The Caterpillar

As I entered the building this evening, I was greeted with a hallway full of smoke. 'Great,' I thought, 'The three inches of crude oil that leaked out of boiler onto the basement floor has finally ignited.' But, before I could evacuate the building, my nose got the better of me. This smoke wasn't caused by a fire.

I ventured inside.

I slowly climbed the staircase through the haze. Hardly able to see in front of me, I noticed that bad-techno-neighbor's door was open - exposing a 6 foot hooka in the middle of his floor - spewing 'smoke'. Someone spoke, 'Duuude, I think we did something wrong - this can't be right - I need to get out of here. It's too much even for me.' Some sketchy looking 'dude' ran into the hallway and pushed past me - heading down the stairs and out into the fresh air. Bad-techno-neighbor stepped into the hallway. I tried to speak his language, 'Um, dude, is our building on fire?'

He looked at me with a dazed expression, 'What do you mean?' I replied, 'Duuuuude, don't you see the smoke? I can hardly see in front of me.' Backing into his apartment and closing the door, he mumbled back, 'I don't know what you're talking about.' [slam]. I shrugged my shoulders and began climbing the stairs up towards my apartment when I heard the door squeak slowly open. Just sticking his head out, bad-techno-neighbor looked at me with his glazed eyes and called out with honest-to-god fear in his voice, 'hey dude, if the building's on fire, make sure you tell me, ok?'

'Sure,' I thought as I heard his bad techno pumping in the background, 'sure thing duuuuuuude.'