If The Price Sounds Too Good To Be True, Then It Is Too Good To Be True. I Learned That The Hard Way.

Update

I stayed out pretty late tonight. At work, I did everything I could to keep my mind off of going home. I surfed through the internet, I tried to strike up as many bullshit conversations as I could, and I powered through the work I had. Anything to postpone the realization, that eventually I was going to have to come back to the condo. As the work day neared to a close, I started to rally a group to go drinking. On a Monday night, I was just hoping for the resident alcoholics, but I managed to get a few lively souls to tag along as well.

We stayed mostly downtown, only hitting one bar on the northeast side for the first hour. Then we headed to my home turf. We went from posh little bars to loud crowded clubs. One of the interns brought a big ass bag of pot with him, and I didn’t mind indulging every time he rolled and lit a joint.

He’d pass it to me pre-lit, with a big stupid grin and say, “Here ya’ go bro, you can have greens.” Don’t mind if I do.

We got drunk and stoned and I’m pretty sure Rick and Steve did coke in the bathroom at Bohanan’s. I don’t remember how it got started, but I even ended up making out with Cindy, the HR girl. Not my proudest moment, but she’s kind of cute. For a solid two hours, I managed to push the whole matter of the condo out of my head. I just had a bunch of dumb, loud fun.

But before I knew it, the bars were closing, and everyone was going their separate ways. I tried to convince Cindy to come over (not even for the sex, but just to have another person with me in the condo). She gave me a big kiss then said it was a bad idea. She got in a cab and smiled at me one more time before driving away. I wasn’t too far from home, so I walked. Home. I don’t even think of it like that now, but the word is familiar.

I stepped into my building, nodding vacantly at the doorman as he greeted me. I dragged my feet through the main entrance and reception area, my head held low. I felt like a child on his way to being punished. So badly not wanting to go, but knowing I had no other choice. Dreading the inevitable is a really stressful feeling. As I entered the lobby, someone caught my eye. I looked up to see the smelly, little old lady from the day before. She was walking away at the other end of the lobby towards the elevators.

“Hey! Hey, wait!” I called out to her. She didn’t turn around or even stop. She just kept waddling forward, her big stupid hat shaking with her awkward little steps.

I raced after her, almost within reach just as she rounded the corner to the elevators. She was out of my sight for just a second. I turned the corner after her, but she wasn’t there. Instead of running into her, I ran into a puddle of something and slipped onto my ass. Hurt like hell. I pulled my wet palms up to see what it was, and even before seeing the red, I could smell it. I was sitting in a pool of blood. It was all over my hands and clothes. I looked up and saw myself in the middle of the elevator hall. It was the me from last night, knelt down and both of my severed arms lying on the tile floor. The blood was mine, flowing out from the bloody nubs at my sides. My face was very pale and my eyes were wide. My head was tilted slightly back and my mouth was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything. I was so insanely afraid, but I still managed to start crawling backwards, away from the other me. As I did, the other me’s head began to lean back even further. I saw a thin line of red appear on my neck and quickly grow into a canyon of red. Then my head simply fell backwards off my shoulders.

I began to hasten my crawling. Just as my back hit an elevator door, I heard a bing sound, and the door opened behind me. I fell back inside the elevator, and immediately jumped up and pressed the Close Doors button. They closed and nothing reached in to yank me out before they did. I pressed 32 and that’s when I realized my hands were clean. The blood was gone. I checked myself over and there were no big red stains on my clothes or shiny blood starting to dry on my skin. I was clean. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

As the elevator passed the 12th floor, it started to shake a little. It was an old building, and it wasn’t the first time the elevator had the shakes. But then the lights started to flicker on and off, and that was both new and terrifying. I unbuttoned my coat a little for easier access to my pistol. That’s right, I had my 1911 on me all day. After all the shit I’d seen the last few days, it seemed like a good idea. The flickering got worse, like I was back at one of the clubs from earlier that night with strobe lights assaulting me. Then the lights went out completely for a moment. It felt like a hell of a long time, but it was probably about three seconds. When they flickered back on, the old woman was standing right in front of me. As soon as I saw her, I could smell her. Like she appeared out of thin fucking air. I yelled in shock and immediately gagged from the stench. She just started laughing at me as the light continued to flicker us in and out of darkness. Her hiss like laugh made my skin crawl. I reached for my gun instinctively. The old lady flickered, laughing in the light for a moment before returning to the dark. When the light flickered back, the dark sexy girl was there, knife high in the air and already coming down. She was laughing too. I yelled more and opened fire. I shot three times rapidly. The muzzle flash lit the whole elevator with each shot. On the third shot, the lights stopped flickering and I was alone. There were three bullet holes in the door, but they didn’t seem to go all the way through.