Haven't posted anything for a bit and feeling the lack of it.
So today, a piece I wrote last week.
More coming!



ALL FALL DOWN

The house is falling apart and Jerry is wondering where to place the blame. He leans towards a vague conspiracy theory – one with nice broad shoulders to carry the load of responsibility – but is also happy to entertain the possible supernatural aspects, an aberrant curse say, or a rogue ogre suddenly inhabiting the basement.

The fact is the house is over thirty years old and the life force of the appliances and plumbing and electrical has just been exhausted.

He wouldn’t mind so much if the catastrophes were spread out into manageable bits but they seemed to occur in badly timed chunks. Like when he’s just paid a pile of bills and is broke, or when he’s walking out the door for a two week vacation in Cancun. That’s when the veritable flood and fire commences.

Okay, well a thirty year old hot water heater that’s been seeping water into the kitchen floor for the last fifteen or twenty years finally breaking through the last fragile wall of rust and flooding the kitchen linoleum isn’t exactly sudden. And when he goes down to the basement for a tool and there’s a steady stream of water pouring out of a fluorescent light right below the kitchen, it isn’t actually an act of God. Okay, so it was possible fire and flood.

He had to admit that it was better for it to have happened as he was packing for his trip instead of already on it. At least he’d had time to stabilize the mess, do damage control before he left. Who would have been there to turn off the power to the leaking light and drain and disconnect the water heater if he’d been gone? Nobody, that’s who.

Hell, the house could have burned down while he was flirting with that tall red head on the beach and he would have come home to a charred ruin, everything gone. That might have been okay (he could always re-build with the insurance), if only he hadn’t missed the last payment on his homeowner’s policy that month so that he could pay for his trip. He would have been homeless, not even able to pitch a tent in the yard, because his fancy tent was, of course, in the basement.

Maybe he should sell the old house and find something new, in a better neighborhood and with a warranty on all the appliances and plumbing and electrical. Then he wouldn’t have all these ridiculous crises cropping up. But he hated the thought of moving, the housing market was as flat as his wallet and the neighborhood really wasn’t that bad. Sure, there were barking dogs on both sides of him, but at least no meth labs that he knew of. It could be a lot worse.

Jerry’s brother had suggested going through the old place with a keen eye and a clipboard, checking every possible problem area and making a list of things that needed fixing. “Using a systematic approach with a list as a basis, it’s possible you could get something done before the next melt-down occurs.” His brother had said. “God knows your present system wasn’t working.” His brother was disgustingly organized.

Jerry had pointedly ignored these remarks when his brother made them, knowing from experience that if he agreed, he’d never hear the end of it. But the next day, he started looking around for that old clipboard he’d had in college. Wasn’t that thing in the basement?

He found it in the basement all right, complete with a thin pad of paper and a stub of a pencil still caught under the clip, so that’s where he started.

He hadn’t used the bathroom down there in ages, and when he checked the valves to the toilet and sink they were dangerously lumpy with corrosion. He tried not to breath on them too hard, and quickly put them first on the list. The previously leaking fluorescent light was next: 2. Repair or Replace. It felt so satisfying to write it down. He decided he would never tell his brother. The list itself would take a while and for sure the repairs weren’t going to be cheap. But on the other hand, if he spaced the repairs out, he could afford it. And a big plus would be that the sickening thought of moving again would be taken off his plate.

He really hated moving.