Ch   um C urt Apa tme  s
Hom    eet H  e

Or, perhaps, the sign meant Chathum Court Apartments, Home Sweet Home. Depending on your definition of sweet.

Aside from the missing letters, this complex was quite the charmer. When you can't afford any of the places Sarah Morris tries to lure you in to, she mentions it.

"I've got a place you might look into," she says. The way she talks, it might make you nervous. "No, no, don't worry. It's affordable. Oh yes, affordable. A unique, cozy, charismatic place to live."

If you were smart, you might be wondering if unique means weird, if cozy really means tiny, and if by all this character she actually means old. But she says affordable. So you ask her when a good time would be for her to show you.

"Oh, well, I'm all booked up, but you should still drop by and check it out, the owners are very friendly. I'm sure they'll show you around."

Then she gives the directions, and when you cross out all the minor details of her wordy speech, what she basically tells you is that it's the building between an empty warehouse and the homeless shelter. It's been renovated from its early factory state.

If you were really desperate and made your living in peculiar ways, that's okay. You'd be welcomed with open arms.

And now, four years later, you've gotten used to the peeling paint and leaky pipes and moldy carpet. The lack of furniture doesn't bother you. It really is home sweet home.

Except tonight. You wake up to a soaking wet mattress due to the nightmares caused by the life you're living. You and your sweaty mattress, that's basically the only thing in your single room. While you were tossing and turning in your sleep, however, the creepy tenant on your floor has been up to some mischief. And before he passed out, he forgot Smokey's golden rule of putting out fires before you leave them.

Tonight you make peace with your enemy, Bowser. He's everyone's nemesis. The other tenants, the mailman, Mario. The only friend he has is the owner of the apartments. But due to this stupid rottweiler, you awake from your dreamland. Because a dog's sense of smell can range from anywhere between fifty and a hundred times better than any human's, you wake up.

Yet you don't think anything of it. Bowser barks. A lot. That's one of the many reasons everyone despises Bowser. You're just awake; grumpy, frustrated, sleepy, but awake. And boy are you ticked off.

You're going to teach Bowser a lesson.

Except for one small detail. When you reach out to grab the doorknob, you recoil as a searing burn chars up your arm. And then you smell it, because now you're alert.

And you wish you had bought a phone for your room. Or at least stole one.

Because you're pretty sure the fire's right outside your door.

And living on the sixth floor tends to have its disadvantages.

That sixty foot drop isn't looking so appetizing.

You're actually terribly afraid of heights. But the fire's eating at your door, and while you're staring out the window, you begin thinking.

And you think deep thoughts, mainly about your life. How you lived it, how you wished you'd lived it. People you'd like to see right now, and people you wouldn't want to see you right now.

Behind you, the scraps of paint that were already peeling off the wall are burning and falling into little ash piles on the floor.

You're waiting for your life to flash in front of your eyes, but you can't remember most of it.

On the other side of town a fire truck turns its lights on. The Nomex-suited men are going slower than usual. This isn't the first time old Chathum has had a little spark. It's an old place with some strange folks living there, and usually it isn't much of anything. It's always controllable. Ten minutes to get rid of this, tops.

You remember that one person, the one you needed to make amends with. But now you're a little trapped.

You're just thinking so much that you haven't noticed the fire sneak halfway across the room. Your sweat soaked mattress has begun to catch.

You don't know why you feel so down. Sure, you hate heights, but humans can survive falls.

Sure, down below is concrete.

But there have been humans who've survived a good ninety-foot drop, this is nothing. Except they probably had a lucky landing.

And you aren't exactly infamous for your luck.

But you really couldn't remember if those falls had been with water or without...

What's the worst that could happen anyways?

So, while you're doing all of this thinking, resting your forehead against the semi-cool window (it could only be classified as cool in comparison to the rest of the room), you look down and compare your chances.

How do you land?

You sit down on the window ledge and prepare to save yourself.. Which is probably a good idea since you haven't noticed the fire less than a meter away from your back. It's too bad you'll have to let this affordable, unique, cozy, charismatic home go. The idea of ole Ch   um C urt Apa tme  s existing no more has got you down. Even the mattress, it was getting kind of comfortable. You try to find some optimism in the matter.

Well, at least you're pretty sure you won't have to pay rent this month.

Karen Cockrum is a student in Southern Arkansas, and fresh meat in the writing market, with nothing in her name but an HP Pavilion laptop to write on.