Matthew Speiser

For some weird reason, there is no room 512 in Jon’s building. There is a 501, 502, 503 and so on. There is a 516, 515, 514 and 513, which is his room. But then it goes 513b, and on to 511. What this means is whenever his neighbor in 513b orders a pizza, the delivery guy gets confused and ends up knocking on his door. This doesn’t usually bother him, but tonight he had very bad swimmer’s ear. So when the pizza delivery guy knocked on his door at 10 p.m., he rolled out of bed clutching his ear. He stumbled to the door and told the delivery man “you have the wrong room” and then stumbled back to the bathroom. He grabbed the nail polish remover from inside the medicine cabinet. He turned the cap over and poured a little bit of the liquid into it. Then he grabbed a cue tip and dabbed it in the cap.

He took the cue tip and swabbed the inside of his ear, which was still in great pain from earlier that day when he had been jumping off cliffs into a lake. He had found out that when you drop from 30-feet into water, the water rushes up into your ears, eyes, nostrils and every other orphus in your body at an alarming rate. Most of that water will gush back out when you find your center of gravity. But some pesky lake water managed to dig into Jon’s right ear hole and wouldn’t vacate the premises. This odd imbalance caused his ear to be very sensitive to the touch, and also gave him painful headaches. His friend recommended swabbing his ear with some hydrogen peroxide, but since he couldn’t find any…nail polish remover.

He swabbed his inner ear for about 20 seconds. Then he let out a big yawn and climbed back into bed. He woke up twenty minutes later and opened his eyes. Darkness. But not ordinary darkness. Everything was pitch black. He felt around for his bedside lamp and turned it on. Still, complete darkness. He began to panic and his heart rate skyrocketed. He fell out of bed and began grabbing at his eyes. They were wide open, but useless. They weren’t registering anything. What had happened? A few hours ago everything looked crystal clear. Now he was a blind man. A poor blind man. He couldn’t understand what was going on. He let out a yelp and began to sob.

Suddenly, a knock came at the door. He couldn’t go to it. He couldn’t see three feet in front of him. The knocks came louder and angrier. “Go away,” he yelled. He crawled to the bathroom. The nail polish remover! Had he poisoned himself? He grabbed the bottle and immediately realized he could not read the label. CRASH!

The door to his apartment flew off the hinges and in stepped a pair of feet. He was scared. He was a hopeless blind man lying on the bathroom floor. The feet grew louder as they walked closer to him. He felt the owner of the feet standing right over him now. He yelled “who is that? Go away!”

“Who am I?” the voice replied. “I am the pizza delivery guy, and I’m here to teach you some manners.” Jon felt something gooey and extremely hot slap him in the face. It was pizza. The pizza delivery man had come back to exact his revenge by pizza slapping the poor blind man! The hot sticky pizza burnt his face. The tomato sauce ran down his cheeks and onto his chest. The pizza man took some cheese and spread it across his own face like war paint. Then he unfurled his loaf, stepped over Jon, and began urinating in the toilet.

Jon lay squirming on the bathroom floor. He tried to crawl away from the noise of the urination. Before he could get away the pizza delivery man grabbed him by the neck and plunged his head into the toilet. The urine went into Jon’s mouth, nose and his right ear, which was still in great pain from the lake water lodged inside it. The urine also rushed into his eyes, and suddenly, as if a miracle had occurred, he could see again!

By regaining his eyesight, Jon regained his strength. He pulled his head out of the toilet and tossed the cheese-faced pizza delivery man against the wall. “YOU HAVE THE WRONG ROOM!” he screamed as he ripped the fat man’s mouth open and deposited the entire bottle of nail polish remover inside it. The pizza delivery man tried to scream but the nail polish remover burned right through his esophagus. With no way of supplying his lungs with air, the pizza delivery man died. Jon rolled off of him and banged his head on the tile floor. Exhausted, he fell asleep. The force of the impact dislodged the lake water in his ear, which puddled on the floor beside him.