Tales from the House of Glitch #1: The Ghost of Angie

The Ghost of Angie

 

Rodney loved Edna, his old girlfriend in Philly, loved her so much he knew he needed to do something special to keep him in her mind, after all, Seattle was a long way away, and Edna couldn't be certain if Rodney was really coming back, not knowing if she should save herself in any way whatsoever for his potential return. He was in Seattle for a gig lasting a month and found a boarding house much cheaper than a motel. The House of Glitch was just the right distance from the U where he dug the Chinese food.

 

He decided the something special for Edna should be postcards, incredible postcards, from all over town, historical sepias of the canal before the locks and magnificent full color sunsets of Mount Rainier with the grasshopper loading cranes in the Puget Sound behind the Bainbridge Island Ferry.  But that wasn't enough. Using the most of his massive cartooning ability, he blocked out a story in perhaps twenty frames, where the first postcard would seem to have a mistake in it, a mistake that wouldn't make any sense until the arrival of the second postcard days later, something incredibly clever, reminding her what a treasure he was, a unique talent she would want forever in her life.

 

He finished the first five postcards, each more elaborate than the last, each one guaranteed to successively boggle her mind to the utmost, until the arrival of the next which would outdo them all. He put on the stamps and left the postcards on the kitchen table to run to his room, grab his backpack, turn out the lights, and lock the door. When he got back to the kitchen, the postcards were gone and Angie, one of the other residents in the House of Glitch, was frying an egg.

 

"Where are my postcards?" asked Rodney.

 

"I gave them to the postman," said Angie.

 

Rodney ran outside and tried to catch the postman but it was too late, he was already driving down the street.

 

The whole thing was ruined. The postcards would make absolutely no sense when they were received all at once. They had to be received one at a time and in the proper order. Now he wouldn't look like a genius to Edna. He'd look like an idiot.

 

Rodney came back into the kitchen. Angie was eating her eggs. "You don't have to thank me," she said. Rodney picked up the frying pan and beat her over the head with it several times.

 

Edna got the postcards and thought Rodney was a genius anyway. She wrote him back but he never got her postcards because he was in jail, where he remains to this day, for the murder of Angie who just thought she was doing him a favor, and whose ghostly presence haunts the House of Glitch to this day whenever someone makes breakfast.

 

MORAL: Never do anyone a favor.