The Beginning.

To say Nikola was a bad roommate would not be fair. He was actually the contrary. Rent was always on time, dishes washed, public spaces clean, personal spaces respected. Nikola was the perfect roommate while simultaneously being the worst. He wasn’t loud – not often at least. When he was, though, it shook the house, rattled windows, essentially scared the living shit out of me. Nikola spent every waking hour in the garage, the garage in which I had been forbidden to park my van. This did not bother me because I didn’t have a nice van and it meant I had to pay less rent. Moving day, when he suggested the idea, I was all for it. I may have been a bit more reluctant had he been a bit more specific about his motives.

On one particular Sunday afternoon, I was watching basketball, being lazy. Essentially I was doing what I always did on a day off -- biding my time before I could start drinking without feeling guilty. The noise started out low, so low in fact that by the time I noticed it, it was already too loud to speak over it. At first, I simply thought the television was quieting. I jammed on the volume button, pressing it as hard as I felt I could without breaking it. I have since learned that pushing buttons harder does not make them more effective. Eventually, the hum had completely drown out the sound of Dick Vitale screaming yet another trademark, “Yeah, Baby!” for which I was actually somewhat grateful.

The sound was similar to the sound of driving with every window down at eighty miles per hour. Added to that, roughly every second I felt a thump. The thump was felt in my chest and in my ear drum -- a thump of a pressure change, not of an actual noise. It made it feel as if my heart would stop if it continued much longer. I desperately threw down the remote, only for my dog Gatsby to promptly grasp it in his jaws and begin to chew it to bits. My dog’s poor upbringing was not on my mind. Stumbling my way to the basement, I felt my knees buckle slightly with each thump.

After struggling for a few moments, I finally reached the garage and threw the door open. I had opened a gate to another world. A world ruled by Nikola himself. In the center of the room stood a narrow metallic tower about four feet tall with silver tubing spiraling up its center. It rotated a song to me. A large ball of what looked to be tin foil was poised on top of this structure. The remarkable part was not the fact it looked like Nikola had stolen a prop from the set of Lost in Space, but the head piece of this prop had arms of electricity snapping, flailing in every direction. They licked the floors, walls and ceiling, reaching in every direction, as if searching in the dark for something to hold. With each second, they pulsed and magnified in brilliancy, causing me to shield my eyes each time. They filled the room, almost blocking out Nikola in the corner.

Behind his glorious creation, Nikola stood at a table with a series of switches, levers and controls which he was attentively owning and manipulating. When he looked up and saw me, my roommate simply did what he always did when he saw me: flashed a middle finger and went back to his work.

That bastard taught him that. I fucking hate him, I thought to myself. There was no other way a Serbian inventor would have any other way of knowing how to flip the bird.

Fed up, I decided to head to the bar to meet up with my best friend. Having a mad scientist turn your basement into his personal laboratory was plenty of reason to start drinking early. The whiskey sour was completely guilt-free.

My best and only friend was already three deep.