T.C. Jones

After the food bank on Saturday I went home to put my grub away. My landlord’s wife was coming downstairs as I was opening the front door. She was going to stand aside and hold the door for me but there’s not much room at the bottom of the stairs to get a bike past someone so I told her to come out first. Her and Raja were in from Burlington for their weekly clean-up of the building and to take out the garbage, but it had been two weeks since their last weekly clean-up. When I was unlocking my door I turned and saw Raja through the back door walking around on the roof. I unloaded my backpack and my bag and then headed out again to Freshco. Raja was just stepping in from the roof as I left. When I got to the front of the supermarket and went to lock my bike I remembered that when I’d unpacked my food, my bike chain had been in the way and so I’d taken it out of my backpack to place it temporarily in the sink. I went home to get it and then headed back out.

At the supermarket I picked up some blueberries, a picnic pork shoulder, three bags of 1% milk, a container of yogourt, some mouthwash and, since their Maxwell House coffee was on sale, even though I have a three quarters full can, a bought another one.

When I got home my next-door neighbour Benji told me that the landlord had been looking for me and was parked outside. Raja usually comes on Saturday evening when he comes. I’ve had the rent for him since the first of the month and it’s not my job to chase him around. I commented that he really should hire a new superintendent. I said that I’d be willing to collect the rent for him and take out the garbage and mop the floor once a week if he were to chop $60 off my rent.

I had lunch and took a siesta but slept about an hour and a quarter longer than usual. Perhaps that was because I hadn’t gotten to bed until 1:30 the night before. Getting up so late from my nap meant that I’d be late heading out for my bike ride, so I decided to only go as far as Yonge and Bloor.

As I was riding east along Bloor around Ossington a large woman with bright red dyed hair and wearing a floral dress shot past me. I could not have a large woman with bright red dyed hair and a floral dress pass me and so I sped up and got ahead of her before the beginning of the Bloor bike lane.

At Brunswick I noticed a box of books on the curb, so I stopped to check them out. They were all hardcover but they were all in German, so I left them there.

I went down Yonge to Queen and travelled west towards home, racing with various other cyclists along the way. One guy that got ahead was just lucky because he didn’t get blocked by a turning car like I did.

I had two sunny side up eggs with toast for dinner and watched a suspenseful but not very complex Alfred Hitchcock Hour teleplay with a twist ending that surprised me but perhaps shouldn’t have.

A serial killer is strangling nurses. This seems to be in an area with lots of old houses that are very far apart and there seem to be more nurses than regular people. We hear his voice at the beginning as he calls a nurse walking home alone at night by name, tells her she has such a pretty neck and then laughs before killing her.

After that introduction the rest of the story takes place in a creepy old house that looked very familiar to me. I was thinking that it was either the Bates house from Psycho or maybe the Adams Family house. It was the Psycho house.

Two nurses are caring for the young man that owns the house. He is bedridden and has to spend most of his time under an oxygen tent. One nurse, Stella is young and pretty and the other, Nurse Ames is perhaps the same age or a little older but heavier set and less attractive. They are both well aware that nurses are being targeted and so they go around to make certain that every single window in the house is locked. But when Stella is checking the basement she is about to lock the last window when she sees a mouse and freaks out, causing her to forget about the last window.

Nurse Ames discovers that they need another oxygen tank and so she sends Sam, the only man in the house besides the sick one to go and get one from the nearest hospital.

Of course it turns into a dark and thunder stormy night and we frequently are shown that basement window as it bangs in the wind and rain.

The phone rings and Nurse Ames answers. She tells Stella a that it was the killer announcing that he knows they are there alone and will be paying them a visit later that night.

The housekeeper is an alcoholic but is hitting the booze extra hard as the tension builds until finally she hears the killer’s voice speaking and laughing inside the house.

My guess was that it was the guy in the oxygen tent that was doing the killing but I was wrong.

We see a man approaching the house in the rain. Stella hears Nurse Ames screaming for help downstairs. She goes downstairs holding a fireplace poker, sees the door wide open and the wet footprints of someone having entered the house. Nurse Ames calls, “Help me! Stella!” Then Stella hears the killer laughing. “Where are you Miss Ames?” “Under the stairs!” Stella finds Nurse Ames crouching in a corner. “He tried to strangle me Stella!” “Where is he?” “I don’t know!” Nurse Ames says they have to get out because the killer is in the house. Stella runs toward the open door but suddenly Nurse Ames screams and warns Stella that she sees the killer behind the door. Stella throws her poker at him. It hits his shoulder and he falls forward. It’s Sam and he was dead already. Stella stoops over his body and hears a man laughing behind her. Nurse Ames begins talking in a man’s voice and telling her that she has a bad memory. Nurse Ames comes forward and grabs Stella. Stella pulls off Nurse Ames’s to reveal that she is a man. Nurse Ames strangles Stella.

Nurse Ames was played by famed female impersonator T.C. Jones, considered perhaps the second best of all time.