The day I had a close encounter with one of the best (worst) monsters.

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕷𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖑𝖔𝖗𝖉 (Halloween edition)🎃

I had been living in Dublin for nearly 3 years. Had never met the landlord. The house needed some repairs, so I decided to call him.

The conversation went well, he sounded like a normal person.

Soon I realized I was wrong. He told me he would come to Ireland a few days later (he was living in the USA). Fine, I thought.

Unawareness of time difference.

Some days passed and one (very) early Sunday morning the bell rang. I went to open the door, happy as a second-hand napkin. What I saw was quite unexpected.

An over energetic man in his cowboy hat hugged me.

Strong Texan accent, he told me he had just landed and decided to come straight to meet me (never mind the time difference) and promised he would get the best people to fix the apartment.

I came back to my senses and thanked him.

The refurbishment was to be done while I was on holiday to give the builders time to fix the new floor and renovate the bathroom. It seemed like a decent idea.

So, I left for my holiday, unaware of what was happening back home.

Two weeks later I came back. Happy, but tired (delayed flight, stopover, lack of sleep). All I wanted was some food, a shower and a good sleep. I was not going to get any of them.

I opened the door, and it looked like apocalypse.

The landlord was in the middle of the living room, in a cloud of thick dust, cutting tiles and swearing because they wouldn’t come up straight. The floor, bombed all over, looked like a battleground.

The kitchen

Like an insane Dali painting, desert-like temperatures and melted glasses everywhere. He had been testing the cooker and had forgotten to turn it off (health and safety!).

The furniture

I had left him all the Ikea codes to go and pick the new furniture. He went to the shop, lost his patience and picked some random pieces (including a baroque-looking bureau-dressing table I had never seen before). The bed was missing, of course.

The Bathroom.

I decided to have a shower, the new bathtub was there. I opened the water and then I went to my bedroom. As soon as I stepped in, water started to spurt from the floor. He had forgotten to connect the bathtub to the pipes. It was like a giant puddle.

I left the apartment like you leave a crazy nightmare.

Came back a few days later, when the place was fit to live in again. I had to go to Ikea and get the right furniture, assembled it and bought new glasses. I could finally start to live in the refurbished house.

I put everything behind me…or so I thought

One morning, as I opened my eyes I noticed a little creature on the bedroom floor. Unaware of its surroundings, a little mushroom had started its new life in my home. It looked at me as if it wanted to tell me:

“I will be here with you forever to remind you of broken floors, flooded bedrooms and melted glasses”

I didn’t have the guts to remove it.