It rained more last night than it has all year, and I could hear drips throughout the house from the leaky roof. The attic is exposed, with loose insulation being the only guardian from the rain, which is no match for Mother Nature. Storms have ripped shingles off over the years, and water finds its way in, making it feel like every drop is falling in the middle of my forehead. The muffled anxiety of home repairs makes me queazy, as stains in the unpainted ceiling start to form, and grow like a mold.
With all the rain, the yard flooded, unveiling water-soaked branches that had broken off of the tall pines in the backyard. Now the woodpeckers will get the scent and destroy the rest of the trees in the yard, leaving me with another mess to take care of. The beautiful, cyclical nature of life is most comparable to a toilet.
The storm came and went, but lingered over the house for most of the night. At times, I woke up from the thumping of branches banging the floor of the backyard from a 100-foot drop. I’ve felt the throe of an immature pinecone, so I could only imagine how much it’d hurt to be under one of those branches as it fell. Thinking about it made me want a coffee. A jolt of anything to get me started on cleaning up the mess.
I made myself a coffee, the way I like it. With simple syrup and “animal milk,” according to one local barista.
After popping a bagel into the toaster, I held the metal lever down, since the spring mechanism broke along with the handle. Now, anytime I want to toast something, it’s a game to see how much pain I can endure to have a fully toasted piece of bread. I’ve never gotten it darker than say a Roseanne complexion, but I have hope.
The pain is bearable for a second, but after a little bit, the feeling sends jolts of electricity through my body, as if I were powering the toaster myself. Sometimes eternities pass holding that lever down. Days go by as I try to get my toast to a perfect John Stamos golden brown. My finger throbs on the prong of the defiant lever, as I try to distract myself from the torture. At times, I’ll switch digits but once it stops cooking for a second, that’s 30 seconds added to the cook time.
I considered tying a rubber band around it to hold the lever down, but was told that was a fire hazard by Ash. I suppose she’s right, but god damn it, I need my bagel toasted. The easy option would be to get a new toaster, but one side works perfectly. If I had waited until Ash was done making her Pop Tart, I could’ve spared the feeling in my thumbs and pointer fingers.
While Ash had something toasting on the working side, I continued holding the lever down on the other side, hoping to get a decent color on my Thomas’ brand bagel. Iggy chased the cats around the house as Ash pulled the curtains open to let the morning light into the living room. Debris and small tree trunks littered the road, just as it did in the backyard, only this time, it was everywhere.
“Did you know the back of your Jeep is open?,” Ash asked me.
I couldn’t hear her since I was in a trance, tuning out the pain to my phalanges, as I read the nutrition facts to my boiled bread.
“Did you know there are 22 grams of added sugar in these bagels?,” I asked. “It’s fucking bread.”
“Your Jeep is open,” she repeated, this time a bit louder.
I looked out of the muzzy, living room window to notice the rear of my Jeep was open, with the tailgate completely ajar. I didn’t hear anybody outside last night, then again the rain was so loud that I wouldn’t have heard fireworks if they were going off in the bedroom.
We live in a decent neighborhood, but every now and then, the young kids will rummage through unlocked cars looking for money or guns. They got into Ash’s car once, but only took a few bucks from the center console. Our neighbor on the other hand, had all of her work documents stolen, including her social security number and business bank account information. Why someone would keep such sensitive documents in a car overnight is beyond me, but it’s not my place to judge.
Before putting on shoes, I braced for the worst before going outside. The best scenario would be that somebody broke in and used my vehicle to escape the storm. If it were a junkie, I’d hoped that they at least took their needles with them, and left the seats bolted in. They’re wrapped with real leather after all.
More than likely, I would notice a missing pair of headphones, and an emptied cup holder. One time, when I lived in a townhouse complex, someone broke into my car and snatched the lock to the driver side door, while grabbing some CD’s for their efforts. The next day, they came back and took a few more things, and I was defenceless unless I caught them, which I never did. Eventually, I took everything out of the vehicle until there was nothing to steal until I eventually sold it for $1,000. A red Ford Explorer that I named, “Roseanne,” because she could explode at any moment.
When I stepped outside, the wetness from the night’s ran had set in. The patchy front yard was waterlogged, with leaves and tree branches freckling the front yard. When I reached the back of the Jeep, everything was in disarray. The blankets that I keep in case of emergencies were tossed over the backseat. Ratchet straps were strewn about the back, and ripped up donation bags littered the back of the hatch. It was exactly how I had left it.
I forgot that I came out last night to transfer some wood into the shed, and never came back to close the doors. Of course, I chose the night of the largest piss storm we’ve had this year, so at least my comedic timing is still on point.
Since the vehicle was exposed overnight, I unknowingly created the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, which I didn’t realise until I was drained of all of my blood on the way to work. You’d think I had my window down in a rainforest with the amount of insects I attempted to swat away. The blood-sucking, little, fucks made my vehicle their home for the night, and I was now intruding on their party. Therefore, they attacked me at will while cruising at a cool 45 miles per hour as I batted wildly in between shifting gears. To others, it probably looked as if I were drumming along to hip, new music, but instead I was trying to see through the cloud of bugs that took over my vehicle.
Desperately swatting at mosquitoes with one hand and clinging onto the steering wheel for dear life with the other, I hoped that nobody would cross the road as I lost focus. Cars past, and they watched me play pickleball from the driver seat, swinging an invisible racket at anything I could hit.
Every swerve of the Jeep seemed to coincide with a particularly persistent mosquito dive-bombing my face. With every slap against the dashboard, the vehicle crossed yellow or white, and I was sure that I was going to die. I was a broken man and the mosquitoes weren’t done with me yet. They were relentless. It was like they had an unlimited supply of reinforcements hidden in the backseat with every set of wings I smashed against a window. Any time I thought I had gotten rid of them, a new squadron emerged from the depths of the vehicle, ready to continue their aerial assault on me until I was a lumped up, and bruised like an old lemon.
When I got to work, it was raining again, so I couldn’t put my windows down to dry the interior. The mosquitoes would surely breed while I was at work, and I’d have to drive home to an ever-growing army of parasites, knowing this the entire time I am at work. I stumbled out of the vehicle, covered in itchy mosquito bites, and looking like the sole survivor of a war that I had just lost. I scratched and itched like a flea ridden cat when I looked across the road.
There were groups of homeless people standing in front of the barber shop, hanging out in the rain. Not one of them carried an umbrella, and most seemed unconcerned by the precipitation, unlike myself who had a certain disdain for what the rain brought with it. These motherfucking, asshole, blood-leeching, cock sucking bugs!, I thought as I scraped my calves with both hands.
After straightening out, I greeted the loafers across the street. They didn’t wave back. They usually don’t. My body was hot from all of the stings, and I couldn’t wait to get inside to smother myself in isopropyl alcohol. I’d have bathed in gasoline if it were available, but I assumed the tramps across the street didn’t have any, or had huffed it all. Work is going to be difficult today.