Alice
by Floyd Looney
“I
work hard to support this family!” Alice said, ending the argument
at the dinner table. Her mother-in-law still looked at her from the
corner of her eye suspiciously. The meal was hardly touched, which
was another waste, Alice thought to herself.
“I
work, I shop, I clean the house. What more do you want me to do?”
She mumbled to herself. She looked over at the kids, they still
seemed a bit stunned from the yelling. “Finish dinner and you can
be excused”.
Her
husband, Matt, was silent as always. He never argued with his mother,
he never defended Alice from her tirades and suspicions either. She
could feel resentment growing within her, how could she have lived
like this for fourteen years?
“Lucy,
I told you not to wear make-up, you are too young” Alice told the
girl, she thought she detected the rolling of the eyes. She didn't
expect the girl to obey, she was a bit of a wild child after all.
She
cleaned up after dinner and washed the dishes. Tomorrow was her day
off and she would do the laundry but otherwise she could breathe
easier. After setting the nightlight in the kids room, she climbed
into bed and rolled over to face away from Matt. She just couldn't
look at him at that moment.
The
following day she schlepped baskets of laundry to the complex laundry
room. This was one of the few times of the week she could interact
with neighbors. A woman with an English bulldog puppy on a leash was
already in the room, moving her laundry to the dryer. Her name was,
with some thought, Gladys she finally recalled.
Gladys
was a grumpy older woman, always found with a cigarette in her mouth,
like some stock character from Hollywood. After acknowledging each
others existence, Gladys went back to what she was doing. She was
never too friendly.
After
loading her own laundry into four of the five available washing
machines, a young man named Doug walked in carrying a small cloth
bag. He lived alone and always had very small loads to wash on his
days off. He was a bit younger than Alice but he was always very nice
to her.
“Hello
Alice!” he said as he entered “Same old grind, I see”
She
nodded. “Too true”
Alice
knew that growing feelings for Doug was exactly proportional to the
resentment of Matt and his mother. She felt like she was suffocating
at home and maybe Doug could be an outlet, she could let off some of
the pressure. Matt would never have to know.
No.
She would have to make a clean break from her old life. End it.
Finish it for good and run away with Doug.
...
I
was concerned about the woman in apartment 290 because no one had
seen or heard from her in a long time, usually she was seen coming
home with groceries or hanging out on the bannister watching the kids
play in the pool and the small park in the courtyard but mostly in
the laundry room is where most who knew (if that was the proper term)
her got to talk to her.
One
day I decided to ask the landlord. I knew it was not my business, but
I had taken care of everything else on my list and I happen to be in
the office to pay the rent. So I asked about the woman, I learned
that she had not been paying her rent. The manager said she was going
to open the apartment soon to see what was going on. I asked to tag
along.
The
dirt on the floor, the cluttered and messy kitchen with dirty dishes
piled in the sink and the stench of rotting garbage wasn't close to
the most disturbing thing found in the apartment. The manager had
stood there in the kitchen doorway shaking her head.
“What
a freaking mess! I don't know why people can't clean before they
move, they don't want that security deposit back? Maybe deposits
should be high like in Korea”.
When
she looked in the bedrooms she choked back a yell and ran out of the
apartment shaking her head much more vigorously than she had about
the trash in the kitchen. So I walked into the short hallway and
looked into the first bedroom.
The
ugly green bedspread had been thrown off the bed, on which laid two
plastic mannequins with stab wounds and one had been beheaded. In
another bedroom were bunk-beds and mannequin children that had also
been “murdered” in a similar fashion.
There
was no sign of the woman who once lived there, I think her name was
Alice.
..............................................................
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OH WOW! Thanks for sharing that!:-)
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