I knew something was wrong when we arrived at our new apartment, but I could never imagine what would happened next.

Story created & performed by:

Aaron Calafato

Podcast Coordinator: Cori Birce

Audio Production: Ken Wendt

Original Art: Pete Whitehead

TRANSCRIPT

7 Minute Story Episode 96: The Apartment - powered by Happy Scribe

You're listening to seven minute stories with Aaron Calafato. Make sure to subscribe rate and write a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you find your podcasts. And don't forget to tell a friend. Visit our merch page at 7minutestoriespod.com. That's the number 7minutestoriespod.com. This episode: The Apartment.

As soon as we pulled up into the apartment complex, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, it just did not feel right. It was foreboding. I mean, we were just outside of Eatontown, New Jersey. I mean, that whole area, Eatontown, Red Bank, New Jersey, not a terrible area. It's just that the apartment complex that we pulled up into was a dump. You could see that from the get. And there I am with my then fiancee, Heidi, and her whole family. I've convinced her to move out to the East Coast with me because I have a dream of becoming an actor. And we were together at the time and we were doing things together. And she got accepted into Monmouth University. And that's why we're in New Jersey. I was trying to find a compromise, a place that was close enough for me to bridge and tunnel into New York to get acting classes and start my career there and for her to go to grad school.

Here's the problem, and I have to be honest about this from the start. I didn't plan this out very well. I didn't really find a place that was safe. I didn't think about those things. I mean, I remember this like it was yesterday. It was over 10 years ago. But I remember it like it was just the other day. I'm in Ohio. Next thing I know, I'm clicking a link on a place that just looks good to live for me to pursue my dreams. I click a link. I'm on the phone call with the landlord. Next thing I know i'm in a lease and I'm in an apartment. I've signed a contract. So, now we're pulling up to the apartment complex and I'm feeling it. I'm going, "oh, God." But I say to myself "I gotta push past this. I'm optimistic. I'm going to make this thing work."

We pull up the car. Next thing I know, there's about five guys standing in front of our door. Now, our apartment complex is one building but 4 units, two on the bottom, two on the top. We're in the lower left unit. And then above us is another unit. And in front of our shared door, there's these five guys and they seem nice enough, but they're kind of just standing around. They're smoking cigarettes. I could tell by their tone of their voice that they're from Vietnam, but they were cool. They opened the door for us and said hi.

And as we're unpacking and trying to settle in for the day, this huge transition, I find out that these five guys and then their five girlfriends or wives and then their three kids amongst them. So that's about twelve people that live above us in our apartment. Nonetheless, we had to unpack and we did. And then we said bye to Heidi's family. And then we're just sitting around the apartment boxes everywhere, exhausted, far away from home. And that's when I noticed it, when I looked up, I could hear how loud it was going to be for the duration of the lease.

See, people who plan ahead know this. But when you live on the lower level of any apartment complex, it's an intense auditory experience. It's like people dropping thousands of marbles above you or glass. It's like a bowling alley, all the time. And the thing is, when you have twelve people living above you, twelve, it's an entirely different level of intensity. More than that, this family owned an Asian fusion restaurant around the corner that was open 24 hours a day, which meant they were up 24 hours a day, which meant I was up 24 hours a day.

They never slept. People in and out of the house at all hours in the night. Strange noises, foods being cooked at 3 a.m., babies crying all hours. I was in a time vortex. I was cranky. I was angry. I didn't sleep. It went on for a month. Not a great introduction to this apartment. But I thought, you know, at least I have my PlayStation 2 that I brought with me. Because I could play online with my friends back in Cleveland. And I felt less alone, felt connected to them and just reminded me of home, you know? But one morning, on a weekend, I went out to play some video games on my PlayStation 2 and I go out and the PlayStation 2 is gone, we can't find it. I wake Heidi up, we look around. No PlayStation 2, we turn the apartment upside down. It's gone. It's literally gone! Nothing else was stolen. No sign of break in. But the only thing we saw was that there was a window that was cracked. We never locked our windows. So someone had to have come in and took my PlayStation 2 in the middle of the night and stole my PlayStation. Who was it? But I thought to myself, I can't get any worse than this Right?

Well, the next day I go to my car to go to work and I walk out there and under my windshield wiper, there's a note, like a handwritten note. And I open up the note and I read it and it says these words, "bang, bang, you're dead". And it has a picture of someone shooting two people, presumably me and Heidi, with in red marker, blood spattered all over the illustration. It's an illustration. It's a foretelling of murder. This is a childlike drawing. You have to understand, there's two possibilities here. One, these are just kids pranking us. Most people would think that, but not me. You have to understand this. I went from zero to 100 in a millisecond. I was terrified. This apartment has already put me in a deep depression. Now, I'm thinking there is no doubt we're being tracked down by a serial killer. In fact, their mark, is that they come into people's houses and steal PlayStation 2's and then murder their victims. I lose my mind. I call the police. They don't seem to care. They're in New Jersey. They got stuff to do they said. I said, you're going to regret this phone call because we're going to end up dead. I have to turn into a detective. I might as well have worn a tan trench coat, drank Dunkin Donuts and had a half-lit cigarette all the time because I had to do my own investigations. I'm trying to figure out who's doing this, who were.. who was the serial killer?

And I end up for a month, imagine this, a month up all night by the window. And it wasn't hard because we had the people above us keeping me up. But I had an Easton aluminum baseball bat, and I was ready for the killer to try to enter. I couldn't sleep at night because I was afraid he was going to kill me in my sleep. It was a nightmare. It was a living nightmare, this went on for a month! And I couldn't get out of my lease and I didn't want to go home a failure. But let me tell you, finally, I got some good news. Talked to my landlord about this whole situation. And I was in the leasing office, and she told me "hey, listen, at least we found out that the people above you, they're moving out". I said, "why?" She goes, "I don't know. We can't tell you that they're just moving out. She said, "all we have to do now is fumigate the apartment". I thought, great. And as I'm walking back to my apartment, I think about that word fumigate. I didn't really understand that... until I came back, and when I was standing in my apartment, I noticed this little. it looked like a weird bug crawling down the side of the wall. And I thought, is that a big cricket? And I went to Heidi, I said, "what is that?"

And she said, "Oh, my God, that's a cockroach". Next thing you know, there's 5, 10, 15, 20 cockroaches streaming down the walls, coming up through our sink, in our bathtub, on the kitchen floor, all the roaches from above us after they fumigated the apartment stream down and infested our entire apartment. And I'm in the fetal position, literally in the middle of my apartment, crying, thinking to myself, there's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home....

7 minute stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato, audio production by Ken Wendt , you can connect with Ken at media216.com . Original artwork done by Pete Whitehead. See Pete's work at petewhitehead.com and Lastly, I'm Cori Birce and I coordinate the podcast. Make sure and tune in next week for another story.

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