The door to my apartment creaked. I know, I should oil it. But it won’t make my life any better, so it can wait a little longer, right?
When I entered, I immediately smelled incense mixed with the sickly sweet scent of cheap coffee, cigarettes, and cat food.
The lamp above me started flickering when I took off my shoes in the hallway. Almost as if it couldn’t decide whether it hated me and would turn off. Or whether it should stay there shining for one more night.
But I didn’t really care. So I walked further into my apartment and threw my coat over the wooden chair by the table.
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“Lasagna!”
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My voice echoed hollowly through the apartment as I called my cat.
Lasagna… I know it’s a very strange name for a cat, but after centuries of having cats, you run out of possible names.
Fluffy, Felix, Sisi. You can repeat those names so often that it makes you sick. I walked slowly into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, and took a can of cat food off the fridge.
After all these years, you finally start naming your pets after everyday objects. Or in my case, after an Italian casserole.
The kettle behind me beeped as I poured the food into my cat’s ceramic bowl.
And I swear that the sound of the food falling into the bowl acts as a kind of prayer to the gods for my cat.
For that thick, red-and-white tuft of fur ran into the kitchen on his short legs at the sound of the food as if the whole apartment were on fire.
Lasagna ran past me and jumped onto the windowsill where I had placed his bowl, without even looking at me.
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“Nice to see you too, cat,” I mumbled under my breath, as I opened the kitchen cabinet above me. From that, I pulled out a simple packet of chicken noodles…
Although I knew damn well that this ‘chicken’ was the most artificial imitation they could find, tasting more like cardboard than chicken.
Oh well, I don’t have much choice but these rubbery noodles… maybe in the next century I’ll finally find the motivation to learn to cook. For now, I have to make do with what I have.
Sighing, I tossed the noodles into a bowl and poured boiling water from the kettle over them.
With the bowl in my hands, I stepped onto the small balcony. After all, it is just about the only place that isn’t crammed with magic books in ancient languages, exorcism paraphernalia, clothes, all kinds of amulets, an open bag of chips standing absolutely too close to the bottle of holy water, and cat toys and hair. And the only place in the apartment that doesn’t smell of cat, cigarettes, incense, and my lack of zest for life.
Sighing, I sat down on the balcony chair and prayed to my mother that it wouldn’t buckle under my weight. Well… a bit like everything in my apartment… If a living room that also serves as a dining room and kitchen, a small bathroom, and a bedroom can even be called an apartment, and not just a small, sad little hole.
Last week, I had to repair a table leg with hope, foolish convictions, and rolls of duct tape. And I don’t even want to talk about wallpaper, if you can even call what I still have on the walls wallpaper… because that wallpaper doesn’t actually exist anymore.
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Sighing, I took a bite of my noodles, chewed on them, and swallowed them.
“Mhm… well, it tastes like cardboard, with a hint of cardboard… even the noodles have the texture of cardboard.”
Slowly, I scooped another portion onto my fork. Reflecting on the irony of fate, I sit, a child of the light… a demigod from the eighteenth century, on the balcony of a run down ‘apartment’, on a rickety chair that should have collapsed long ago, with a bowl of cardboard-tasting instant noodles costing one euro and twenty cents from the supermarket around the corner.
Well, to be honest, there is nothing divine about it.
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Behind me, I heard the soft pattering of cat paws on the floor, along with a soft “Prr” as Lasagna jumped onto my lap.
He immediately curled up on my lap, and I automatically started stroking his back.
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“You know, cat? You and I just share the same unfortunate fate. I am a demigod and cannot die, and you are my cat and now you are named after an Italian pasta dish.” After these words, I put the fork of noodles back into my mouth.
“It still tastes like wet cardboard,” I muttered under my breath, so with a total lack of appetite, I placed the bowl, still half-full, on the balcony railing, where it wobbled dangerously, and pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of my pocket.
As if the fact that this bowl could fall to the neighbor downstairs didn’t exist… Although, even if it did, I wouldn’t feel sorry for him. He’s a complete asshole anyway. Just last week he was whining to me about Lasagna. That my cat smells like fish and he said I should throw the cat out on the street.
Which is inhumane, and I wanted nothing more than to punch his stupid grin, teeth and all, right there in the middle of the stairs.
…
But I restrained myself, because it is not worth wasting my time on idiots like him.
So, in my eyes, he deserves more than a bowl of noodles in his pots and plants.
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Anyway, I don’t wish the worst on my downstairs neighbor any longer… I’m lying about that, I poked a cigarette out of the pack, put it in my mouth, and lit it. I blew out the smoke.
Meanwhile, Lasagna stretched out on my lap and rolled over. He purred the whole time… he didn’t understand what I would do for him. My little, purring, chubby ball.
“You know, cat? You’re the only one in this whole block who doesn’t get on my nerves,” I replied, before taking another puff. And as if it were meant to confirm my words about how much I hate my neighbors… I mean, how much I love my neighbors, my neighbor from the apartment next door came onto the balcony in a bright pink floral bathrobe with hair rollers in her hair and started screaming…
That woman can never keep her mouth shut…
I think it was something along the lines of me not smoking on the balcony, because I’m setting a bad example for her children… Yeah, sure, Ms. Marie… as if the fact that you scream your lungs out until well past midnight isn’t a bad example for your children.
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I, on the other hand, politely gave her the middle finger to let her know she can go fuck herself. Hoping that one of her devil spawns would see this and copy it. That would be actually funny.
Because I know that engaging in a discussion is pointless with this deranged woman, with complexes about her husband leaving her and the fact that at the age of twenty she was already sitting at home with her first screaming beast who is her oldest child. Besides, it is my balcony, my life, and I do what I want. Especially since her terrible children should have been asleep long ago.
And I never yell at her from the balcony about her children whining at three in the morning and running through her home like a herd of sheep when everyone wants to sleep.
She yelled something at me again; it was a threat this time, I think. I don’t know, listening has never been my strong suit.
And I took another drag before stubbing out my cigarette in the ashtray.
“Without you, I would have gone crazy in this apartment complex long ago, Lasagna,” I mumbled, as I blew out the smoke.
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Then I lifted the cat, who was growling discontentedly, into my arms and went inside.
I set him down on the scratching post and went to the bedroom, leaving the door ajar, just in case Lasagna wanted to come sleep with me. I let my hair down and took off my shirt before crawling into bed, only to stare aimlessly at the ceiling for another half hour before finally falling asleep.
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and then Add to home screen.