After a long day at work trapped in a 6”x6” cubicle pretending that I was enthusiastic about selling car insurance to senseless jackasses who didn’t know any better, I caught the L train back to Morgan Avenue, back to my shittyass apartment complex that used to be a factory but was converted into shoddy living quarters. Upon entering my apartment, I was greeted with what was perhaps the greatest shock of my life.

The place was completely bare.

I got down on my hands and knees and inspected the dingy floorboards. I hadn’t seen the floor for years, due to all the crap that consistently lay on top of it. I admired the cleanliness for a few moments.

And then, the panic came.

“WHERE THE FUCK IS ALL MY STUFF?!!!!!!!!!” The apartment was so empty that my voice reverberated several times throughout the space. The decrepit ladybug wallpaper was gone. The hole in the wall was fixed. All of the evidence of the tornado-esque mess in my apartment was now completely obliterated.

“Ah, there you are.” Damien strolled out from the kitchen area. His aura of smugness nearly blinded me.

“Damien. Where is my stuff? What the hell did you do with it?! The bicycles?!!! The computer parts!!! My cinderblocks?!!!” Completely out of my element, I stood up and began to pace.

“That stuff?” Damien gazed at his nails, entranced. “Oh. I threw it away.”

This is the part where I should have had an aneurysm and died.

But the aneurysm never happened. “WHAT?!!! WHO THE FUCK SAID YOU COULD THROW AWAY MY STUFF?!!”

Damien shrugged and loosened his tie a bit. “It was just stuff, Eugene. Now get out of the way, the movers are going to arrive any moment, now.”

“The movers?” I stepped aside, still in a state of shock, as I heard the sound of heavy footsteps trudging through the outside hallway. A bunch of burly men suddenly burst through the door, lugging all sorts of heavy furniture. Someone slapped a priceless-looking Oriental rug onto the floor, and a black leather couch and loveseat were immediately set down over it. A glass-top coffee table was wheeled in, followed by a new refrigerator and dishwasher. Damien watched the scene on high alert, barking out orders and insults.

“No, no, NO! I told you, the television goes over there!!” Damien growled with venom. “Donkeys!”

I curled up onto the loveseat. Within an hour, the transformation of the apartment was complete and the movers, wary of Damien’s prying eye, shuffled out the door single file. The walls were adorned with framed pictures, ( most of them of Damien, smiling cheekily into the camera and holding up various awards and plaques ) the living room and kitchen were decked out with new furniture—modern lamps, a new bookcase, beautifully detailed chairs made of wrought iron, and some sort of large glass tank.

“You bought pets?” I asked, approaching the tank. “What is it, a lizard or—“

The tank housed two tarantulas.

“Their names are Hugh and Stephen,” Damien explained, lifting the lid to the cage.

As much as I semi-appreciated Damien’s effort to make the apartment livable, the prospect of sharing my home with two fuzzy eight-legged creatures twice as big as my hand sort of freaked me out. I grabbed Damien’s arm. “No. Don’t open that thing. I can’t be held responsible for my actions if you—“

Damien raised a brow, and lifted the lid higher. “I love looking at them and watching them,” he continued. “I find them fascinating. Hugh is a Brazilian Bird-Eater, and Stephen is a Goliath Bird-eater. They’re semi-aggressive breeds, so I don’t take them out of their cage very often—“

“And you’re not taking anything out right now,” I hissed through my teeth. Hugh was already trying to crawl up out of the glass enclosure, no doubt out for blood. Mine, particularly.

“Hm. You’re right, actually.” Damien replaced the lid. “They’re most likely stressed out from all of the moving and commotion…”

“Yeah.” My pulse slowly returned to a respectable speed, the hairs on the back of neck fell at ease. Between the craziness of my old missing roommate Lars ( that fucker! ) and Damien claiming to be looking for him, and then not looking for him…and then moving in with all of his shit and giant spiders and holy crap, what the fuck was I getting myself into? I needed to time to adjust to the insanity. If I didn’t take control of things, and fast, then they would spiral out of control. I couldn’t shake the feeling off that this was only the beginning of even worse things to come.

Hugh and Stephen’s sixteen eyes glared at me from the confines of their tank.

It was going to be a really, really, really long night.

---

My room, at least, remained intact, useless junk and all. It appeared to have been untouched, but common sense urged me to look harder for evidence of tampering. After all, I was no idiot, and Damien’s move-in was probably some sort of ploy. A long-term stakeout. It certainly didn’t seem like regular FBI protocol, but then again—was Damien really an FBI agent? The badge he’d shown me could have easily been fake. The gun could have been fake, too. The business card, too. Maybe even Damien himself was fake, and actually a robot. At any rate, I wasn’t exactly ready to trust this guy. Never trust anyone who thinks that spiders make good pets.

I looked for any signs that my stuff had been snooped through. Everything seemed to be in order. I checked my desk, shuffled through important documents containing sensitive information. I inspected my computer to make sure that nothing was amiss. I then checked Lars’ room—it also appeared to be untouched. After about an hour of checking and double-checking, I was satisfied. Nothing had been touched. I sank into bed and gazed up at the ceiling. Naturally, just as I closed my eyes, the doorbell rang. “DAMIEN!” I hollered. “GET THE DOOR!”

The doorbell rang again. I didn’t hear Damien’s footsteps. What the fuck was he up to?

“DAMIEN!!!!”

Nothing. I heaved a giant sigh and rolled out of bed. The bell continued to ring, impatiently. I reached the front door and threw it open.

“Hey man.” Harvey stood before me, his steely gray eyes beginning to waver with desperation. “About the apartment…” He didn’t look quite so tough now—he resembled some poor spoiled Long Island teenage brat who’d run away from home because his mom refused to take him to the fucking mall.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, but I’ve already got—“

Harvey shoved past me. “SHIT!!! What the fuck happened here?! It’s—I mean…you—the floor—furniture…clean?!!! WHAT.” He continued to sputter for a few moments. And then he saw the spider tank. He ran to it, his chains and metallic things softly clinking together. “THIS IS THE MOST FUCKING AWESOME THING I HAVE EVER SEEN.”

Damien popped out of the kitchen, sternly furrowing his brow. “Don’t yell! They’re sensitive to loud noise.”

“Oh my god.” Harvey gazed at the spiders. “Those motherfuckers are badass.”

“Um. Harvey.”

“Shut up, man.” Without even looking at me, he threw a wad of cash in my general direction. “Where do I sleep?”

I began to count the bills. “You take Lars’ old room.”

“Sweet,” Harvey said under his breath, peering intently into the spider tank.

---

I collected my thoughts over a bowl of Capn’Crunch.

Okay, so things weren’t as bad as I’d thought. I’d managed to acquire not one, but two roommates, and therefore exceeded my expectations. And on top of that, I got a home makeover that would put Ty Pennington to shame. My only areas of concern were the spiders, and Damien’s ulterior motives. If Lars ever did come back, he’d get busted by the Feds. Damien was off the case but that didn’t mean he would pass up the chance to solve it, should that chance ever present itself to him.

But what did I care? I wasn’t about to cry a fucking river for Lars. Sure, I’d grown up with the asshole but he’d never done me any good anyway.

I crunched on the cereal, savoring its sweet cardboardy texture.

“Hey, Eugene.” Harvey walked into the kitchen, dangling a metallic object between his fingers. “What do you want me to with this?...I found it in Lars’ room.”

The object that precariously dangled from Harvey’s grip was a gun.

“Give it here,” I held out my hand.

Harvey hesitated.

“Harvey. Give me the gun.”

“Um. No. Not until you tell me what’s—“

At this point, Damien walked into the kitchen. He spotted the gun in Harvey’s hand, and then quickly drew out his own firearm. His movements were lightening-quick and automatic. “Put that down before you hurt somebody!!”

Harvey panicked and pointed the gun towards Damien. “Who the hell are you?! Put yours down first!!”

“Damien is my roommate!” I hissed. “And he’s a federal agent! So put the gun down before you shoot a hole in my wall or something.”

“Oh.” Harvey put the gun down. “Look, can somebody here tell me what’s going on?!”

“You tell me!” Damien growled. “You’re the one who was waving that gun around in a disturbingly nonchalant manner! Guns aren’t toys, you fucking gutterpunk worm!!”

“Look, man, I’m not a criminal,” Harvey replied. “The most experience I’ve ever had with a gun is playing Duckhunt when I was five years old.”

Damien grunted an apology and slinked out of the room, throwing Harvey suspicious glances over his shoulder. Harvey sat down at the table and poured himself a bowl of cereal. “Well. He seems nice.”

Damien? Nice?

NICE?

“Jackass,” I muttered.

“Damien?” Harvey asked.

“No, you. I’m calling you a jackass. Ugh.”

“…Oh.”

I looked away from him and smiled a bit. Although Harvey was indeed a jackass, I liked him. I liked him a lot.

But he didn’t need to know about it.

And I didn’t plan on ever letting him find out about it, either. I retired to my bedroom, in hopes of passing out so that I wouldn’t resemble a zombie the next morning. I imagined what Harvey’s reaction would be once he found out that I was a bonafide faggot.

Slowly, the black oblivion of sleep kicked in.

---

A/N: Jesus Christ, I suck at this writing. I hope you people quite bothering me for updates, now. Because I doubt you’ll be getting one for a loooooooooong time. Heh.

Notes:

-Morgan Avenue is real, I’ve hung out there on many occasions. Know some people who live around there, too. Was considering looking for a place in that location, because of the convenience of the L-train stop there.

-the spiders Hugh and Stephen are named after Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Who, by the way, are fucking badass.

-Eugene lives in a three-bedroom apartment. Just to clarify in case there’s confusion.

-I think that’s it…