Free Small Apartments by Chris Millis

hospital infirmary had Bernard laid out on a steel table, covered up to his neck by a white bed sheet. Franklin sat on a metal stool beside his brother’s head. They were alone. The smell of Bernard’s dead body was different from the smell of Mr. Olivetti’s, though they had been dead for nearly the exact amount of time. Bernard smelled more … sanitary. Franklin was cold in just a T -shirt, shorts and sandals. This is my brother Bernard, thought Franklin. I am now officially alone in the world.
    “I didn’t know you were sick. Or that you were free to come and go as you pleased,” said Franklin. “Why didn’t you come visit me? Why didn’t you talk to me?” Franklin fiddled with the corner of the sheet that covered his dead brother and rubbed the tender bump on his head.
    “I’ve been busy, too, Bernard. I murdered my landlord. I didn’t mean to do it. How it all began would be funny if it wasn’t so terrible. Mr. Olivetti, that’s my landlord, whom you might have met if you ever visited me, came over yesterday morning and wanted the rent. It was almost a month overdue, like it always is, and I didn’t have it. I never have it. So he wanted me to do the thing for him. The thing he always wants me to do for him.
    “Now Bernard, you know I like girls. I love girls. I loved the girls you used to bring home to our apartment on Ashland. And I especially love teenage girls. I’ve loved them even before I was a teenager, remember? Remember Rebecca DeLeggio from Grover Cleveland Elementary? In high school, when she became your steady girlfriend, you don’t want to know what I did while I was alone and thinking about her in the bubble bath. And Mr. Olivetti must have liked girls too. He was married to one for forty years and they had a daughter together. I don’t know what sort of relationship he had with his wife, but it couldn’t have been much to speak of.
    “Yesterday morning he was in a bad mood and a hurry. He was working on some plumbing or something. He said it was giving him a ‘pain in the balls.’ He didn’t want to argue about the rent, he just wanted me to do my business and be done with it. ‘Hurry it up,’ he said. ‘I have to fix a drip in that pothead’s sink.’ So I did, Bernard. I did. I got down on my knees, pulled out that dirty guinea’s fat cock and worked it like an ice cream cone that was melting in my hands.
    “Do you know what I think about when I’m doing that, Bernard? I’ll bet you could guess. I think about Switzerland. I imagine that what I’m really blowing is my mighty alphorn as I stand atop a rugged Alpine peak overlooking a Swiss lake. The green hills, they stretch out to the mountains. And the mountains, they disappear into the clouds. Bernard, it must be the closest thing to Heaven on earth.
    “Yesterday morning I made a decision. As I knelt on the floor in front of that farting monster, I decided I couldn’t live that way anymore. I decided I had to make a change and I had to make it right away. I have always been afraid that Switzerland could never be the place I dream it is. The real Switzerland—the place—with its people and its buildings and its red dirt could never equal my expectations. It could never resemble the vision I have built in my mind since I was a boy. I know that. I’m not a fool. But whatever it is, whatever reality it has to offer, it’s better than the hell I endure here in Buffalo. I’m a loser, Bernard. A nobody. I’m a fat, forty-one-year-old footnote. I either need to change my circumstances, or get busy dying.
    “So, I made this decision. I decided from that moment on that my life would be different. I mustered all my courage and all my adrenaline and I stood up.
    “Bernard, you will not believe what happened next.
    “As I rose to my feet, Mr. Olivetti rocked backwards and, like a catapult, threw his head forward and sneezed. He sneezed! His fat chin struck me square in the middle of my head. It was like I’d been