Squatters

by JT Pearson

certain that the man was not actually an enormous bird.

  "I don't know anything about you and your claim that this is your house, guy. We rent it from a dude. We've been renting from him for a couple of years now, so if you don't get the hell out of here I'm gonna call the cops."

  "You're going to call the cops? Tremendous." Cameron pointed at him. "Go call them so we can get this over with and I can have you and your imps escorted back to the zoo, or the sewer, or Hell, wherever you animals called home before sneaking in here."

  Half an hour later the police were on the scene doing their best to sort the situation out.

  "So you, Mr. Beformi, claim that you've been renting this place, yet you have no legal documentation to prove it?" The officer looked like he'd rather be somewhere else, as he angrily swept the accumulating snow from the bill of his hat with cold pink fingertips.

  "The dude that rents it to us never drew nothing up. Like, we sorta just did it with a handshake and you know, trust, old fashioned, like real men." The girls standing on either side of Neil nodded in agreement.

  "They're squatters, nothing more," interjected Cameron. "My brother probably has never even set eyes on these people."

  "You claim to own this house, Mr. Peralt, but you can't produce a deed and the home is still registered to your deceased parents." The officer folded his arms. "That leaves me in a strange predicament. I don't know that some kind of arrangement for rental hasn't taken place."

  "It belonged to my parents and they left it to me and my brother, and my brother has the deed. I showed you the old letters that I found on the premises that have my last name on them."

  "You did, but they don't prove ownership. And I'm sorry to hear about your parents."

  Cameron did the obligatory nod to the officer even though he could care less what the man thought about his parents' demise.

  "Your brother must be the man that these folks are renting from?"

  "Claim," corrected Cameron.

  "But it is possible that he rented the house out to them," argued the officer.

  "I suppose it's possible. Anything is possible. It's possible that they took the house from my brother and buried his body in the basement. I've left countless messages but I'm yet to get in touch with him."

  "I'm going to ask you to refrain from making idle charges, Mr. Peralt. You don't want to make those kinds of accusations." After a pause, eye brows raised sternly, the officer proceeded with his questions. "But you were unaware that any rental arrangement was agreed upon between your brother - what was his name again?" he said looking down at his notepad that he had to clear of snow before he could read it. "Ummmm, John Peralt is your brother's name," he mumbled. "You are unaware of an agreement between your brother and Mr. Beformi? Is that correct, Mr. Peralt? Please state it this time for my report this time."

  "How many times do I have to say it! No one informed me about anything because it never happened! I wouldn't have agreed to the arrangement if my brother had proposed it to me!"

  "I see," the officer sighed. "Here's what I'm going to do. You," he said to Cameron, "already have your personal property in an available room and also claim that you are financially burdened at the moment, making a hotel - even a temporary stay, out of the question, and you," he turned to the other three, "I can hardly ask to leave the premises and find another place to stay in this kind of weather, so I am going to recommend that all of you continue to try to get hold of this man, John Peralt," he said reading from his notes again, "who set up the rental agreement, and straighten things out. In the meantime, I suggest you all live in peace until that happens, and don't give me any cause to come back here, or I'm going to send the whole lot of you to the shelter. People get bitten in their sleep and lose their shoes down at the shelter. I wouldn't care to stay there so I don't expect that you would find it to be your best option either. Do you all understand me?"

  "This isn't right! Where's the justice? You expect me to share my house with these - miscreants, just because they were able to creep inside my home like a bunch of rats?"

  "You watch your mouth, sir, or I'll arrange a special room for you downtown where you'll be lucky if you're only bitten and shoeless by morning."

  Cameron paced angrily. "My parents used to practically own this little mud hole town and now I'm forced to stay under the same roof as this group of degenerates! It isn't right! I didn't work hard all of my life to be lumped in with the likes of these people."

  "You are treading on very thin ice, Mr. Peralt. That's the last comment like that out of your mouth or I'm taking you with me." The officer stared at him hard. "I know you've been under some stress lately. You said so already. But you are going to act in a civilized manner or you're going to be the only one removed from the premises tonight." The officer lingered for a moment before he left.

  Later that night, as Cameron lay in the rollaway bed, the springs reminded him of a weekend that he spent at an overpriced retreat for yuppies who wanted to get in touch with their spiritual side and the bed of nails where he spent hours chanting, meditating, and bleeding. He listened to the furnace kicking in occasionally, old familiar creeks and groans the house made, noises that he'd become so familiar with as a child. Suddenly accompanying the normal night-song was the light patter of feet and floor boards whispering under pressure, betraying the covert movement of whoever was prowling outside his door. He got into a sitting position as quietly as he could and extracted a junior-sized bat from under the bed that he'd uncovered from a toy chest in the bedroom closet. The door quietly opened and a silhouette started to enter like a ghost. Cameron's heart pounded wildly as he got ready to strike the intruder.

  "Back up! I see you."

  Then he heard someone shush him, a woman's voice. It was one of the girls he'd met earlier, Amy. Even in the dark he recognized her panties, because the Rolling Stones emblem, he now found, was glow in the dark. She crept across the room and sat down on the bed next to him.

  "What on earth do you have against clothing?"

  "Quiet, you'll wake up Rusty. He's just right across the hall from us."

  "You had a pair of pants on when the police were here. Now what did you do with them? Mentally retrace your steps and you might be able to figure out where you left them."

  "Neil keeps the temperature set real high and my body happens to run kind of hot already, so I don't always bother with clothes. Rusty doesn't seem to mind."

  "Is that your man? Isn't that how your generation puts it? Your man? Like a mop or a loaf of bread that you just picked up somewhere. Your mop, your bread, your man. Whatever happened to having a husband? None of you ever get married anymore."

  "I wouldn't call him my man. We don't really live by those types of rules."

  "I can't say that I understand."

  "What is that in your hand?" She couldn't make it out in the dark.

  "It's a bat."

  "Put that down. What were you going to do with that, bash my head in?"

  "If necessary."

  "Really?"

  "I'm not sure what I was going to do. What do you want?"

  "I'm bored so I thought we could talk."

  "It's the middle of the night. You're supposed to be bored. That's what makes decent people go to sleep every night. Haven't you ever had to get up and go to work? That's how this world keeps going you know. People work, they come home, they complain about work, they go to sleep, and then they get up and go to work again."

  "We don't usually go to sleep this early. Neil was pissed that you're here, so he made us all turn in early. He does stuff like that, like he thinks he's our daddy or something. Usually, at this time, we have a bunch of people over and we party and have band practice, but I think he's worried about that cop that showed up. He's hoping all of this will be over with tomorrow and you'll just disappear."

  "Well he can hope all he wants to, but that's not going to happen."

  "So, you want to talk for awhile?"

  "I have nothing to say to you
."

  "Let's just sort this situation out so we can avoid any more fighting."

  "No thank you. I want to sleep." Cameron said this a little too loudly.

  "Quiet down." She paused, waiting to see if he'd woken anyone else in the house. "Come on, stay quiet. I don't want to wake up Rusty."

  "I thought you said Rusty didn't care about what you did."

  "I didn't say that. I said he wasn't my man. He'd still get pissed that I was even talking to you because of the type of guy you are. He hates lawyers."

  "I'm not a lawyer. I'm a corporate investment adviser-was."

  "Same thing to Rusty, anybody that dresses like you and has a bunch of money that they didn't make as a laborer or an artist pretty much counts the same way. Rusty's a born asskicker. You really don't want to screw with him."

  "So, please, leave and we won't create the opportunity."

  "We need to talk."

  "I know what girls like you are really looking for. I wasn't born yesterday. There were plenty of young girls hanging around the parties at Yale when I was younger that were just like you. I appreciate the offer to um...visit. It's really very flattering but I'm not interested. Get out of my room, please, and let me attempt to get some rest in this Venus flytrap that I'm lying in. I'm asking politely, young lady."

  "You thought that I came in here to have sex with you! Is that what you actually thought?"

  "Oh, right, sure," he said sarcastically, "you're so insulted. Because you, in your constant state of pants-less-ness, are