The Daily Nightmare Redux

By Mary Khazak Grant

This is a droll, fractured fairy tale account of life in a fringe apartment house featuring as many characters as in Dickens' "Nicholas Nickleby", but it's definitely not Dickensian. It's rather macabre, fiction noir, and funny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781458322715

Book preview

The Daily Nightmare Redux

by Mary K. Grant

This is a droll, fractured fairy tale account of life in a fringe apartment house featuring as many characters as in Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, but it's definitely not Dickensian. It's rather macabre, fiction noir, and funny.

Dedication quote:  Nursery Rhyme:

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary, How does your garden grow?

With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells, And so my garden grows

The Daily Nightmare Redux

Copyright © 2022 by Mary Khazak Grant

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN 9-78158-322715

Lulu Press

3101 Hillsborough Street

Raleigh, NC 27607

Publisher Website (lulu.com)

Some observations about PG—Notes by an Inmate

On The Daily Nightmare,

To share with City officials later on:

(But, of course, you don’t want to be shown the door)

1. prison shoes/slippers for black male  tenants

2. constant radio intrusions into apartments of scary, buzz  word paranoia producing cont ent

3. constant illegal monitor of your internet and phone which is not governmental

4. It seems to be Russian funded control

5. How they block income making through the internet marketplace like craigslist ads

There was a Gangster Landlord at PG….An Introduction

PG had been run by gangsters in recent years. Actually, they were very old demons, but kept up the pretense as they had a criminal record or two between them.

There was a mad black doctor living there who thought that some of the white tenants looked too young, as another doctor, John from Houston, had been testing out his Egyptian-derived anti=aging serum on volunteers for quite some time and—it had worked, to a limited extent.

Meanwhile, the shifting of weight between neighbors had been recently straightened out.  One lady, Rosalind, had deliberately put 15 pounds on a romantic rival to make her ugly—and, when admonished to fix it as the rival was dieting constantly to no avail, did so one midnight by standing outside that apartment door, reciting an incantation, then holding her breath for a minute before retiring upstairs. Sure enough, that lady was 13 pounds lighter the next time she got on the scale. Such bodily transfers went on at PG, which featured a reef of such capable sponges, all friends of Sponge Bob Square Pants. Bikini Atoll was a former residence for many there.

At any rate, the mad doctor had cajoled his old chum, a licensed physicist with an old degree, to build some device to cause aging, but under control. The theory was related to a diffused x-ray emitter.  It was developed by Ed and built, then taken to one of the rooms with soft old floors to test on a worthy tenant they all hated.  The machine did indeed aim at the poor soul’s sleeping head for one minute. In return, the doctor paid Ed $50.  However, another chum of theirs leaked the news about the great invention to the local military base upstate, out of concern for his own energy level and youthful appearance.

The next thing they knew, the gangster landlord was dialed up by a local major who visited the next day along with a colonel. By this time, the machine had been confiscated in a citizen’s arrest and the mad doctor and scientist put in the local jail.  There was a federal law against building or owning an x-ray diffuser.

After examination, where it was determined that someone had indeed built and utilized one, the military brass read the landlord (who had put on a loud zoot suit for the occasion with a florid tie—he was really stuck in the 1930’s) the riot act and arranged so that the doctor, a rabid retro-racist, would remain in a booby hatch until he died. The scientist, begging for mercy, was remanded to his apartment and admonished not to do any more inventing.  Their instigator, Ray Walston, My Favorite Martian was annihilated by the gangster. 

Such goings on were heard by Sadie, one of the older residents, on the internal wireless network the gangster broadcast at night on his PG Channel: Tidbits from Mars.  They liked to listen at PG to these MP4 computerized stories.  Tidbits from Mike was another favorite—about the antics of a local drug dealer, best friend of the owner.

Nothing was dull at PG. Every day and night was indeed a Daily Nightmare.  This story has a dark side to it, though.  In retaliation for the use of this aging ray machine on one of the sweet old ladies’ precious heads while they slept, the local Jews murdered 10 individuals associated with the project—including the Martian and some used parts salesman from a local junkyard.

About Dr. John, Chief Denizen at PG

In related development, local doctors, stupefied by the discovery that Dr. John Huston did not have much of a heartbeat, decided to show mercy and not exterminate him for his diabolical ways and forbidden medical experiments in a private lab and surgery.

They informed him, much to his later concealed merriment, that they thought he was some kind of elf.  He played dumb and forced them to explain that to him.  They then decided in mercy to situate him in a basement apartment, for his increased comfort and security. It was believed that his heightened para-normal hearing abilities such as hearing radio wave transmissions 24/7, would be muffled or deadened. In this way, below ground, he could get comfortable and sleep like a normal human being.  They had noticed in the sleep lab that he didn’t at all.  Dr. John was a likeable creature, a small man who never could be cured—but, at least, they might reduce his impact on an apartment house through social isolation.  This devil, after they departed, fell into a fit of merriment for hours. They had paid his lease for a year.  They did not know that he was a devil, in fact—the devil.  Such was his ability to camouflage himself and disguise his true intentions or identity.

The Bruised Hand Incident

Sibyl had become accustomed to the sprinkler system at night. It featured some kind of light misting which emanated from the porous custom built floor boards through the parted broadloom into the room, imparting some dopiness or grogginess to the 94 old tenants at old, dilapidated, 75 year old PG.

But, like her counterpart in the hit British comedy Fawlty Towers, the wife of Basil Fawlty, owner of the little hotel, she could not tolerate company nor companions.  There were two matrons who would have fit well into a carney motel subculture in Florida when the circus hibernated for the winter sojourn, but instead, upstate in the winter at PG, they did nothing but get into trouble. Hazel and Primrose had the uncanny catty ability to pick victims in the late fall and work on them during the winter season. They reduced Sibyl to smithereens with their focused antics.

In late February, deciding to go full throttle, Hazel became intent on poisoning, but not in the Italian manner.