I forgot to turn off the fairy lights and little dollar store glowing christmas tree last night. Woke up to the slowly changing hues of that cheap plastic crystal tree and the sound of the garbage collection rattling my windows. If they are awake…everyone else has to be too. It is a rule. I crawled back into bed after turning out the lights. I have been so very tired recently. It was only 6.30am. I was hoping to drift off for another hour, but no such luck. A man outside started yelling “Judy! Judy! Where are you going!”
I looked outside to see where the yelling man was, and if Judy needed any help. He was shouting so loudly he voice was cracking. I couldn’t see Judy or her pursuer, so stopped twitching the voile curtains and sat on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t relax. There was a man out there who sounded like he wanted blood. He started shouting again. I got up again. Looked up and down the road from my window. Nothing. Eventually, on the fourth or fifth attempt I managed to catch a glimpse of him. Black plastic garbage bag over his head. Tall. Skinny. White. Drainpipe jeans and dirty sneakers. He was stalking up from the corner of my street, and peering down the road that runs north to south. He kept on yelling to the thankfully invisible ‘Judy’. The shouting took a turn for the worse, invectives and bile poured from his mouth.
I sat on the bed in my room, with the lights out, wondering what to do. Since there was no ‘Judy’ just the violence of his words, it seemed impossible to hassle the cops with this. They wouldn’t care anyhow, I would just make trouble for myself. I resolved that if I saw a woman out there, I would call, otherwise I would just stay quiet in my apartment. Then he started to kick a door in opposite. All of a sudden all the fear and the loathing, the hatred and the resentment; all the sheer adrenaline soaked terror and the deep down spark which primes your limbs to run run run to get away from the man with the fists and the kicks and the words and the violence, kicked in hard.
I wanted to run. I wanted to flee. I wanted to scream. There he was, this douchebag, kicking in someone’s front door opposite. Then the door next to that one. He was screaming about Judy. I hoped Judy is a figment of his cracked out imagination. I figured the inhabitants of the apartment opposite would call the cops. I figure he did too, because his anger spent, and his foot hopefully broken from trying to kick in a door in those sneakers, he slunk off down the road. Loser in fucked up nikes. Anyone who wants to kick in a door should at least have the foresight to wear a good pair of BOOTS. Heck, if he is such a badass perhaps he should have stolen some. Sneaker wearing bullshit sorry excuse for a man.
That was that. Doomed. Awake for the day when I am bone crushingly tired for no obvious reason. Awake because a man got it in his head to scream and rant and rave and kick and smash because he could.
The light came up and the dawn faded away. It looks like it is going to be warm today. I will be too tired to enjoy it anyhow.