sully474

This is my story the entire book is something like this with the mad happenings and I need a title.


Chapter1: Welcome to Toronto


“Just take a right here, pass three sets of lights, go left and” My words were cut off by my best friend, Jimmy Stevens.

“What are you talking about Marty?” said Jimmy with a bit of a clueless smirk on his face. Marty was me, Rick Martinetti, but the rest of that sentence I didn’t understand.

“The new apartment, I’m giving you the directions because you haven’t seen it yet. We agreed that we’d drop our stuff there before we headed on to the campus.” I replied.

“Uh Marty, the apartment is on the other side of the campus.” a puzzled looking Jimmy told me, “And besides, I never even told you where it was. I was keeping it a surprise. Why do you think you know how to get there” laughed Jimmy.

What had happened sunk in on us at that very moment. We had no jobs and two apartments to pay for. “Are you serious Jimmy?” I thundered. Perhaps I should explain all of this. Jimmy and I were going to university together in the big city of Toronto. We’d decided, after we both had been accepted into the university, that I would get us an apartment for the school year, until we went back to the fun town of Douro, Ontario, where cow tipping is the number one source of entertainment in a place that sixty some odd people call home. While I got our new place, Jimmy was supposed to be getting us jobs that would allow us to pay for all of our stuff, including the car, apartment and all of the basic neccesities of life. Fortunately, our tuition was already paid for with some money that we had managed to scrounge.

“I told you that it would cost $750 every month, last week when I called you , and you said that we had good part-time jobs that paid $200 per week!” Jimmy screamed. My eyes were aglow, but my lips motionless, as I could not find the right words to express my emotions. Those certain words often fail to come to me when I am faced with situations like these.

We sat in silence for a good hour or so after that, both blaming the other entirely, while thinking about what we were going to do about this situation. I was relitively passive before Jimmy was. “Uh Jimmy, did you sign a contract?” I said as calmly as is humanly possible in this situation.

“For what?” he snapped at me. I wasn’t surprised in the least that he was still mad. His temper is almost famous back home, where everybody knows everybody. One time we and some other friends were playing pond hockey on a warm day in April. Somebody left one of his hockey sticks in the snow, and as the temperature dropped overnight it was frozen into the snow. Nobody could remember who put the hockey stick there, so Jimmy wouldn’t talk to any of us for the next two months, when his stick finally came out of the ice.

“For how long we have the lease of the apartment.” I answered.

“Yeah I did. We have to stay there until school is out. What does that have to do with anything?” Jimmy replied angrily. I was fighting back tears now.

“Because now we have two apartments and we have to keep them both until we go back home, I signed a contract too. We can’t even afford one of them. We are gonna be broke in no time.”I predicted. We groaned simultaneosly.

We quickly decided on Jimmy’s apartment, and I mean very quickly. It didn’t have bars on the windows and graffiti all over the walls like mine did. Those bars really scare you when you are used to a place where it is unusual for somebody to lock their front door when they go out. Aside from this however they were quite alike. They both looked like they would collapse at any moment, and we were surprised that the doors didn’t fall off their rusty old hinges when we opened them. We crept down the beaten up stairs that looked as if they had carpet on them at some time before it had been ripped right off, not to make sure that we made no noise, but so that they wouldn’t cave in under our combined weight.

We had just been to see our landlord, J.R. Maxwell, who instructed us to call him Mr. Maxwell and Sir at all times. We had to sign another contract, not for the lease, Jimmy had already signed that, but as a promise that we would call him by that name at all times without slipping up once. Otherwise he would evict us, call the cops for trespassing before we could even get our things out of our room, and that was what would happen if we were lucky. I can’t imagine what would happen if he didn’t like us. There was absolutely no joking in the tone that he had in his voice. We looked around the dingy office to see pictures of him, as a drill sergeant with the CIA training camp. Then he finally decided to give us the room key.

“You guys are really lucky, 3B is a really nice well furnished room” he said in voice that was almost too sweet to be true as we left.

Mr. Maxwell Sir had really given us quite a scare, but we were but for the first time since we had reached Toronto we were feeling somewhat decent about getting a good room.

“I hate the word ‘contract’”moaned Jimmy on our way up the stairs,“ It always messes things up.

“That’s for sure” I replied,”But at least we got a good room.”

When we made it to Apartment 3B we expected the best. The outside of the door was green chipped paint with initials carved all over it from the previous occupants. All of the other rooms on the floor were done in a nice clean fresh coat of paint.

“Hey Marty, do you think that he confused this one with a different, and much nicer room?”asked a puzzled looking Jimmy Stevens.

“I’m not sure, probably, that guy was pretty crazy.” I replied.

We opened the door to find pink everywhere. Pink lacy junk hanging from the ceiling, pink paint on the walls, pink heart shaped pillows. On the wall there was a huge blown up picture with the words ‘Amy and Deanna Forever’. Jimmy looked the exact same as he did the time that he wet his pants in kindergarten, and I’m sure that my reaction was pretty much the same as his.

“So that’s who we have to blame for this place. Well, Amy and Deanna no longer.” said Jimmy while ripping the picture from the wall. “At least we had gotten a clean room I suppose.”

Jimmy went to the bathroom and screamed. Then I heard a big splash and flushing noises.

“That’s taken care of. We can fix this dump up tomorrow, you know what we have to do tonight, ok Rick.” Jimmy said from inside the washroom.

“Sure, I just have two things to say. Don’t come back with another apartment, I prefer jobs, and what was that thing you just flushed?” I asked.

“Uh nothing see ya later.” said Jimmy. He sounded really embarrassed .

That night did not go as I had planned over the last few weeks during my dreams. Jimmy and I weren’t taking some girls to the movies or something cool like that, wearing really awesome looking clothes and sunglasses that we didn’t even own. He sat at the apartment on the ugly pink couch with his long, blond hair peeking over a newspaper, looking for a job that we were qualified for. I took the car out to put up flyers for the apartment that we desperately needed to sell.

The car was an old Trans Am that Jimmy and I fixed up with my dad a couple of years ago. So at least I looked cool in the car. Or rather I would have looked cool in the car were it not for the fact that I had to get out every ten seconds to tape up another of our apartment posters. Believe it or not, the only colour of paper that the print shop had left was pink. Stupid colour. After about half an hour of boredom where I passed some awesome places that I could have been at if it weren’t for having the God forsaken extra apartment, some guy behind me started running. He was wearing a big black overcoat and pants that were somewhere around his knees in the crotch.

“Dude, dude!” he screamed like some sort of a starvation crazed maniac.

It was pretty funny at first, then I realized that he was going the speed of an Olympic sprinter. The guy was a running machine, easily as fat as Ben Johnson without the steroids. I know that he didn’t use steroids because he was way too skinny. His arms were like toothpicks, and his legs were popsicle sticks. Ok, fine they weren’t literally that small, but you get the picture. Then his pants came off in the middle of a big city sidewalk where everybody could see him, in a pair of heart boxer shorts, loafers and nothing else. He didn’t care at all, either that or he didn’t seem to notice all of the people laughing hysterically at him. He just kept on yelling, “Dude, dude!.”

‘There has got to be something wrong with that guy!’ I thought.

I wasn’t putting up posters anymore. Watching this idiot was far more entertaining, and I could always go back to the places that I had missed. A couple of kilometers down the road I realized that he wanted to talk to me. We were right in the heart of campus and there were tons of people around. I didn’t want to look stupid by talking to Captain Skinnylegs in front of everybody. That sort of thing could entirely ruin my reputation, before I even got one. I would be the laughingstock of the entire university. Well, besides the wannabe streaker behind me. I just kept on going.

On the far side of the campus I finally stopped for him. Nobody else was around, and I laughed at the thought that I had just made him run about seven kilometers without his pants through university campus and the heart of Toronto.

Lara

I believe that if you want to make a good impression with a story, you need to have a strong opening, something that is going to grab the readers attention. Your opening did grab my attention but only because I found it hard to understand and confusing. Why wouldn't Marty have understood the rest of the sentence? :\

Again I found this confusing. I think it would be better if you could briefly explain that both Marty & Jimmy had found appartments earlier rather than in the next paragraph it would be easier to comprehend. I found myself having to keep re-reading to remember what was happening. I have had very little sleep though & if I read this tomorrow it would probably make a lot more sense.


Why almost famous? If everyone knows everybody wouldn't his temper be very famous?

I think something is missing here, is Marty supposed to be saying

"So for how long have we got to rent the apartment?"

Why is Jimmy saying, "Yeah I did", he did what, signed the lease of the contract? Didn't Marty ask him that a while ago.



Is this realistic? Can someone really boot you out of a house because you didn't address them in a certain way. I have no idea of American/ Canadian laws.


I think you have a good start but I found that your story is hard to follow at times and could be more coherent. Good luck.

- Lara

sully474

It is unrealistic in its entirety, but that is the way that I intended it to be, sort of to show the way that Mr. Maxwell acted towards other people. I suppose I should change that bit to something more realistic though.

About you not having any sleep, I think it is better that way, because if a tired person can understand it when I am done then anybody can.

Thanks for the help. Having another person reading it was really great because sometimes I just start writing and I put stuff down that I understand, because I had thought about earlier, but had not put a good description of what was really happening in words.

Lara

Ok, I get you now.

I alwyas find it useful when someone else reads your work, they pick up on things you can easily miss.

B1ot

Can I suggest a small and simple change? I think this:
Would be better with "laughed Jimmy" being replaced by "he laughed."

__________________
John

sully474

I like that.

For some reason when I write I always seem to find that it is neccesary to put the name of the person who is talking, even if it is implied already. Just a habit of mine, and when I read that over, it made lots more sense your way. Thanks B1ot