A Happy Home: a story in 60 seconds
Where you live is where you die...if you're lucky
“This place is a freaking dump,” Al huffed. He looked at the tattered window dressings and peeling linoleum flooring. “One of us is going to trip and break a leg …”
“You don’t think I know?” Marcia answered, rummaging for a glass. “And listen to these doors,” she complained as she flipped the cabinet closed. “That squeak is going to put me in the nut house. I thought you said we would remodel the kitchen this year.”
Al squeezed the bridge of his nose. “With what money, Marcia? Have you forgotten we got none?”
“Didn’t your uncle leave you something in his will? You said you were going to see the lawyers this week.”
Al laughed. “Oh, he left me something, alright…The jerk-off willed me an old baseball signed by Joe DiMaggio.”
“Well, that must be worth good money,” Marcia insisted.
“Yeah, you would think, right? So, I brought it down to that sports memorabilia guy next to the laundromat, and you know what he told me? Thing is as real as his ex-girlfriend’s tits. Would you believe it? My uncle showed that ball off for fifty years. What a goof…”
Marcia just shook her head. She walked into the next room and began fiddling with the thermostat. “That’s awful!” she said to herself. “Just awful! Now I understand why your mother stopped speaking to him.”
Al caught himself staring at the grubby window panes and the fractured sash that struggled to hold the glass in place.
“They’re all good-for-nothings…” he muttered. “Every one of them…”
“Al?” Marcia called out.
“Yeah?”
“I think the thermostat is on the fritz. It won’t get any cooler in here.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he grumbled. He walked over and squinted at it. “Thing says 72 degrees.”
Marcia fanned herself with a magazine from the mantel. “Well, it doesn’t feel like 72. It feels like 92.”
Al was never one for his wife’s dramatics, but he couldn’t help but agree. Their tiny condo felt like a convection oven.
“I think I need some water,” he murmured, grabbing a glass from the cabinet and filling it at the sink.
“Ugh, that noise!” Marcia screeched as the door opened and closed. “That unbearable noise!”
“Relax!” he shouted back. He turned off the faucet and returned to the thermostat. “The thing really isn’t working at all now. It feels like it’s getting hotter…”
Plop…Plop…Plop
“Al…the faucet…I think it’s dripping.”
“My god,” he muttered, “it’s like the seventh circle of Hell in here…”
Al wiped some sweat from his brow and looked back at his wife. She was smirking.
“Funny you should say that,” she giggled. “Because this is the seventh circle of Hell.”