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William ShawApologies for being away so long. Life is busy. But there is a great big pile of stories waiting to go up so it's time to get going again. UNTITLED When people are young, having limited resources and money, living space has to be compromised. Roommates are sometimes necessary to keep up with bills. These roommates can be friends, family, or people who need to save money. Sometimes this living condition can lead to parties, fights, and police intervention when things go wrong. I speak from experience since I’ve had many roommates, most of which led to those problems. During 1993, I moved into an apartment in Manchester on Hanover Street. My friend Mike and I shared this home, with fewer of the problems found in shared living than usual. Although we had many parties, we kept ourselves out of trouble while having fun. Out of all the parties we had, one uneventful party quickly turned into a strange night.  The apartment on Hanover Street was on the first floor of a three-family Victorian house. The ceilings were high, and there were belt lines in some rooms. Cabinets with glass doors adorned the kitchen, and old cast-iron radiators heated each room. The living room had bay windows wrapping it on one side. Our modern furniture and appliances looked out of place in such an old-fashioned environment. Our dress styles also contrasted with this home; we were more party animals than conservative. Everyone who knew us loved this apartment, as if they were attracted to it like a moth flies into the light. Some people thought our apartment had a personality about it, an almost living quality that spoke to all who entered it. Mike and I had a good friend named Doug who came to our place often. He called us one night, and said he was coming over. Mike asked me if Doug was bringing beer, because we had none. Doug said, “I’ll have to get forties, because I only have five bucks.” Doug was the kind of friend who shared what he had with us, so I told him, “That’s fine, man. We got the food if you bring the beer to wash it down!” He arrived in ten minutes. Once Doug showed up, I began bringing out some food for us to eat. Just as I sat down to drink my freshly poured beer, someone knocked on the door. I peered through the peephole in the door to see a female face. It was Natalie, a friend of ours who frequently came over. I let her in, and within ten minutes she and Mike disappeared into his bedroom to watch a movie she brought with her. Doug and I listened to music for a while, and until someone else knocked on the door, it was an uneventful evening. This man was going to die soon, if he didn't stop bleeding... The knock came around eleven at night, and by this time Mike was back in the living room with Doug and I. Natalie peeked out from Mike’s room to see who was knocking. I got up to answer the door once again, only to see an unremarkable male face on the other side of the door. I assumed someone would know this person, so I opened the door. Our front door opened inwards, so I didn’t have a chance to see him in full until he was inside the apartment. The first thing I noticed about this man wasn’t visual; it was a feeling I had. Since both Doug and Mike had the opportunity to see this man before I did, their expressions made me uncomfortable at once. I stood there behind the door momentarily, looking at both of them, as they looked at each other with confusion. I stepped back to see a man in his late twenties, with a medium build and height. He had brown hair and eyes, and he was obviously drunk. In his hands he carried two tall Budweiser beers, and his coat pockets overflowed with four more. His presence in our home and his level of drunkenness was strange enough to raise concern about our safety, and stranger still was his silence. The man swayed like a small boat in the Pacific Ocean.Finally, after a few moments which seemed like minutes, Mike asked the man harshly, “Who the fuck are you?” The man replied, “I did something I think I’ll regret in the morning.” Blood dripped from his hand generously, and his jeans suddenly stood out in my eyes, for they were soaked with blood. I immediately assumed he murdered someone. Doug stood up and asked him whom he had killed. I asked him to leave, and mike returned to his room to get a weapon. With a Scuba knife held in his hand behind his arm, trying not to be obvious, Mike closed his door in Natalie’s face, telling her without words to stay inside. Mike walked up to the man and told him, “Get out.” “I need a place to stay for a while,” the man said without reservation. “I did something I’m going to regret tomorrow.” I reasoned with him, “You can’t stay here. We don’t know you, and why the hell are you all bloody?” The man continued his silence while he took off his jacket. “Didn’t you hear us?” Doug added. “We don’t want you here.” I could see Natalie peeking through the doorway again. She mouthed the words, “Who is he?” I walked up to the door and shut it again. The man finished taking his jacket off, and with it came a towel that looked maroon in color. Soon I noticed that it was soaked with blood, too. “What did you do?” Doug asked. “I had a fight with my girlfriend,” the man replied. “I was drinking all night, just don’t call the cops or the hospital and I’ll show you what I did.” We agreed not to call the authorities, so he pulled up his sleeve to show us one of the worst wounds I had ever seen. I asked him if he cut himself. He said, “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. I just wanted to kill myself.” Mike walked into the kitchen to grab a plastic bag, and put the towel into it. Then he got a new towel from the bathroom and returned to the man. Mike told me, “Go pick up that bag in there. It’s heavy as hell. You couldn’t fit another drop into that towel.” I examined the heft of the used towel, and mike was right. This man was going to die soon, if he kept bleeding. We fixed the towel to his wounded arm, and told him it was time to leave. The man put his jacket back on and grabbed his beers. He said, “Thanks for not calling the cops, guys. You’re cool people.” I told him, “You’re lucky you didn’t go to a different house, guy. Anybody else would have left you for dead and called the cops.” Mike wrote our names and address down on a piece of paper, and placed it in the man’s pocket. “Call us tomorrow and tell us how it turned out.” We watched the man leave through Mike’s bedroom window, all four of us. Natalie asked us why we didn’t want her in the same room as the man who was now walking past the window. Doug said, “That’s why we hang out here. Mike and Will were looking out for you. That guy could have killed three people for all we know.” “I wonder where he’s going?” Mike said. Just then he fell in the street. The man struggled to get back up and fell again. We started betting on if he could get up at all, but he surprised us once again when he got up and stumbled across the street. A car pulled up ahead of him and opened the door. The man who arrived in our lives so quickly disappeared into the night, never to be heard from again by us. William Shaw hails from New Hampshire. The photo was taken by Suvi Korhonen who found the blood on a street in the middle of Helsinki. 9:36 PM - 28/10/2007 - post comment
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