The kids played on the old playground at the back of complex. Everything was metal, and rusted. There were sharp corners. When you fell, it hurt.
“Better than nothing,” parents said with a shrug. “Just gotta be careful.”
Every so often, a tenant would complain to the maintenance man, Glen. People generally only complained once before realizing that it was useless.
“What do you expect?” Glen would say. “Does anything actually work around here?”
Like the lights in the parking lot, or the elevator. Then there’s all the cracks: in the windows, the walls, the ceilings. Whatever could leak, did. Like the whole building could collapse at any point. People looked forward to that. For a few it was the only way they could leave. Many have left in sheet covered stretchers, but that was not the preferred method of finding a new place to live.
“But you can’t beat the rent!” Glen would say as he walked away, shaking his head.
People liked Glen, but they didn’t know whose side he was on. He didn’t live in the complex. If he did, maybe he would sing a different tune. He lived with his mother in an old house by the abandoned railroad tracks.
That afternoon, Kendra, a stay-at-home single mom, of whom there were many here at the complex, had taken her two little kids, Cyrus and Belle, to the playground. Glen, who was a major creeper as far as Kendra was concerned, was spreading old mulch nearby. Kendra tried to avoid him whenever possible.
She was hoping that Cyrus and Belle would tire themselves out and sleep all afternoon so that she could get high for a while.
Kendra didn’t get high when her kids were awake, or at least during the week. Weekends were different.
The kids were playing on the round steel cage, climbing it, hanging off it upside down, having a ball. Kendra smiled as the smoke from her vape shot out of her nose.
“Look at me, mommy,” Belle called out to her.
“Me, too,” Cyrus called out.
Kendra’s smile was genuine, and she was beautiful when she smiled. She got so bored in that crappy apartment all by herself, with no money to go out and do anything. Just the kids, the TV, and her crappy phone. When she was high, she forgot how bored she was, and about the huge cracks in the walls of her apartment. Let the fucking place collapse.
She loved her kids, and would do anything for them. But she hated this dump of a complex. And she loved getting high.
–Shawn Yager
Stories