#was talking about this w friends but also my shower leaks into the basement <3 so

[slaygentford]

one thing about having lived in apartments my entire life is that I was dumped into this condo situation without a maintenance man. like is it worth it. is it fucking really.

[the-boy-in-the-corner]

Does anyone know a good plumber?

Does anyone know a good plumber? I fucked up one of those stupid ritual things that everyone is doing and now my shower is leaking and also there’s some faceless guy in my kitchen. My landlord comes tomorrow and he’s going to kill me, especially because I also have a cat and I’m not even supposed to have pets.

It all started when I was drunk messaging a girl on Tinder and she said that the only way we would meet up was if I did this weird ritual thing where I summon a ghost or some shit. I think she called it Mea Culpa or something.

Actually, her exact message was,

the decaying flesh will not rest i am the alpha and omega i have seen the burning cities consume the earth hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh [LINK TO RITUAL INSTRUCTIONS] our souls meet when darkness spills mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa kkkkkkkkkkkkkkggggggg

She was a weird chick.

At least, I think she was a girl. I couldn’t really see her face. Her picture was just a black background with two shiny dots that kind of looked like eyeballs. You could sort of see some features, but it looked like her face was gray and I couldn’t really see her mouth. But she had really good skin. I wasn’t about to rally for a pizza face.

So, anyway, I weighed the pros and cons of spooky rituals vs trampoline booty as best I could on five shots of Patron.

It was totally worth it.

I set my cell phone to 3:26 am, but since my phone is a 2005 Motorola Razor that was dropped in the toilet several times, it went off at 4:00am. FUCK.

I decided to go through with the ritual anyway. I was also supposed to have a friend during this thing, but my bestie recently got incarcerated for selling heroin on the corner of Patterson Park and Eastern Avenue. Shout out to my main man, Roscoe.

Anyway, I sat up and turned off my alarm, but the moment I turned it off I drunkenly passed out again. I woke up 20 minutes later and actually got out of bed this time, stumbling around the room in the dark because apparently you’re not supposed to turn on the lights, because if you do a GHOST WILL POP OUT OOOH.

I was supposed to find a candle and light it, but my hangover just made me trip over one of the several candles I placed on my floor. Eventually I gave up and flipped the lights on, grabbing a candle from my desk.

I squinted out my window to see what my ghetto Baltimore neighborhood looked like at 4:20am. The street was empty except for some rando wearing a black robe and a giant pointy black hat. He was staring up at me through the window. I couldn’t really see his face. You know, Baltimore has gone to the fucking dogs. First gang wars, now an updated KKK. For God’s sake.

I lit the candle and looked at my phone. I was supposed to knock on my bedroom door 66 times, the 66th knock timed on the 4:06, but since I had fucked everything else up I just did a “Shave and a Haircut” knock and then walked into my hallway. My bedroom door is opposite the stairs, and looking down that dark stairwell was pretty spooky. I thought I saw something move on one of the lower steps.

For the next step, I was supposed to close my eyes and walk forward while chanting, “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa”, which is Italian for “my Culpa”, which is probably some kind of shitty Italian car. I tried to close my eyes and walk forward while talking about Italian cars, but my cat, Fish Sticks, ran under my feet and I ended up tripping over him and falling down the flight of stairs.

At some point the stupid candle went out as I flailed down the stairs, but I was too concussed to care. I rolled up from the ground, groaning, and decided that I would just continue to go through the motions, which meant hiding in a closet and waiting for the ghost to play hide and seek with me. I chose the kitchen pantry because I had some opened potato chips in there, so I made my way back.

As I stumbled, I heard several soft whispers behind me. I spun around, hoping that I was right about Fish Sticks knowing how to talk, but there was no one there.

Except for the figure standing in the corner.

I stopped, blinked, and it was gone. I really needed to lay off the Patron.

As I honed in on the closet, the alcohol and concussion finally caught up with me and I stumbled to a stop, doubling over and vomiting watery Patron all over my kitchen floor. FUCK. My ass was landlord grass. The hellish combination of alcohol, concussion, post-vomit and a looming eviction notice caused my emotions to go haywire and I unleashed a violent sob, mucus and tears rivering down my face.

I heard a noise outside the kitchen.

My eyes fell on the kitchen window and I spied that stupid gang member/KKK dude in my backyard, still staring at me. I must’ve looked like an idiot, weeping in front of my kitchen pantry. Too ashamed to confront him, I just crawled into the pantry and shut the door. It was so cold in there it damn froze my man-titties off. My air conditioner was probably broken. I definitely needed to call the landlord, but that would mean sedating Fish Sticks and stuffing him in a suitcase under my bed.

At this point, I realized that I needed to reevaluate my life. Maybe I shouldn’t drink as much. Maybe I should give Fish Sticks to a good home. Maybe I should find women with intellect and poise. Maybe I should move out of my shit neighborhood where KKK people roam around at 4am.

After going through an entire existential crisis in my pantry, I decided to say fuck it and end the stupid ritual. That Tinder girl wasn’t even that hot, anyway. And besides, I still had like seventy more ritual things to complete, which included lighting eight more candles, stabbing a Japanese doll, and spinning around in a circle while screaming, “YOU’RE IT, YOU’RE IT!”

This was all supposed to culminate in me going to my basement, sitting in front of a mirror, and looking into the mirror but not actually looking into it, which made absolutely no fucking sense.

As I got up to open the pantry door, I heard a low moan coming from behind the door. I froze. I prayed to God it wasn’t my landlord.

I cracked open the door to see the gang member/KKK guy standing in the kitchen, staring at me. I finally got a good look at him. He definitely didn’t have a face. I guess getting your face taken away is part of a gang ritual now.

He didn’t react to my presence— he just stared. I didn’t know how the hell to deal with gang members or faceless KKK members, so I just stared back. We did this for about five minutes before I slowly inched out of the kitchen and back upstairs. He turned to watch me as I went, but didn’t move.

So after that I went up to my bathroom to take a shower and now my shower-head is leaking, which I blame on the stupid ritual. So if you guys know any good plumbers in the Baltimore area, I would really appreciate it.

Written by narrativeofthelife on Reddit, in the section /r/nosleep.