---("One Weird Apartment")----------------------------------------------------
this is y0lk #104.
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        "Can't this wait 'till morning?  Ya know what time it is?!"

        "Damnit, no. I didn't know who else to turn to.  Just listen to me."

        "Okay, what is it?"

        "I have a problem."

        "That's why I'm here."

        "<sigh> I just don't know where to start."

        "Try the beginning."

        "Well, I guess it all started about a week ago.  I woke up, got out of
 bed, and stumbled into the bathroom like any other day.  I had a small
 headache, so ..."

        "You were drinking, right?"

        "What?  Well, yeah -- the night before, I had a few drinks.  What does
 that hafta do with anything?"

        "I thought you gave up drinking."

        "Would you please just let me talk!?"

        "Okay, I'm sorry.  Go on."

        "Okay, so I walk into the bathroom, switch on the light and decide to
 take some aspirin.  See, I had a pounding headache."

        "Probably from drinking so much."

        "So, I stare at myself in the mirror for a second, then open up the
 medicine cabinet."

        "... yeah, AND?"

        "And ... I saw hell."

        "You saw _hell_?"

        "Yeah.  Right there.  Where there used to be shelves of dusty bottles,
 there was this big hole.  And, well, there was hell."

        "In the hole."

        "Yeah."

        "... in your medicine cabinet."

        "Uh huh."

        "Whadya do?"

        "I spit."

        "What?!"

        "I spit into hell."

        "Why?"

        "Why not?  I was a bit confused.  I'd never seen hell before or
 anything, especially not in my medicine cabinet.  So, after a few minutes of
 staring into hell, I spit."

        "And what happened?"

        "Nothing.  I tried throwing all kinds of stuff in there.  Rolls of
 toilet paper, underarm deodorant.  It all just ... well, burned."

        "Then what?"

        "Well, I shut the cabinet and decided I was hallucinating.  I counted
 to ten, then opened it up again."

        "And ..."

        "It was still there.  Fire, brimstone and all -- still there."

        "In your medicine cabinet."

        "Yup."

        "And this was a week ago?  What's happened since?"

        "Well, after that, I went to work.  I really hoped that by the time I
 got home, whatever had happened in my medicine cabinet would stop.  Well, I
 got home, rushed to the medicine cabinet, flung it open, and sure enough --
 blazing fires of hell, all in my 8-by-10 medicine cabinet.  I've kinda
 learned to live with it.  I get a few complaints about the noise."

        "What noise?"

        "The wails of eternally suffering souls.  The noise is horrible,
 although you tend to get used to it after a few hours.  I just play the radio
 a lot to drown it out."

        "Makes sense."

        "Yeah, and I'm sure that I'm saving a bundle on my heat bills.  I just
 leave open the cabinet, and it warms the place right up.  The real problem
 came just two days ago."

        "The *real* problem?!"

        "Yeah, that's when I saw him."

        "Who?"

        "The devil."

        "The devil?  In your medicine cabinet?"

        "... in hell, which is in my medicine cabinet."

        "Oh."

        "Yeah, he was just sitting around.  So I started to talk to him."

        "Whadya say?"

        "Well, I said, 'Excuse me.  Are you the devil?'  He looked kinda
 surprised to see me.  He asked me what the fuck I was doing in his medicine
 cabinet."

        "Wow."

        "Yeah, I think he was just joking around or something."

        "Didja ask him about the hole?"

        "I tried several times, but he really isn't interested in people
 unless they are willing to give up their eternal souls."

        "I see."

        "So, just a few hours ago, I discovered something else."

        "What?"

        "Well, I was in my bathroom and I opened my toilet lid."

        "And ..."

        "Where I was expecting to see toilet water, there was ..."

        "What?"

        "Heaven.  Heaven was in my toilet."

        "... and hell in your medicine cabinet."

        "Yeah."

        "That's a pretty weird apartment."


  - M u t t e r
  Ed. root zine
  (http://www.openix.com/~mutter)
  mutter@openix.com

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