The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 2

But back to the early days. The day I moved into that pristine basement apartment, it was a warm February day. The snow had actually melted in Chicago and it was warm enough that I remember that we were wearing short sleeves, tee shirts I think. As we moved things down below into my new pad, we started running out of room in my apartment; I had a feeling it was going to be a little cramped!

Since there was no real storage space within the basement apartment, the landlady told me I could put the rest of my 100 or so boxes into an empty existing room next to a furnace. That was her idea, not mine. Something else odd about the landlady my two friends Zog-19 & Lew Brickhate pointed out to me that day, that I had since filed away inside my brain. She changed her pants three times within in an hour. I did think that was a little obsessive. So did my friends.

The first few weeks in the apartment were okay, until I was informed that the former occupant’s cats were still there and had yet to be caught. I found out by seeing that my bathtub was filled almost daily with cat poop. It took them six weeks to catch the two cats that were, ironically, hiding beneath the bathtub!

Then one week later, the toilet overflowed; to which my landlady and her boyfriend both responded; "Oh, this is an annual event." Whoopie! I could hardly wait until next year.

Then strange occurrences began to take place. One day, while getting my mail from the front porch mailbox, I noticed a lot of strange mail coming in for the former occupant of the apartment. Seems that the former occupant (Gwen Jema) owed a lot of money. Her friends started calling her phone number that was registered for this apartment. Most of them wondered; where was she? No one seemed to know, not even the landlady.

Back then, I immediately knew what I had stepped into; a missing person’s case fiasco, which the landlady proceeded to cover up by throwing away all of the former occupant’s personal belongings. “Why weren’t the police called?” a few of my friends began asking me when I told them. I wasn’t sure. The sure tell-tale signs of the unreported crime were the basement being redone, the throwing away of her belongings and then I thought, “Oh! If only those cats could speak for her!”

I thought about it long and hard; had I stepped into a crime scene? Why had this gone unreported? Why was this landlady overly-nice to me? What else was going on that I wasn't being told about? I'd soon find out and would also begin to answer my own questions...