Crackhouse Acid Nightmare
It all started when my best friend called to tell me all about her new place. She told me about the blood stained carpet in the bedroom, the little girl's panties she found stuffed into the wall of a closet decorated in scratch marks poorly disguised in blue paint. She told me about the rolled up rugs in the closet her "landlord" had told her not to touch.
By that point, she was practically in tears, thinking she had just wasted $400 to live in a fucking crimescene. So naturally, I told her it was all gonna be okay. I got on the bus and headed to the east side with the intention of easing her mind enough to let her stay there comfortably until she found a more suitable domain.
It was winter, mid December, 2016. About an hour earlier, Sam had called me, so excited about her newfound home. A tiny apartment on the East side of mt Clemens, Mi inside a yellow house containing 4 other apartments. She told me she only had to pay $400, no deposit, no ID, no credit check.
Any normal person would say
That sounds a bit too good to be true
But me being the type to see good in anything, congratulated her instead.
As we were walking up to the house, I got an eerie feeling, as if someone was watching us. The garbage men were out front, picking up the rolled up rugs the "landlord" brought to the curb. We walked in together, holding a few things she had yet to bring in.
When we got inside the house, the hallway was painted this ugly, almost maddening sea foam green color; paint chipped and worn down like the inside of a county jail holding cell. There was a downstairs and an upstairs. I followed her up the steps, and up some more to her apartment. She told me the previous renter actually only moved to the downstairs apartment... I couldn't help but wonder why.
We walked into the apartment. The walls were an off-white, with old wood flooring hidden under a dusty rug in the center of the living room. The dining/kitchen area actually had a little class to it aside from the hideous rust colored carpet. (Who carpets their kitchen anyway?)
She decorated the windowsill with pretty glass trinkets and a vase of flowers in hopes of brightening up the place just enough to distract her from the darkness. It didn't even come close to working.
As we continued through the apartment, we entered the bedroom. There was a blanket lying over the carpet that didnt belong to her, along with a few other nonsense things we didnt bother to look through.
We moved the blanket and started clearing out the room only to reveal even more blood stains. The carpet in the bedroom was cream in color but it was so covered in rust colored stains the shape of bodies, you could hardly tell what color it was supposed to be. There were bleach marks, as if someone dumped a bottle of bleach over everything in hopes of covering it up, but it only spread it around further. If THAT was the best they could do, I can't even IMAGINE what it looked like before.
The closet door was painted white, but as i opened it I saw that the inside, and ONLY the inside of the door was painted blue. The only thing painted in the entire apartment, and it was the INSIDE of a closet. As we looked down towards the floor we saw claw marks at the base of the door, scraping off the paint, as if someone was once locked inside, desperate for a way out.
I looked out the window to see a rooftop and couldn't help but think it was the perfect way for someone to break into a place. With a closer look I noticed the screen on the window was slit clean along the edges, maybe in hopes no one would notice? The window didn't lock. Sam told me she had already voiced her concerns to the landlord about the windows and he just offered to nail and calk them shut for her himself. You can't tell me that mother fucker wasn't trying to trap her ass, give her only one way out, one way in. FUCK. THAT.
I'm not fuckin' Nancy Drew or anything but everything we saw in that apartment SCREAMED get out. But like I said... I'm not Nancy Drew. I'm probably just crazy, jumping to conclusions to find an ounce of excitement in my life, I don't know.
So we shrugged it off, convinced each other the bloodstains were really just rust marks from old furniture, and the pair of child's panties that were shoved in the wall of the closet were really just a little girl's desperate attempt to hide an accident she had.
Maybe the painted door was just for fun, and the scratch marks were probably just shitty paint chipping from years of use. Maybe the screen was slit so the previous tenant could smoke on the roof. I dont fucking know.
All I knew was that my best friend was hurting, so heartbroken at the disappointing place she agreed to live in for the next month, and I wanted to fix it.
I remembered when I moved into a shitty area. The anxiety and discomfort, constantly on your toes. That feeling you get when you just don't feel safe enough to go to sleep. Then i thought about how I changed it. I made it mine: personalized, painted, covered in art and good vibes. That's exactly what this place needed.
So we went to the store and bought around 20 cans of spray paint, a couple cans of wall paint and a few brushes; went back to the apartment, dropped a couple hits of acid, turned on some music, and went to town.
This is the part where you say
"Why the FUCK would you drop acid in a crackhead den like that?"
and I say...
I've got no fuckin' clue....thought it was a good idea at the time!
I also know the moment I bring up acid, everything I say afterward is void because for all I know it was all in my head. Let me just say... this was the realest and most terrifying experience I have ever had and I was NOT the only one who experienced it.
Around midnight, maybe an hour after taking the acid, Sam decides to invite her friend Tony over. She tells me he lives around the block and knows everyone in the hood of Mt Clemens and he would make us feel safe. I didn't even know Mt Clemens HAD a hood but apparently we were in it.
So Tony comes over and gives us the lowdown on the house we were in. He tells us two apartments are for the crackheads, and the other two apartments in the back are for the dealers. Apparently the apartment we were in was for anyone who had cash first? Or maybe it was the apartment designated for murdering people, I don't fucking know. There were too many rugs and bloodstains to think anything else. Why else would a landlord not even bother asking her name or making record of her existence? Maybe it was a scam; Get $400 for a months rent, scare the living shit out of them before their first night's through, and then do it again to the next "tenant". People are savages so, who knows.
Tony laid back on the deflated air mattress with his hands behind his head all cocky and annoying, bragging about how he shot his Washer/Dryer repairman TWICE for being five days late. He started laughing and said,
"You wanna know why I got away with it?! Because I'm WHITE!"
At that point, I was still painting; standing on a chair trying to spread and create good vibes, rolling my eyes as this mother fucker bragged about being a piece of shit.
Tony's presence alone made the place darker. Eventually, he left to go grab something; I don't even remember what it was, I was just happy to see him leave; but he left his bag. This fuckin' bag was the size of me, designer, some LV type shit... he carried it like 5 blocks in the middle of the night looking all hood rich and flashy for no reason and when we looked inside, all he had in there was a change of clothes. This is not really relevant to the story but I just want you all to get a feel for just how ridiculous this kid was, and the fact that he left his bag only meant that he was coming back, so I told Sam he was ruining my trip an when he got back, we told him to take his hood ass vibes elsewhere.
He had just finished walking 8 blocks in a foot of snow at 1 in the morning to be sent away, so he was PISSED. He left, cussing and slamming doors. The final door was the front door and he slammed it so hard that the entire house shook, all of the windows rattled. Every person in that house jumped into action, like they were gearing up for war.
The men upstairs were screaming and cussing; we could hear them jumping around. We could hear someone trying to calm them down but failing. We heard a banging coming from the apartment beneath us, as if the tenant was poking the ceiling with a broom handle as he yelled nonsense profanities that were too muffled to understand.
As I'm sure you can imagine, we practically pissed. We turned off the music and sat on the deflated air mattress in silence, occasionally whispering ways to make it better. I kept convincing myself we were just trippin' and the acid was exaggerating everything.
Meanwhile, Sam was in a trance, still wide eyed, just repeating the same thing over and over again:
"We done pissed off the hood. We fucked up..."
We smoked a bowl, quietly discussed making the neighbors casseroles or cookies with a note as an apology on Tony's behalf, and soon went back to painting once the people upstairs stopped stomping around.
This time around, we turned the music on as low as possible, trying to avoid anymore disruptive behavior for the sake of our lives. It was hardly a background beat to our painting spree. We couldn't even hear it over the sound of spray paint cans so we actually switched over to paint brushes just so we could; that's how quiet it was.
3 AM rolled around and we heard a cop knock on the door. You know the kind. That aggressive, triple pound knock that sounds like they're using their entire arm to make the loudest sound possible? We cut the music real quick, and I ran to the back to hide the bong and any other paraphernalia I could find.
When I came back into the living room, Sam was standing outside of the apartment with the door wide open, trippin' fuckin' FACE! I mean, our eyes were blacked out. All i could think was:
oh my god, there's NO WAY we're not going to jail...
Unfortunately it wasn't the police; and I only say unfortunately because 30 seconds later we wished it had been...
I heard an older woman's voice shriek. Sam slammed the door, waving me over to help her hold it shut. I held the leaned against it, holding the locks still while she held the door shut. She couldn't even speak.
I asked her;
"what happened? what did she say? who the fuck is out there Sam!? I
NEED TO KNOW!!! What the FUCK is happening?!"
I was shaking her at this point. She just stared at me wide eyed and terrified. I almost didn't recognize her. All of the blood had drained from her face, I had never seen her so petrified before. Every time she tried to speak, nothing came out.
The pounding on the door continued and moved up and down the hallway. I didn't know if it was a group of people or one single person, I sincerely could not tell. It sounded like at least three people. The apartment didn't even have a peephole, so I was completely in the dark as to what the fuck was going on on the other side of the door.
After the first 15 minutes of holding the door shut, I was pretty much CERTAIN we were gunna die. I'd been searching for anything and everything we could possibly use to protect ourselves but all we had was a metal lamp. not even a screw driver; not one knife; we had to open the paint cans with quarters. There was nothing in that place but a deflated air mattress, a lamp, a bong, a radio, and a bunch of empty spray paint cans.
she looked at me so seriously, still whispering;
"call the cops. no wait..... not yet."
I had a lamp in one hand and my phone in the other with 911 dialed, waiting for her say so. She had her ear to the door, listening for anyone talking, weighing out whether or not getting the police involved was necessary. No one in that house wanted the police around.
It was 3:30 in the morning at this point and the pounding still hadn't ceased. The walls and windows rattled; i could see them move with every blow; just constantly vibrating like a really loud, poorly connected washing machine. 30 minutes of this; you'd think they'd have stopped after five. They REALLY wanted in and I had no idea who "they" even were. Not a single word was said from the outside of the door. I think that may have been the most terrifying part. They just went berserk without saying shit to us. All I knew was that the windows didn't lock and that her new apartment really was "too good to be true."
We thought, maybe this was what they use the 5th apartment for... maybe this was a trap from the very beginning, maybe all those bloodstains are soon to be accompanied with our own blood, and no one will know what happened to us because we'll just be rolled up in the one rug the "landlord" left behind, soon to be dragged to the curb and crushed by a garbage truck like the ones before us.
When she finally got her voice back, the pounding had stopped and she still held the same confused, panic-stricken look on her face. I asked her again what happened, who she saw.
"I opened the door, some crackhead in a robe upstairs yelled,
'Ya'll better watch out that muhh fucker's CRAZY!'
I heard him say,
'I'M CRAZY?!'
an I slammed the door before he got to me. He was RUNNING AT ME CHARLOTTE! Like, full force. It was the bald guy downstairs! He was big as fuck!"
The bald guy downstairs, AKA the previous tenant of her oh so humble abode...
Realizing there was absolutely NO CHANCE we could over power a 6 ft 5 200 pound man hopped up on crack, I texted my little brother. I didn't want to scare anyone but I figured he was my best bet because he rarely ever woke up to texts or calls. I figured he'd see it in the morning and at least someone would know.
Joe. The guy downstairs did it. 180 N walnut St Mt Clemens
The thirty minutes of constant pounding abruptly ended and all we could think was that he must have found another way. We watched the windows, waiting for the man downstairs and all the other tweakers to find their way onto the flat, balcony style rooftop like a swat team. We thought about barricading the bedroom door, but we had nothing to use. Every sound we heard had us on our toes, thinking he was already inside. He lived there before. He was the previous tenant. He, of all people, would know if there were any other entry points.
It was about 4 AM, and we gave up on painting, listening to music, even talking. We sat awake in silence, watching the windows and waiting like sitting ducks, jumping at every sound the wind made; still trippin' from the acid we took hours earlier. We told ourselves to hold on til day light, because for all we knew, he could be sitting outside the door waiting for us. We couldn't tell without a fuckin' peephole.
We could hear the people upstairs yelling at each other for a while. Someone said something along the lines of:
"You're gonna bring the cops here actin' like that!"
FUCK THAT, I'LL CALL EM MY FUCKIN' SELF!
followed by huge thuds, as if every crackhead in the apartment above us tackled him at once;
and ironically, that was followed by a police siren WOOP that sent the entire house into an almost deafening silence, the way a father's footsteps send kids running to their beds when they've been up passed their bed time.
Aside from the utter terror of it all, it was actually kind of comical. Realistically, at that point it was probably safe to get the fuck out of there; but we didn't.
We knew crackheads were basically vampires; They only came out at night. So to play it safe we sat still, hostage until sunlight eventually crept in.
Come morning, We grabbed a few of her things and left the rest behind, walked out of her apartment to find a note on the door that read:
All we could do was laugh. We were in fear for our lives, facing certain death in our minds, and still didn't call the police. Most people would say
"why the fuck not? you could have been killed!"
Well, we were on acid. You try talking to a police officer with pupils the size of marbles. Even if we HAD called them, they wouldn't have believed us. With how fast the house fell silent, just after that one little, distant woop, we knew the rest of the house would just pretend to sleep and we'd look crazy, or worse, catch a case. Hardly anyone believed the story in the first place. We'd have been in straight jackets before daylight.
On top of that, we had already pissed off the hood. We figured bringing the police into a crack den would only piss them off more. I'm not sure why street creds were even topic of conversation between Sam and I because no one gives a fuck about whether or not you call the cops if you're fucking dead, But we were proud of ourselves nonetheless. We didn't lose our composure once; not a single tear was dropped. We just sat and looked at each other all bug eyed and terrified until we were free. I think that's at least worth something.
Let me find out we were higher than the them.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't trust a "landlord" that doesn't even bother asking for your name, GET A FUCKING PEEPHOLE, and maybe stay away from dropping acid in shitty places around shitty people in hopes of making the situation less shitty.
In Sam's words,
"You can only polish a turd so much."
That would be a hell of a trip, I would’ve handled it way worse
Haha right? I was so impressed with myself. But I had nightmares of this house for months couldnt even leave the house without panicking lol I think the acid made me extra sensitive.
(Who carpets their kitchen anyway?) < or bathrooms ? What’s up with people doing that SMH. People are savages so, who knows.< Ain’t that right! But the occasional one can be a saint or Angel too just not in a palatable ratio sadly.
I love what you did with the ocean wall. Almost looks like a tie dye mural :)
We knew crackheads were basically vampires; They only came out at night. < another truth LOL. When I had my larger sanctuary I had a McCrack across the street, the dealers let people drive by one of the windows like a bloody fast food joint -LOL! All at night and the early morning hours. Me and my baseball bat Susan often blocked their driveway lol I was a bit more crazy then ;) This was a very enjoyable read looking forward to more. You have talent kiddo :)
Thank you so much! It really means alot (: "McCrack" I laughed out loud. I can totally picture that, I've seen dealers drop bricks of weed from their upstairs windows before and thought it was the goofiest shit in the world. I imagine if anyone tried standing around with a bat theyd be shot on spot where I'm from. very ballsy move on your part. lmfao
WE THOUGHT THE SAME THING! The wall was originally just supposed to be an ocean sunset, but it tuned into a tie dye version of a pit bull breathing fire onto the ocean. If you look closely at the top right corner, the purple clouds look just like a pit, I swear LOL !
And people got shot every other day where that happened too I just am crazy as fuck when people piss me off. And it is probably why they just never did anything. Susan and I had a reputation as I used to save fighting dogs in the area but also was the underground vet in the hood. Crazy enough I almost never locked my door there and I actually lived over a year without a door in that place. I can totally see the pittie :D There is a saying in my culture that goes God protects children , drunks and the insane ;)
HA! That's crazy I love it! and mad props to you for being a hero for those poor innocent creatures I've always wanted to work with a rescue, it breaks my heart knowing there are people out there sick enough to harm such loving creatures.
God protects children, drunks, and the insane. I fuckin love it. What is your culture?
Mostly exile Russian with a 1/4 Austrian and a few drops German and Tartar but the saying comes from the Russian side.
Haha that makes sense !