L.A. Rotten Read Online Free
Author: Jeff Klima
the Gideons or the Offramp Inn chain has anything to do with this unique promotion, but it is late, and there is still carpet with which I must deal.
Decisively, I pick up both the Bible and condom and drop them into an unmarked trash bag. As far as I am willing to be concerned, they are just part and parcel of the oddity that is room 236.
How long will it be, though, until I am in another 236, finding a similar setup?
When my work is all but done, and the carpet is bagged and in the bed of the truck with the rest of the trash and biohazard, I pull out my worn Minolta and retrace my steps, clicking as I go.
The mattress and box spring are back in the room, along with a scrubbed nightstand I don’t feel like taking. A glance over the balustrade tells me that, sure enough, down below, the shopping cart and clothes are gone. Last, I pull the door to room 236 shut, taking special care to document the tacked-on door numbers, and the fact that the lock on the door is undamaged. I wonder if this means that ol’ street urchin Annie knew her attacker.
Chapter 3
I park the truck, biohazard materials and all, in as close a street space to my apartment as I can find. It isn’t exactly legal to leave biohazard out unattended in public like this, but I can only pray that some hophead or dickhead teenager will steal one of the bags and jam his fist inside without considering what the orange warning stickers might mean. Lugging only my milk crate inside, and doing that only because it contains the Minolta, I quietly key my way in and push the button for the elevator. It is a loud, chugging beast of a lift that will reveal my late-night entrance to the landlord, Ms. Park-Hallsley. The result of this will be a typed note, slid underneath my door tomorrow, reminding me that other people live in the building too. I don’t even have to look at the door to her apartment to know a shadow has passed across the peephole and that she’s registered my presence. She’s a wacked old bitch with no greater calling than to give her tenants grief; just another true Angeleno.
The dirty mustard inner walls of the elevator are blank, save for a posted notice just above the handrail that reads no posting. I rest the milk crate on the rail, deliberately blocking the sign, and endure the slow, jerking ascent to the fifth floor, one down from the roof.
I don’t want to, but I can’t not think about 236 and its riddles. Christ, it sounds like a twisted Hardy Boys novel or something. “The Mystery of the Condom in the Bible.” It is dangerous to overanalyze this puzzle—I don’t want to begin a path of thinking that prejudices me against considering other angles. Like maybe it is a religious man who is proselytizing through murder? Maybe he kills these people for sins against the Bible? See, that seems likely to me…why would it be anything but that? Probably, if I were so inclined, I could research all the victims and find some deep connection among them—like they had all taken part in some shady government study and this was the terrifying result…
Jesus, I’m more tired than I realized
…It annoys me that whatever this whole burgeoning enigma is, the cops haven’t caught on to it. I’m not going to go out of my way to help them—already today I got a little too close with that cop damn near figuring me out. I’m already baiting the trap by working in such close proximity to the police, so I’m not going to stick my foot in by getting involved. Many of those guys would happily leave me dead in some Skid Row alley. I’ve got a good thing going and it’s for the best—for me at least—that I just keep my head down. I can’t save everyone on Planet Earth…No, my best bet at the moment is to hope that whatever the fuck is happening in the 236s across Southern California currently, well, that shit better sort itself out organically. But I don’t hold out much hope for that.
—
My apartment, with its single bedroom and absence of
Decisively, I pick up both the Bible and condom and drop them into an unmarked trash bag. As far as I am willing to be concerned, they are just part and parcel of the oddity that is room 236.
How long will it be, though, until I am in another 236, finding a similar setup?
When my work is all but done, and the carpet is bagged and in the bed of the truck with the rest of the trash and biohazard, I pull out my worn Minolta and retrace my steps, clicking as I go.
The mattress and box spring are back in the room, along with a scrubbed nightstand I don’t feel like taking. A glance over the balustrade tells me that, sure enough, down below, the shopping cart and clothes are gone. Last, I pull the door to room 236 shut, taking special care to document the tacked-on door numbers, and the fact that the lock on the door is undamaged. I wonder if this means that ol’ street urchin Annie knew her attacker.
Chapter 3
I park the truck, biohazard materials and all, in as close a street space to my apartment as I can find. It isn’t exactly legal to leave biohazard out unattended in public like this, but I can only pray that some hophead or dickhead teenager will steal one of the bags and jam his fist inside without considering what the orange warning stickers might mean. Lugging only my milk crate inside, and doing that only because it contains the Minolta, I quietly key my way in and push the button for the elevator. It is a loud, chugging beast of a lift that will reveal my late-night entrance to the landlord, Ms. Park-Hallsley. The result of this will be a typed note, slid underneath my door tomorrow, reminding me that other people live in the building too. I don’t even have to look at the door to her apartment to know a shadow has passed across the peephole and that she’s registered my presence. She’s a wacked old bitch with no greater calling than to give her tenants grief; just another true Angeleno.
The dirty mustard inner walls of the elevator are blank, save for a posted notice just above the handrail that reads no posting. I rest the milk crate on the rail, deliberately blocking the sign, and endure the slow, jerking ascent to the fifth floor, one down from the roof.
I don’t want to, but I can’t not think about 236 and its riddles. Christ, it sounds like a twisted Hardy Boys novel or something. “The Mystery of the Condom in the Bible.” It is dangerous to overanalyze this puzzle—I don’t want to begin a path of thinking that prejudices me against considering other angles. Like maybe it is a religious man who is proselytizing through murder? Maybe he kills these people for sins against the Bible? See, that seems likely to me…why would it be anything but that? Probably, if I were so inclined, I could research all the victims and find some deep connection among them—like they had all taken part in some shady government study and this was the terrifying result…
Jesus, I’m more tired than I realized
…It annoys me that whatever this whole burgeoning enigma is, the cops haven’t caught on to it. I’m not going to go out of my way to help them—already today I got a little too close with that cop damn near figuring me out. I’m already baiting the trap by working in such close proximity to the police, so I’m not going to stick my foot in by getting involved. Many of those guys would happily leave me dead in some Skid Row alley. I’ve got a good thing going and it’s for the best—for me at least—that I just keep my head down. I can’t save everyone on Planet Earth…No, my best bet at the moment is to hope that whatever the fuck is happening in the 236s across Southern California currently, well, that shit better sort itself out organically. But I don’t hold out much hope for that.
—
My apartment, with its single bedroom and absence of
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