“The Soulless” I

Part 1: 

So here I am.

I chose what city to live in based on the success of its football team. I have an insanely monotonous, low paying job, a shitty apartment and a neighbor with constant, questionable noises exerted from his side of the wall. 

I miss all my old college buddies. I even miss my old high school friends. They no longer can shield me from  all the pointless stresses that seem to plague my mind. 

I don’t even get laid anymore.

I used to have the luxury of being selective, I would go for the prettiest girls, with the smallest waists and biggest boobs. Now, I settle for “not deformed.” As long as the girl has a tolerable face in the dark, I’m set. 

I was on the subway two weeks ago, and I see this not deformed girl. She’s all bundled up in her winter jacket, waiting for her train, looking at some intellectual magazine. So I start to talk to her and we set up a date, real casual. 

I go to the bar. I see her. She’s sort of looking over the sea of heads, over the trashy girls swinging their perfumed hair. It was dark and she probably didn’t remember exactly what I look like, so she was checking all the faces carefully. 

I’m glad I saw her before she saw me. 

Fuck Philadelphian winters. I hadn’t seen, because she was all covered by her giant down-filled jacket, but she had a sagging gut. Disgusting. I ducked out before she noticed me, went to KFC and found myself on my old couch with the my neighbor’s heavy grunts as my only company.

I hate this place, the Eagles are doing the worst they’ve done in nearly ten years, all the women are fat and I’m doomed to live the rest of my life as a corporate asshole, trained for nothing by all my years of school. 

Tonight, the air has a feeling of expectancy. Like, at any moment a knock will come at my door, I’ll answer and there will be a mysterious man in a trench coat delivering a message that could change my life. Or, the phone might ring and the sexy woman on the other end will pay me six million dollars to fuck her. But, no. 

Instead, the power goes out and shuts off the evening news with the really, really not deformed news anchor. She’s the prettiest girl I’ve seen since coming here, and just as my lonely hand finds the button on my pants, the darkness removes her face from existence. Her mellow, soothing voice, the vocal equivalent to chamomile, is gone, replaced by silence, and then by the rhythmic groans from my neighbor.

Here I sit, with my right hand partially down my pants, my left on the remote, poised for when the power might return. It doesn’t. After twenty minutes of my neighbor’s moaning becoming louder and no TV to drown it out, I decide to leave, get some food, hit a bar, maybe pick up a chick. MAYBE. There are deformed things walking all over the city at this hour. 

I have on my jacket, this brown thing my brother, Billy, bought me. It’s pretty ugly but Billy, who lives in Alaska, uses the same one, so it’s pretty fucking warm. 

I’m about to step out of the door when the phone rings. 

“Tom…”

“Yeah, Ma?” 

“Are ya alright?” 

She’s got this quivering thing going on. She got that when Dad died. He had this heart attack. She said my name like this, “ToOoOoOm”, for a month. It got old real quick.

“Am I alright?” I ask. The answer is no. I’m depressed and if life doesn’t get better quick, I’m honestly contemplating shooting myself. I have the gun already for my temple. It’s in my room, in the night stand. I plan on using it after an amazing fuck, but, that fuck hasn’t happened, so I haven’t used it.

But, I don’t tell her that. “Sure, I’m alright. The power’s down, but-” 

“Oh God!” She wails. Not this shit again, please Ma! 

“What?” 

“Tom, ya have ta get outta there! It’s all over the news!” Click. Dead silence, well almost, you know, the neighbor is still going at it with his unresponsive date (blow up doll, for sure).

I go to the window, I have the remarkably useful view of a brick wall. There’s nothing down in the alley, the only thing I see is a bum meandering around. The streets are slick with rain water. The water must be freezing, making the roads slippery. I hear the swerve and the peal of tires locking against pavement. 

Then the moaning grows very loud. It’s at my front door. Crash. 

The door swings open. I never lock it, bad White suburban habit. I’m in my bedroom, that’s where the window is. I see the man coming at me with a deranged look, he is nearly running. It’s my neighbor.