Stone Daisy

By Richard Henry

They gave me a summons to deliver to a woman named Michelle Tankens a.k.a. Daisy. I drove right up to the curb and made sure I had gotten the address right. I opened the door and poked my head out, but quickly ducked back in and shut the door. The stench was overwhelming. A mixture of unkempt, unswept streets and stale milk had forced its way into my nose. Pulling my air freshener from the rear view mirror, I brought it up and sniffed deeply. Sucking my breath in, I jumped out of the car and ran into the apartment building. Inside wasn't much better. Piles of weeks old garbage lined the halls. A greyish white light filled the hall, but didn't seem to be coming from anywhere. In a nearby apartment, a baby was squealing from hunger and lack of attention. I looked at the summons paper and saw the apartment number. 12D. The twelfth floor and no elevator.

I ran up the stairs with a light spring in my step, not knowing I should save my energy. Halfway up the stairs, music started playing abruptly. Light came steamed down and laughter came with it. Confetti and steamers trickled down. I squinted my eyes and thought. Taking a step back, everything stopped. The laughter and music died. The light went out. I took another step forward and everything started again. Heaving a sigh, I continued forward.

When I got up the stairs, a giant floor party was going on. At first, it seemed there was just one party. But after several scans of the room, it looked like different parties merged into one. Near the stairs was a slumber party consisting of eight year old girls. In a open apartment, a Super Bowl party had just celebrated a touchdown. Their hats and shirts bore imaginary teams and cities. I began to shuffle through the crowd, towards the stairs at the other end of the hall. This apartment building was built strange. Instead of a centralized stair case, the stairs were a zig zag pattern. The stairs coming up at were at one end of the hall. The stairs going up were at the other. This nearly doubled the length of the walk. Oh well.

In a corner, five pseudo angst ridden teens were huddled around something important. Posters from different satanic bands decorated the walls and gothic books were piled around them. They were mumbling something incoherently, but words like ‘oppression' and ‘totalitarian' floated out. One of the teens flopped on his back and began coughing. The other teens began laughing at him. The important something was a rather complicated looking bong.

I chose to ignore their illegal escapade and continued forward. Wandering through the halls was a wedding reception. A woman in a long white traditional wedding dress, smelling faintly of a expensive perfume and laughing a very feminine laugh. Her new husband was laughing as well, clad in a generic tuxedo. Both of them were being carried high above on chairs, over the heads of best men, bridesmaids and assorted relatives.

Running past me was a woman of twenty dressed like a peasant girl screaming at the top of her lungs. Chasing after her were three, large men dressed in stereotypical Viking armor, including the historically inaccurate horns on the helmet. This, for all intense purposes, was odd. An entire floor enjoying themselves by having a part...oh. Parties. Slumber party. Super Bowl party. Drug party. Wedding party. And now, a raiding party. I groaned at the pun.

I just wanted to get out of here. Making my way through the crowd, I got to the end of the hall. But a gate for the stairs had been locked.

"Is this ever a fire hazard," I mumbled to myself. I turned around and spoke to the crowd.

"All right, who's got the key for this lock?!" I jiggled the lock for demonstrations purposes. Things started getting spooky at that moment. Nobody said anything. The crowd just parted, and made a trail to a door, the only closed one. I looked around for a moment, then started down the newly created path.

To be continued.....

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