometimes he gives the drug addled vagrend what he can just hoping that maybe he's wrong. Everybody treats him like a lesser, but his daughter, she respects him, he's a great man to him, he makes her proud, she thinks he's the pinnacle of manliness, she's everything his bitch of a wife isn't. Mr. Bruce is a little afraid of his daughter.
         I walk down the steps to the lower floor, and I happen to land on the last step as Merecala is taking the first day's load of laundry to the washing room for Pete Eras. Merecala is Mexican born in Mexico and has had a terrible life. Her son has been in jail since he was seventeen, he's twenty-eight now. I don't know what he did, but I know she still loves him, from what I've gathered from her. She loves to talk about unhappy she is, and how it's hard for a little old Mexican woman to make a living today, but she's quick to say it could be harder, if Jesus wasn't personally holding her aloft and lifting some of the burden and sometimes microwaves her dinner for her when she gets home. She's paid by a nursing home who in turn is paid by the government to clean out Pete Eras' apartment for him on occasion. Pete Eras is a retard, and a ward of the state because both his parents killed themselves instead of living under the burden of an unlovable child. Merecala told me that about Pete Eras once, and we both nodded and agreed that it was the world we live in and asked ourselves 'isn't it terrible?' and got angry at nobody in particular.
         "Hello Kalum." Marecala sounded less Mexican then alot of Mexicans I know, but still pretty Mexican, "Isn't it sad about Pete Eras?"
         "It's the wold we live in, they don't know what they're doing." I had no idea what she was talking about, but that was generally all I ever needed to say.
         "I know! It's terrible!" She held her basket of clothes against one hip and shook her dark caramel colored hand infront of me, "It's one thing for somebody who doesn't know better, but she was a trained professional, y'know, she went to school and everything!"
         "Most people who went to school didn't seem to learn much." Again, this was a simple sentence that I've leaned back on in many a situations. Standard stock, and one you should familiarize yourself with, too.
         "Myah, no kidding, getting all angry about one sweet little man like Pete Eras saying a few things about her," She rolled her eyes, "like he knew better."
         "Oh, another nurse up and quit?" I quit trying to edge away long enough to hear the response.
         "On Tuesday morning."
         "It's the world we live in."
         "It's terrible!"
         "Well, g'bye."
         Pete Eras was not a sweet little retarded man, he wasn't a grown man with a child's mind, he was a angry, twisted soul hiding in just an angry, twisted body. Everytime I had ever seen him he was with his nurse, his frightening large and powerfull hands feeling along the walls and probing the air likely because he couldn't see even with the aid of his huge thick glasses, stopping inches above obstacles almost half in fear and half in reverence. He wore a ballcap over most his head, I say most because they don't make hats large enough to cover his. The worst thing about him though was the hatred he exuded, and once you'd been around him long enough to understand his slurred words you'd realize he was talking about killing people. Fantasizing about blowing them up or stabbing them, and the nurses, who changed as quickly as they began to understand what he said, would just nod and smile and say, "that's nice."