My house looked a lot like two pointy-headed monsters squished together, it was so big. But what was really neat about it was that it even looked like the two monsters had a baby-monster because of the garage, it had a little studio on top of it and my mommy and daddy would rent it out to people. All sorts of people. Some nice, some weird, some artists, some boring, some who stayed a long time, some who didn't and some who were just strange. Like Stan.

I remember him, he was the last person to stay. He was Russian and he had a funny way of talking, like an animal choking and only on rare occasions could I understand just half of what he was saying and sometimes Stan would swear but only when he thought I wasn't there. All I knew about Stan was that he drank a lot of vodka and ate a lot of dill pickles, I know this because of all the empty vodka bottles and dill pickle jars that sometimes overflowed our recycling bin as if the smell of pickles and vodka turned the bin to life just to make it barf up the empty jars and bottles all over the ground outside the house. It seemed like that must've been all he ate, there were so many.

I never talked to Stan so I thought he was pretty nice, he never bothered me except sometimes the studio smelled when I was walking to the bus, but really I didn't mind much. Mom always complained he had too many parties with vodka and friends that had no end and the bottles went in but only came out in the recycling bin. The morning after one of his parties he decided to move out at last, and I don't know where he went but he went pretty fast. The next day my mom made me come up to the studio to see something and that's what was memorable, she wanted me to see the blood on the carpet for some reason, she thought it was incredible. I didn't understand what it meant that day, but that's okay. It was his business, my mom would say, it doesn't matter, it was his business, that's what we tell all our renters.