The Sunset Apartments #4
Floor: 3
Apartment Number: 345
Complaint: Garbage disposal broken.
Name: Jerry and Ken Livingston
Hector knocked on the door of unit 345 and waited.
Vartan coughed and cleared his throat as he kept a hand on the toolboxes.
The super sighed as he knocked again and looked at his watch. “They’re always home.”
“Work from home?” Muttered the assistant, leaning against the handle.
“They pioneered working from home.” Hector took out their master key and knocked one more time. “Mr and Mr Livingston, we’re here regarding your ticket.”
“Jerry, can you get the door?”
“No, Ken, you get it. I’m on a call.”
“And I’m in the middle of a dungeon!”
“Ma’am, one moment. Ken, I am dealing with an irate customer. Please, just, answer, the door!”
“Fine, one second guys, brb.” The lock on the other side of the door turned and the bearded face of Jerry Livingston nodded to Hector and Vartan. “Oh, new guy! Yeah, come on in. Hector, you know where the sink is.”
“Mhm.”
As the door opened more, Vartan noticed Ken was standing right behind Jerry and when Jerry turned to walk back to his computer in the living room, Ken rotated and walked with him, too. “Yeah, I’m the new guy. Name’s Vartan.”
Ken thumbed toward himself and then his brother, saying, “I’m Ken, and the guy who’s always got my back is my brother, Jerry.”
“Oh, are you two connected?”
“Yep, both physically and relationally.”
Jerry flipped the switch on his headphones to mute the call. “Can you both please be quiet?”
“Sorry, Jer!” Yelled Ken, who then turned their attention back to Vartan. “Hey man, I gotta get back to my raid. Thank you again for the fix.”
Vartan followed the super into the kitchenette immediately to the left in the small studio apartment. He watched as the two men sat down in unison in backless desk chairs as he asked Hector, “What’s the story?”
“What story?”
“Are they werewolves? Victims of some portal accidental that conjoined them?”
Hector squinted at his new hire. “Naw man, their connected at the ribs. Been that way since birth. One works as a customer service rep for a major game company while the other plays said game that the other is supporting.”
“Oh, that’s it?”
“Not everything in this place is bizarre. Now unplug the garbage disposal under the sink.”
“You want me to do it?”
“Hey, you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty at some point today. I can’t fix everything all the time. Also, working under sinks kills my back.” He put a gardening mat on the wooden ledge so it wouldn’t cut into the kid’s skin. “I’ll talk ya through it.”
As the two maintenance men worked on the problem, Jerry’s voice began to dominate over all other sounds in the room as he threw his headphones against the wall, yelling, “What a god damned moron! Two hours of my time, gone! And WHY?! Because the old lady didn’t even have the computer plugged in this whole time! GAH!”
Ken muted his mic as he said, “Jer, can you please keep your voice down?”
“I just can’t deal with these people anymore! Why, why can’t they just fix their own problem?”
“Because if they could, you’d be out of a job?”
“I’d love to be a potter. Make things out of clay all day.”
“That might be a problem since I cannot do outside that well.”
“You could do outside fine if you’d get off that game at any point of the day!”
“If people like me weren’t playing this game, then you wouldn’t have a job, dude.”
“Whatever, let’s get some tea.”
“I can’t, in the middle of a thing.”
Jerry sat dejected for a moment before asking, “What boss you on?”
“Rash’targ, the Lamenting.”
“Ah, did you attune yourself to his final form?”
“Almost to the final form.”
“When you get there, can you ask for a rest so I can get some tea?”
“Sure, just give me three minutes.”
“Thanks.” Jerry’s cell phone began to ring. He grabbed it, saw that the number was unlisted, but picked it up anyway. “Hello?”
Vartan removed the old disposal, his coverall getting wet as old food scraps that didn’t get disposed of fell on his face. His thin arms hoisted the dead machine to Hector. Sitting up, he wiped his face with the paper towel the super was holding ready for him. “Is this job everything you dreamed it would be?”
“And more so.”
As he went to lay back under the sink, a flash of light filled every edge of the apartment. He shot up and stood next to a shocked-looking Hector. The two gazed upon Mr and Mr Livingston, who were now separate people. Both of the tenant’s faces matched that of the repairmen’s. Ken looked at his brother and said, “What the hell just happened?”
Jerry turned around by himself and looked at his brother. “I… don’t know. I got a phone call from that old lady I was angry at, and she was speaking in some language. Something odd. It sounded like chanting.”
Ken bent over and touched his toes. “You didn’t have to move when I did that, did you?”
“No. No, I did not.” Tears began to flow down their faces as the two brothers hugged.
Hector asked a question after the two men separated: “Did the lady say anything else on the phone? This is strange even by this building’s standards.”
Jerry and Ken scratched their left side, where they had been conjoined, at the same time before replying, “That this was a curse.”
“A curse? Looks more like a blessing to me, man.”
“Ken, do you know what this means?”
“That we can now finally have privacy when pooping?”
“No, yes, you’re right, but that I can be a potter!”
“Oh, yeah, man! Chase that dream!”
“And that I am moving out!”
“Wait, what?”
“I always said to myself that if I ever got the chance to be on my own I would take it, and this is that moment. What are you going to do?”
Ken glanced at the raid that was in progress on the computer behind him. His teammates yelled that he needed to get back so they could finish the dungeon. He looked back at his beaming brother and said, “I… don’t know.”
Jerry nodded and gripped his brother’s shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” And walked out the front door of the apartment.
The two supers looked back at Ken, who was now crying once again. Vartan tried to cheer him up by saying, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. You’ll find something.”
Between sobs, the tenant wiped his nose with t-shirt and said, “It’s not that. We got to live here because of our condition. Now that we don’t have one anymore, we can’t stay… I mean, I can’t stay. Wow, that’s odd to say.”
“If you get a job then you’ll…”
He yelled, “That’s not how it works here! You live here if you’re strange or odd and right now we… I am neither!”
He continued to cry as Hector walked over to him and comforted him, saying, “He’ll only know that if someone tells him. Won’t he?”
The single man looked from between his fingers at the super. “You mean you won’t tell him?”
“Why would I tell him?”
“Won’t he fire you?”
“No, he won’t.”
“I mean, if you didn’t let on then I…” Hector nodded and was gripped in a massive bear hug from Ken. “Thank you.”
With a gasping breath, he replied, “You’re… welcome…” When he was released, he walked back over to Vartan, who gave him a slight grin. “What?”
The new assistant watched the gamer return to his raid and said, “You did a nice thing just then.”
“Hey, just because we shouldn’t be friendly with the tenants doesn’t mean we have to be monsters, man.” He handed his assistant the new disposal. “Install this, and let’s get lunch.”
“I never asked, but how much is rent in this building?”
“It’s free.”
It was an answer Vartan hadn’t expected to hear as he sat himself up from under the sink. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah, living here is free.”
“Wait, wait, wait, the tenants here pay no rent?”
“Yep.”
“Then, wouldn’t leaving here be a bad idea?”
“Yeah, Jerry will probably wise up in a few. He’s just riding his high right now.”
“If no one is paying rent, then how do we get paid?”
“We get paid.”
“How?”
“Magic pixie dust, I dunno man, just finish up the install! I have a torta with my name on it over at Super Mex. We’ll go there for lunch.”
Vartan shuffled his way back under the sink.
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