Goddamn Electric Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

chainsaw noise stopped. The screaming stopped. Suddenly, there
was silence.
             A
shadow appeared before the peephole and quickly disappeared. I then beat my
fist against the pale oak door a third and fourth time. Still,
no sound.
             “Now
look here, folks! There are people here trying to sleep!” I said, answered only
by silence. “Now, if I have to come up here a second time, I’m gonna knock down this goddamn door and pull ya out by your earlobes!”
             Silence
still.
             “You
hear me?!”
             Silence.
             “Well,
alright then.”
             I
lowered my shotgun and walked back downstairs. The other tenants all watched as
I trudged down the hallways. I just waved them off, shooing them back into
their rooms. I just needed some sleep and goddamn it if I was gonna stay up all night answering their questions. I wasn’t
sleeping so well then. Not with all that noise anyway.
             Before
climbing into bed, I went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. I
then hugged the sides of my icebox and moved it out about two feet. Three large
brown cockroaches sat underneath, panicked at the light and anxiously sought
refuge. I was able to pin one of them down against the floor with my index
finger. I pinched the pest, picked it up and pushed it to my lips. I wrapped my
tongue around its squirming body to hold it in place while I went back for the
glass of water. I hate the fucking taste of a filthy cockroach. I can never manage
to swallow one without having something to wash it down with. Only reason I eat
the bastiches are because there seems to be something
in their fat bodies that always makes me feel tired. It’s like that chemical
found in turkey meat that is supposed to make you feel sleepy or something.
Whatever it is, it works. I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in nearly a month.
I needed it.
             I
bit the little fucker in two, downed the entire glass of water and spent the
rest of the night picking parts of its legs from my teeth until I finally fell
asleep.
             I
was awakened shortly after, or so I thought. Turns out I’d slept for two entire
days. A drop of water landed right square between my
eyes and pooled around my left socket. It brought me screaming back into
consciousness. I wiped the water from my eye and looked up at the ceiling. The
entire span of it was completely soaked and had already started growing black
rings of mold. I immediately leapt from my bed, discovering that the carpet was
buried beneath two inches of freezing cold water. The mail slot in my door was
crammed full of white envelopes. Some of it was mail. Most of it was complaints
about the water leaking into and destroying the tenants’ apartments. All of
them claimed the water was coming from the third floor. It was then that I had
suspected that I had slept a little longer than I had originally intended.
             Again,
I grabbed the shotgun and angrily stomped out of my apartment. I lost my
slippers in the ocean somewhere between my front door and the first staircase.
             When
I finally got to the staircase, a waterfall was pouring down onto the steps
from above. I pulled the nightcap off my head, pitched it angrily at the pool
of water below, and braved the flood.
             Now
I ain’t gonna lie, at that
moment I felt like killin ’ a man. Maybe that is the
easiest way to explain my participation in the unfortunate events that
followed.
             Once
I was up on that third floor, staring down the hall at room 333, I knew right
away that something wasn’t right. The oak door that had been on those hinges
just two days before was replaced with a large steel door, the kind found on
goddamn submarines! You could imagine my anger when I first noticed this, being
the