The second blade incident, as initially recalled

It started, I guess, the day before. I heard, from my spot making porridge (I subsisted almost entirely off of porridge) in the kitchen, an apocalypse coming down the back alley of our house. Only when it came through the back gate did I register what I heard: he was bashing fences, tipping over bins and grunting a lot. Watching him tip over the bins and bash the fence and grunt enlightened me.

“All right,” he proclaimed, but I was sure it was anything but.

And let it be known that, really, he was the serial kitchen offender. He’d bin what is left unwashed rather than deal.

“I’m sick of coming home from work – to this.”

I looked at my two dirty dishes, a bowl and a mug.

“I’m about to use the mug again.”

Tom’s four unwashed dishes stared at me.

“And most of them aren’t mine.”

“I don’t care. They’re there, aren’t they?”

“Yes”

“Exactly.”

It was resolved I would, post porridge, wash mine and some of Tom’s dishes, and any further infringements would be met summarily with a bashing.

I had D stay over that night, not just for safety. He took what I’ll call the squatters room. In the morning, we went drinking in campo. I got hungry, promised to come back and went home to snack on some mi goreng.

He must have heard my stumbling. R was in the doorway when I opened the back gate. I went to walk past him, but arrived only at him walloping me in the face, accompanied by some queer epithet.

I felt the blood flowing out as I looked him in the smile, screamed how I was gonna kill him. I knocked over a tin of paint (I was always finding paint), the contents weirdly coagulated and looking like toxic waste. On my way out, looking like I might radioactively mutate, I knocked over the bins, for both safety and synchronicity.

Then the tape skipped again. I was blurry at the bus stop, then the cop shop. They told me I’ve been stabbed and took me to hospital.

After a bit of waiting around, I went for a smoko. When I came back, they told me four hours had passed. I asked, “Really?”

“Yep.”

I remember, before I sat down, telling some strangers police did this to me.

I needed seven stitches. I got none. I was too scared of the needle.

Police said they would arrest him soon. I was too scared to shower at home. Police said they would arrest him soon.

I pissed in bottles of wine and barricaded my door. He woke me at four in the morning getting up for work.

For days, I lived like this.

I must have called the cops. They were there, but the evidence was cleaned, and R said he didn’t do it, which made it that was that, apparently. They told me, and I have A as my witness, that they thus wouldn’t investigate. I stormed out. “This is why people say fuck the police.”

I became good friends with Tom, but. After all, it wasn’t his fault.