Student flat viewings can always be a little strange. Here
you are, unprepared and relatively unwelcome, walking into the grotty abode of
some unkempt individuals, not knowing what could exactly be around the corner. Nothing
feels out of place, you must learn to expect everything ranging from a somewhat
tamed traffic cone to a disturbing life-sized cardboard cut-out of actor Warwick
Davis. In our first instance of viewing a flat, my flatmate to be and I saw
something neither of us, as the prospective tenants, nor the under-paid tour
guide expected: a live rabbit. Half of the back room had been converted to accommodate
the creature, seemingly against the will of both current tenants because surely
you wouldn’t want to sacrifice the precious sanctity of your small slice of home
to a damn rabbit. This wasn’t just a short-term operation either; by any other
name it was a zoo.
The rabbit won. We backed off. A clever ploy from the devious tenants to ward of potential prying eyes, smart. We were too green, too fresh to the horrors of student life. The ground floor flat was written off as a danger zone; no landlord in their right mind would take the nauseating challenge of sanitising that hell hole, only for some other disreputable students to tear it all down again. Hopefully the next inspection, a two bedroom on the second floor in the opposite building, was less beastly.
This time the tenants were in to greet us, opening the door to reveal their half-naked visages. The general feeling was that these people had everything resembling self-respect ground out of them by the crushing corruption of the higher education system; all that remained was the basic instincts of hunger and reproduction, the two driving forces in the mind of most students. The back room remarkably remained a living room with barely passable chairs and a sad, cold table. The larger bedroom had the spacious double bed pressed snug against the left-hand wall. Opposite sat a television set blaring out noise and colour, something to drown out the deep, institutionalised depression these students inherently held. The one who opened the door had since assumed his natural position, lodged firmly in the bed with eyes and mind both swallowed by the screen. We left the room with little fanfare; the occupant either didn’t realise or simply didn’t care that there had even been any visitors.
Our last call was the small bedroom. The door creaked like a laughing hag when it opened. A thick wave of darkness seeped from the opening as if we had opened a tomb and the last grim breath of the occupant had squeezed out. An anxious feeling of death sucked the air from our lungs. Behind the door was a husk perched in a chair, only illuminated by the iridescent half-light of twin computer monitors. Nothing could have prepared us for this zombie bludgeoned by the modern age. His box was his home and his tomb. The last image we saw before closing the door on this uncomfortable scene was the sheer look of helplessness on the lost soul’s face. It screamed “please free me from this never-ending nightmare. I am so hungry, please let me out!” This scar wouldn’t heal, we had seen too much, exposed too many taboo secrets. All that was left to do was to leave and try to forget.
We ended up getting that apartment.
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