Used Car Salesman Jim
“Do you still want to rent that back bedroom?” Dale asked.
“Huh?” I was hungover. Dale continued, “Used car salesman Jim is moving out next week.”
“Five hundred a month?” I asked.
Dale farted then answered in the affirmative.
It felt good to have my own space again. Aside from Dale, my only other roommate was an aged pill head named Dennis. Dennis was a card-carrying asshole, but he usually was good for a few Vicodin so that made him tolerable. “Oh yeah” I told myself. It was time to be positive. It was time to enjoy the simpler things, like being able to lock my door, masturbate in peace and run the air conditioner 24/7.
I was awakened the next morning to the sound of mariachi music and Dennis screaming that he could, “Fix his fucking leg wherever he felt like it!” As Dale’s muffled voice backfired down the hallway.
“These motherfuckers," I thought as I peeled myself from the floor and headed down the hallway to witness Dennis waving a pistol and losing his shit.
“Fuck you Dale! You fat fuckin’ baby! I pay my rent so you can kiss my ass!”
I looked to the head of the blood drenched table to see Dale purple and fat; his exposed hernia pulsated to the pounding in my head. I sidestepped Dennis, put my coffee in the microwave and stood ready. Ready to what, I couldn’t tell you.
“What’s all this blood and shit all over the table?” It was my attempt to inject some levity into the situation and find out why our mutual dining table looked like somebody had thrown a tray of lasagna at the ceiling fan and let it rain.
Dennis wheeled around and shouted, “It’s for my fucking leg!”
“Be nice to him” I told myself. He might have some Vicodin. Offer him a cup of coffee, grab the gun, kill him and empty the lockbox he keeps his pills in.
Sitting back down in front of his tampons and syringes, Dennis took one final run at injecting lidocaine into the bloody ham steak that lay weeping down the length of his shin. But faster than you could say, “You got any Percocet you wanna sell?” Dennis retreated to his bedroom leaving behind a trail of blood and an emerging pattern of being batshit crazy, crippled with anger and unable to understand why Dale and I came to believe him to be, an irredeemable piece of shit.
David Burdett
5/31/2023