The Violation in 314 ✔️

***6***

Even though they were typically decent tenants, Mickey did not like the couple in 314. Perhaps he didn't like any of the tenants (himself included), but he really didn't like the Webers. He outright hated them. There may not have been any one thing upon which he could blame this hatred, yet it remained; and it was bitter, tangible, and indisputable.

Mr. Weber - his first name may have been Jerry, but Mickey never felt the need to learn it – was about 35 or 36, with a slight potbelly and a weathered face that made him look about ten years older, but otherwise in shape. He was a runner, up at the crack of dawn and on one of the treadmills in the building gym by 6am each morning. As much as he ran, Mickey didn't understand why the man hadn't lost his gut, but he suspected that What's-his-name Weber was a drinker. Of course, he ran on a stupid treadmill, so it's not like the man could call himself a true runner. True running was done outside either as sport or because someone was chasing you, not on a machine at some yuppie's leisure.

Mrs. Weber, Abigail "Abbie" Weber (Mickey made sure to know her name), was only a few years younger, but she looked 25 at most. If Mickey was honest with himself, he had a bit of a crush on Abbie. She looked all sweet and innocent, ripe for a white knight savior fantasy; but that was all an illusion. If she were so sweet, she wouldn't avoid him like the plague. No, the sweet ones, they saw the prince beneath the ogre and they soothed him; they didn't spit on the prince and piss away his kind words.

And perhaps that's the crux of it, he thought. I hate her because I want to fuck her. I want to take her to bed, but no, she's shacking up with that lame-ass yuppie of a husband.

Maybe it was that simple, because it was not as if Mickey really knew the Webers. They both worked, but what they did for a living was beyond him; it happened outside of the walls of The Villa. They didn't have people over and when they weren't at work they stayed to themselves, quiet and, if truth be told, decent tenants. Even so, his hatred remained.

Sometimes, when Mickey was working his rounds, he would pass What's-his-name in the hall making a laundry run. On a rare night, Mr. Weber might even cast him a pity hello, but that's all it was. The greeting always came out quiet and barely audible, and Mickey knew why. Weber didn't want to actually be dragged into a full conversation with Mickey. The prick should have stayed quiet like most of the tenants. His false courtesy was salt on an open wound.

Mr. Weber should have known better, but he was a moron through to the core. Each and every laundry run, the man left his door unlocked (Mickey had checked) and on occasion the door could even be found partially propped open. Apparently it took too much effort to grab his keys and let himself back in when he returned to the apartment. On his bad nights, Mickey would stand outside that unlocked door and imagine what it would be like to burst in, take Abbie and bash her pretty brains against their modern glass furniture as she screamed, then sit quietly on their wraparound leather couch and wait. He could just wait there for the husband to return. Would the man see it coming? Would he weep or yell, tear at his hair or charge; how would Mr. What's-his-name Weber respond to the death of his dear little Abbie?

This dream was absurd of course. As much as Mickey would like to think the whole affair would come as a shock, he knew that the tenants were scared of him. They thought he was crazy and they wouldn't be surprised at all. They probably already suspect that I'm going to crack one of these nights.

More than anything, Mickey didn't want to give them the satisfaction of having been right about him all along. Perhaps this is why he had never acted on that impulse, despite his many nights standing outside the Webers' door, erect at the thought of killing the happy couple.

Tonight, though, tonight was his night to finally act. Aunt Lucine was probably going to fire him next week anyway; she must have heard that damn window-box falling and of course she would hold him responsible.

Hadn't he already seen her talking to that big fellow in the office, anyway; some young buck with Hollywood muscles and probably hung like a fucking horse. God, that man had a shit-eating grin. He had just stood there smiling as he ate up everything Aunt Lucine was vomiting forth from her rotten gag-hole of a mouth. And Mickey be damned if the tenants weren't smiling and nodding their little pea-brained heads at this jerkwad and stopping to chat with him in the halls. Yeah, Aunt Lucine was grooming this cock to take over.

And yes, maybe he would prove everyone right if he burst in 314 with his temper flaring, but all the tenants hated him, so fuck them all the way to hell. And was he really going to kill the Webers or just put the fear of God into the pampered couple, and who could blame him for that?

Mickey stopped. He was here.

The door of 314 loomed, a silent guard protecting its unknowing occupants, a thin barrier between them and Mickey's anger. He could knock and maybe they would answer, or maybe this late at night they'd pretend they didn't hear – though he'd know they had heard; they always heard. Or he could use his master keys. They didn't know he had those, but of course he did. His great aunt had been their keeper but that old bitch was losing her mind, so he had freed them from her. Weren't they better in his hands than in those of some senile crony, anyway?

Still, the Webers might answer, and Mickey wasn't entirely certain how far he would go. He was quick to anger but slow to act, always reigned in by his dad voice. Yet that voice was eerily silent now. It had been ever since he'd slapped that fucker down back in the courtyard when it tried to shame him over the hippie chick from 408.

Mickey stood there outside the apartment debating his options, just as he had stood there many nights before, dreaming of beating the Webers to death. He was torn between his hatred and the tiny thread of sanity that still held him in check. Yet the decision was no longer in his hands. Before he reached his own conclusion –

CRACK!!

The door buckled outwards, the wood splintering and the door rattling in its frame as something large and heavy smashed against it.