(Read this when you have plenty of time to waste :)

I got this hideaway couch from a friend who lived on the sixth floor of my building. Took it down the elevator to the second floor with my mother and another friend. The couch was incredibly heavy (I think it was mostly made of iron) and awkward as all get-out, and the elevator was teeny-weeny tiny. We all barely fit. And the bed part had an incredibly powerful spring that kept wanting to spring out whenever it was on its side(which it had to be, to fit in the elevator.) So here we are, the three of us wrestling this monster down one twisty hallway and in and out of the elevator and down another twisty hallway and into my apartment, and it kept trying to leap out and mash us to the walls. My mother started to really fear for her life. She thereafter referred to it as ‘El Sofa Asesino,’ the Murdering Couch.

Fast-forward to the end of the year. I was going away for the summer and needed a place to store all my stuff. Leave it at my place, says my boyfriend Boyd. So we haul all sorts of things to his place, a horrifying example of Kingston Student Ghetto housing - a lovely old Victorian family home converted into some sort of warren for eleven students. Lots of odd corners and awkward spaces, living rooms converted into two or three bedrooms, closets for bathrooms.

So we move bookcases, lamps, etc and then we try to move the couch. And it's supposed to go into the living room, which is, get this: up three steps to get into the house, onto a small landing, slightly to the right, up three more steps, into a hallway that goes to the left, then to the right, then down two steps, then to the left, through the kitchen, around a corner, into the living room.

And there we are with the Murdering Couch. And between myself, Boyd, and two of his housemates, we're stuck on the first three steps going into the house for, I kid you not, twenty minutes, trying to finesse its awkward bulk into the house without getting killed by its homicidal spring. Finally Boyd's housemate says, The hell with this, I hate this god damn couch, we gotta show it who's boss, this damn thing is not gonna defeat me, I'm just gonna scream it in, and he takes a deep breath and starts to scream as he and Boyd give a mighty heave and in the monster goes, up the steps, onto the landing, up three more steps, left, right, down steps, left, through the kitchen, and into the living room, screaming all the way, in about twenty seconds, while the rest of us watch open-mouthed. And thus the couch becomes the Murdering Screaming Couch.

Fast-forward to the next year. I've broken up with Boyd (amicably) and am now going out with Chris (whom I married two years later). Boyd's lease is up, and he needs to move his stuff (and mine) out while Chris and I are not in Kingston. We get two of our friends, Phil and Nick, to move the couch. They don't go into detail over that move, but let us know that they will never move anything for us again and that the stains on the *&%$couch are indeed what they look like, blood. We give them plenty of beer to ease their sorrow and the Murdering Screaming Bleeding Couch spends a few months in Boyd's new home while I live at Phil's and search for a new apartment for me and Chris, who's in Calgary for the summer.

Middle of the summer. Chris comes to Kingston for the July 1st weekend. Since I'm working in the tourism industry(Fort Henry), I have to work July 1 (Canada Day - it's a big deal). So I work all day and then Chris and I spend the next two days with a rented van, moving all of our stuff from Boyd's, Phil's and Nick's houses to our new home. A walk-up apartment on the fourth floor.

We're doing OK until the time comes to move the couch. We get it out of Boyd's house OK, but then we get to the apartment building, get out of the van, and just stare at each other in dismay. Chris sits on the front steps and says, you know what? Let's just leave it where it is (the back of the van, taking the place of the back seats). He says let's just return the van like this tomorrow. If they wanna know where's their back seat, we'll just say the van came like this. And if they say, Didn't you notice the back seat didn't match the rest of the décor of the van, we'll just say, What do we know about décor? We're students, man, we don't know from décor. You should see our place. We don't even have a couch.

Anyway. We finally muster up the courage to move the damn thing. And on the second floor, I finally give in, sit on the landing, and start to cry. This is never gonna getup there, I sob, we should just leave it here, I hate this #^%$ sniffle #^* sob%*^$ sniffle sob ^%$@ing couch. And Chris gets all manly and says, The hell with this couch, I'm getting it up there. And he basically pulls it the next two floors up by himself.

And so the Murdering Screaming Bleeding Weeping Couch lives for another two years in our fourth-floor apartment, and Chris and I vow that the next time we move, we will pay somebody else to cart it away and never bring it back.

Somehow we don't, and our next move to our first house in Kingston goes OK. No story there. Then when we move to London a few years later, the movers deal with it and that's OK too.

Then we're going to move to Ottawa. And we just look at each other and decide, no way in hell. Not with two small children. We're living in married student housing, and there's about four recycling huts where people leave bottles, cans, cardboard, etc - as well as tables, chairs, toys, whatever that they're not using any more. People are always moving in and out of the place, and the ones moving in are poor as church mice and will take anything that the ones leaving don't want. So we take the couch down to the hut, and before the day's over, somebody has taken it. The Murdering, Screaming, Bleeding, Weeping, Recyclable Couch has begun a new life with a new family. And I wish them joy.

Poor unsuspecting sods.