Welcome to Gaia! ::

The sky was overcast and promised to soak all men in suits on their way home just when they missed the bus and forgot their umbrellas. It had already begun to rain in the warehouse district, and the coming winter would soon turn it into sleet. Grim tore his gaze away from the sky and stared at the faded white building number. Redstone Heights Apartment Complex was just another low-income tenement that was built in the ‘60s to house mobsters and junkies, and had seen so many vandals and juvenile delinquents that nearly every window within throwing height was broken. A flickering red neon sign announced that, contrary to thought, there was Room to Rent. Grim critically inspected the sign, and pushed open the door.

A smell of mildew and anaerobic bacteria greeted him on the other side. Old newspapers covered the crumbling yellow wallpaper in the places where bullets, knives, and who knows what else had been thrown at the walls. The carpet had given up and died decades ago, and now only the rotting pad and the dry-rot remained.

A man is street clothes smoked at him over the pile of cardboard orange crates that served as the desk and looked up from his celebrity tabloid.

“You delivering, checkin’ in, or takin’ away. Cuz if youze takin’ away, the TV’s already gone. Course, there wun’t much to take away, even then.” The night-clerk scratched at his grey stubble.

“I’m here concerning a Mr. Joe Finch,” Grim said, pulling at his striped blue tie.

“Finch, eh?” The clerk turned his battered swivel chair and flipped the pages of his registry. “Yeah, it sez there’s a Finch in the buildin’. You might wan’ try room 319. This ain’t about the law, is it?”

Grim picked up his briefcase from where he had rested it on the floor and replied, “If it was about the law, you’d be busted by now.”

The clerk smiled in that “I’m going to bust your teeth if you try that again” way and watched Grim test the button on the wrought-iron lift door. It was, of course, broken, and Grim lifted his foot to test if the stairway could hold his weight, then ascended.

Cockroaches popped and snapped under Grim’s Belgian Midinette shoes. In many places, the banister had been repaired with aging ducktape, probably by one of the tenants with a flair for home repair. Grim passed the 2nd floor, nearly tripping over some deteriorating police caution tape. His steps continued up the winding staircase until he reached the 3rd floor.

A rat scurried in front of Grim, pausing only to screech rat swear-words. Grim passed rooms inexpertly boarded over creating a blank canvas for the graffiti artists that had run out of room on the walls. Finally, he reached room number 319. A kid in a smudged white hoodie and a red baseball cap stopped Grim in front of the molding room door.

“Hey, man, what you want with Finch?” the kid said, taking the grubby home-made out of his mouth. Grim brushed him aside with his left arm while using his right to open the door.

“Eh? Who’re you?” asked a startled man who looked like he had been lying on a storm drain when the sewers overflowed.

“I am your…appointment,” said Grim as he strode into the room.

“What appointment? I been clean for three days,” Finch backed up into the bathroom door with a dull thud.

Grim slowly opened his briefcase, and drew out a Sig-Sauer P23 pistol. A single ejected brass dropped to the floor and Grim walked out the door.


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Cheers,
Barsidious.