Here's a terrifying story of roommate horror that could help you get reacquainted with your breakfast. On Wednesday writer Peter Kassel posted an online account he heard while looking for a room to sublet in New York. Upon finding a great little room in the Lower East Side for cheap Kassel had to ask Doug, the apartment owner, why the price was so low. Doug assured him that no one had died there or anything, "but something did happen..."

He then launched into the story of Jack, the room's last occupant. The meat of it:


After living with Jack for a few months, Doug was running home through the middle of a raging rainstorm, and noticed that Jack’s window was wide open, water pouring into the room. He rushed up the stairs, still dripping wet, and knocked on Jack’s door. Nobody answered, and Doug figured Jack was out. He found his master key, opened the door, and clicked on the light.

Neatly piled into stacks were Chinese food containers, some 10 boxes high, some already toppled, with their half-eaten contents strewn on the floor. The cartons covered all the available area on the floor except for a narrow walkway to the bed and the desk. Doug stood horrified at the doorway, then noticed the water flooding the floor by the window. He rushed over to close it. [...] Then he saw the boot.

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The grossness intensifies after the jump.

Doug leaned over to pick it up, knowing what the contents were before his fingers even made contact. Spilled out from the tops were strings of Lo Mein noodles, and hard pieces of dried rice. Doug was sure he could see crusted-over mounds of meat and hardened sauce. Sickened, Doug sat down the shoe, and as he did so, he noticed a shadow in the shape of a human body beneath the twin bed.

With absolute trepidation, Doug lifted the bed and slid it a few feet away, knocking over a pile of takeout boxes. What he uncovered wasn't—to his immediate relief—a real person. But it was a person's shape, with a hooded sweatshirt attached to gloves and a pair of jeans, with the other boot tucked into the leg. Coming out of the seams were remnants of noodles, rice, and meat, grease stains pooling through the fabric and onto the floor, spoiled scraps of food filling the hoodie to the brim. Doug scanned the body—and...yep, there it was. Noodles oozed out of the unzipped fly; a glory hole that Jack had ostensibly been taking advantage of all spring long.

Blurrrrrrgh. On a scale of barfosity that's a nine (with ten being "I'm Already Barfing"). This is why I stopped doing the Craigslist roommate shuffle this year. Can anyone beat that story for roommate story for sheer grossness?

Read Kassel's whole story here with pictures of what appears to be The Boot and part of The Doll. via