COUCH

by RICHARD MILLS

I made spaghetti and it came out horrible. My roommate and I have a dining table but no chairs. I set the bowl of spaghetti on the arm of our couch and ate. I ate just enough to not feel hungry. I put it in the fridge hoping I’d forget about it. A decomposed lump of moldy slop would be better than this.

I had been sitting on my couch too much. Everyday I’d come home tired and sit on this damn couch. My back had started hurting from sitting on this couch so often.

The couch was an awful brown lump sitting in my living room. It was covered in a fabric like corduroy but the lines went side to side as well as up and down. It really had no shape. Maybe at some point it had a shape but it was so old and disgusting now. It resembled a couch.

I never bought this couch. I never found this couch. I never wanted this couch. I just sat on it. The more I sat on this couch the more back my hurt. The more back hurt the longer I sat on the couch. The longer I sat on the couch the more my back hurt. The more my back hurt the longer I delayed getting rid of this couch.

It was left by the previous tenant. I never knew why. It seemed like a fine couch. Then I sat on the couch and I realized why they didn’t take it. I wondered why they didn’t throw it out.

It was a few days ago I was walking home. The snow had melted leaving behind. A few weeks worth of salt. The wind picked it up. I felt it in my throat. I stopped to cleanse myself in smoke. I bought a black and mild. I forgot how disgusting they are. A sickeningly sweet stale cigarette. As I walked along smoking it I felt nauseous.

A block from home I passed by a house. The people living there were moving out. They had a few pieces of furniture on the side of the road. There was a mustard yellow wingback chair upholstered in linen. There was a small couch with a tan paisley fabric. They said I was free to take them both. I carried the chair home and called my friend Jerry. I asked him to help me move the couch. In exchange I would give him dinner. I had a pork loin, butternut squash, and red beans and rice.

In a few minutes he came to my door.

“What are we moving,” he asked.

“A couch.”

“What are you gonna do with this one?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Shouldn’t we get this couch out of here?”

“Yeah… I guess so.”

We picked up the couch and moved it into the hallway just before the door. The door led directly to a stairwell at the end of which there was another door. Outside the door there was another set of stairs. I lived on the second floor. We tilted the couch up in the hallway. We couldn’t fit it through the door.

“Ok, let's try angling it,” he said.

We tilted it at an angle and couldn’t fit it through the door.

“What if we try getting it first out the door then just pushing it down the stairs,” I said.

We had it standing up in the hallway. We made minute rotations in every direction. It wouldn’t fit out the door.

“See it’s the back it’s too tall,” I said.

My roommate, Jon, came out at this point. I forgot to tell him what I was trying to do. He had been working all day and was tired. When he saw what was happening he sighed. I explained to him what was going on. He replied.

“You can’t move anything in this hallway. Its too narrow. Remember what happened to my bed.”When we were moving in he had a bed frame. It was a pretty nice one. The box spring was a few inches too big to get through the door. I thought well if we just break it a little bit it’ll get through the door and still work fine. I went outside and found a brick and started smashing the side. We ended up throwing it away.

I got a hammer and started to pound the wooden frame of the couch. It was really thick wood. It wasn’t Ikea furniture. The frame had to have been 2x2 pieces of wood. The hammer wasn’t doing anything.

“What if the other couch doesn’t fit,” Jerry said. We lifted up this couch and put it in the corner standing on its side. I wanted to keep it like that. It was provocative and whimsical. Really, it was idiotic and lazy.

We all went down into the street to check on the other couch. It would fit. We lifted it up. Jerry and I were at the ends and Jon was in the middle. It was heavy. Every ten steps or so we had to stop and put it down. My forearms were starting to ache.

We finally got it to the doorway. To get it in we had to go up the small set of stairs, turn a corner and then go up the inside stairs and turn a corner into the hallway. We first tried tilting it straight up and down and carrying it up the small set of stairs. There was a metal railing and it was too wide to fit in. With just me and Jerry on the end we pushed it up the stairs. I lost my grip halfway up. The couch fell down and the mattress inside sprung out.

I saw my neighbor J.R. pull into the street. He always seemed to have trouble parking his car. It wasn’t a large car, but he was new to a world of limited parking. He was a transplant from the country. You could see whatever reason he was here didn’t amount to anything close to how much he loved where he had come from. I waved him over for help. He couldn’t help much. Even though we had three people we could only use two.

“Cool couch,” he said

“I know right, I found it a street over.”

He tried to help us but it was an idiots adventure. There was no meaningful way he could lend support.

“Why would you come over here and help us,” Jon sighed. “If anyone ever asked me to do this, I wouldn’t.”

“I’ll take it if you guys can’t get it in.”

“No I’ve got it I just need to figure out how to do it.”

“Richard this isn’t going in,” Jerry said.

“No, no, we’ve got it.” It was at this point my crew quit. “Ok, take it.”

J.R. got his friend Aaron to come help. Aaron was a big strong guy. He wasn’t big and strong through pure effort, he was born that way. He was a state champion in shot put. I’ve known people like that in my life. They are told they are big and strong for most of their lives and they get sick of it. They don a look that seems to say, Why are you telling me? Tell god and mother, I didn’t ask to be a freak! Go find someone else to play football for you jackass!

I watched as they moved my spoils into their house. Jerry and Jon helped them. I couldn’t do much. I was too tired and didn’t want to help those thieves. After they moved it in, the turncoats came home and I cooked them dinner. We ate on that awful brown couch.

A few days later I went into J.R.’s house. The new couch was nice. It fit right in. It really did tie the room together. His old one was a wreck. I wouldn’t have sat on it, for fear of penicillin shots.

Every morning I wake up and drink my coffee and sit on that damn couch. I hate it. It is one of the few things which I so regularly partake in which makes my life miserable. I plan to buy an axe and chop it up. By the time I get around to doing that, I’ll be moving from here. Another poor bastard will have this rotten couch pawned off on him. Cheers to them.