In the midst of the ever-changing yet always devastating news cycle, something catastrophic occurred last week. More devastating than anything on CNN, because this one affects me personally.
An Instagram post simply captioned “Sooo we did a thing!” The picture: a classmate of mine holding up a pair of keys with a house behind her. Not just any classmate, but the very same classmate that taught me how to shoplift lip gloss from Bath and Body Works. The classmate that later tried to recruit me into a pyramid scheme while we met up for coffee at her ex-boyfriend's short-lived cafe named “The Bean Lebowski.” The classmate that asked me to put air in her tires when it was snowing outside because she'd recently seen Brokeback Mountain and got scared about putting air in her tires because that's how Jake Gyllenhaal died in Brokeback Mountain. That classmate is now a homeowner.
And I know the house she bought, because it's haunted.
Nobody will tell you that there used to be three Property Brothers until one of them disappeared inside when they tried to renovate it. HGTV scrubbed the internet of his existence. There's a large gap of space in videos where he once stood, but I remember. His name was like, Jared or something. And I can't wrap my head around the fact that her dinner parties are going to be possessed by a couple from the 1980s that died there, because I'm jealous she was able to afford the fucker in the first place.
Her Instagram stories about the torture chamber in the basement with a thinking emoji don't put an ounce of concern in me—only envy. The serrated hooks in the chamber would do wonders for my hanging plants. I bet she's going to turn it into her home gym because she can afford a home gym.
She says she saw the face of Lucifer in the fireplace. I don't have space for a fireplace, but I do have a space heater that can reheat my tea if I hold the mug in front of it long enough. I thought it was so fun that I got a tabletop gumball machine for my desk, and here goes this bitch with her full-size gumball machine that stands on the floor. Her windows are gorgeous and sprawling. My windows are the size of a Pez dispenser.
I think about the cold draft that likely billows through her hallways at night as I sit in this suffocating summer heat. I'd kill to have a ghost sweep past me and bring a breeze with it. She claims she can hear the eerie laughter of children from the attic, and I think about how all my belongings are downtown in public storage. Those ghost children are probably just as obsessed with her IKEA furniture as I am. But she has attic space for her Järfjället Bjorkumstöddr, whereas I do not because I live in a box apartment like a rollie pollie in an Altoid tin cared for by a six-year-old. Sometimes if I close my eyes, I can see the poorly drawn rectangle on the wall that supposedly acts as my TV.
I noticed that she recarpeted the house when she sent me a video of a dark figure crawling up her staircase at 3:00 in the morning. What a show-off. Just rub it in my face. “Oh look at me and my beautiful carpet installation that was probably free because Home Depot had a promotion going on! You bitches can't even SPELL Home Depot!”
She's trying to get the place exorcised. Great! Now I can't stop thinking about how she can afford an exorcism too. If I knew that exorcism money was the kind of money that pyramid schemes brought in, I would've become Bernie Madoff years ago.
Now she's scared because some secret door in the basement with a foul odor. Awww, can't she buy some Febreze and shut up already? I know she can afford it.
Whatever. I bet her parents bought her that house anyway.