A Safe Spot

It’s been about three weeks since this room’s been cleared out. Not that there was much to clear in the first place, but it has become a little more spacious. They even took my curtains. Do they normally take the curtains? Regardless, that was a bit rude. I liked the demented duck print it fashioned. The room feels awkward without them.

The paint peeling off the bottom of the wall became a little more visible with the new found light shyly edging its way into the room displaying the grey floorboard in all its glory. They left the window open in an attempt to air the place out last week but I don’t think it had much of a substantial effect other than halting the production of mold on the ceiling. Assumingly, it was done in an effort to greet a possible new owner of this crate by perhaps diluting the smell of death with the fragrance of cat shit and garbage. I couldn’t care less what they chose to do with this rotting casket. It’s not like I can smell what’s being cooked up.

About two months passed, I think. Surprisingly enough we had three sane people come to examine the place to decide if it were suitable to live in and in an orderly fashion, they would begin to cringe and gag before promptly declining. It was mine for a little longer.

The inclination into the winter began which only repelled life further away from here until this girl came along. She accepted. To live here that is. A wildcard to say the least; I couldn’t understand her amazement when she first entered. She looked straight at me, of course not knowing I was there, but still, she did not recoil.

The air had begun to thicken with a sheet of ice which weaved through the gaps in the floorboard blurring the last few hues of colour. It’s the day of her arrival.

You could hear the brittle walls tremble as they braced for impact upon hearing the quick succession of stilettos on the pavement approach. The door jumped from its hinges and let out a draw out yelp. She stood for a moment, and only a moment, to take in the parched air with suspicious blue eyes then began her assault.

She appeared as an overly caffeinated chihuahua with a tail vibrating behind her legs, wafting through the limited 15 by 15-foot space, re-examining its majesty. Dumping her yellow scathed suitcase in the far-right corner and balanced her tote bag on top, she rushed back out. After a while she came back with a broom, a broken dustpan and some dry window wipes, from that storage cupboard at the end of the hall, and began to resuscitate the terminal wooden flooring.

As expected, it was highly effective. So much so that she later on bought a thin second-hand rug to retain the glossy varnished oak.

Throughout the rest of the morning, she put in an excessive amount of effort into arranging a handful of photographs of herself with others onto the wall, taping them neatly in place and blue tacking a string of fairy lights to the low ceiling while profane music occupied the air. I never thought to pin stuff to the walls. What would I pin? I never thought to paint miscellaneous flowers to the pillars either but there she was.

I shifted my body to switch the overlap of my legs and breathed out a tired sigh. I had hoped this place would stay empty for a little longer. Just until I was ready, I guess.

The sun dropped behind the jagged scape of brick buildings, blooming night into the sky as the girl laid on her futon with her phone over her face. Her comfort in this crippling apartment was obscure but... somewhat reassured me. She was definitely the unnatural one here.

Over the span of a week, the crate was filled with more questionable items that had no real functionality other than to brim the floor with an unnecessary number of obstacles. Baskets and boxes were stacked in the corners filled with folded clothes and shoes with a recycled desk flush against the wall which framed the window. She would keep a roughly piled stack of textbooks on it with a pencil case, a hand mirror and a 500-page blank notebook. On days where she would head out, the carpet would be layered in a quilt of dresses and shirts that had been thrown around in a fury as she tended to have no grasp on time so would undoubtedly run late to her due appointments with friends and work. Then when she would return, she would stealthily hop around on her toes avoiding the piles of fabric to dismantle onto her bed, still not bothered to clean up.

By another two month’s passing, the room had been completely monopolized.

I had to start standing up since she would always end up flinging socks that would occasionally hit me. On top of that, the mounds of books that grew began to swallow the last few glimpses of wood and it had become an obscene landfill of random trinkets and indisposed water bottles polluting my mind with an overload of epileptic chaos. I’m not sure if nausea is a possible feeling to have when you have no internal organs but that’s what I would describe it as.

She was tireless. Persistent, even when there was no need to be. Quite frankly it disgusted me to my very bones. Why was there a need to be so aggressive? So unrelentingly joyful at life? Where do you even find such a thing? Disgusting. Disgusting. How dare she act as so while I am shackled. I am still here, lacing the walls in an unwanted presence as I watch the hyperactive savage claw through the walls each day.

Oh. Speaking of which, she's not here yet. It's past 1 in the morning. She never usually stays out this late. The neighborhood fell silent.

Would this be one of the odd days where I'd have the night to myself and not have the drilling of snoring rattling my eardrums? Fortune has favoured me it seems.

I swept back the box of leopard print press on nails, that had taken my original seat in the far corner, and laid down for the first time in a while. Blissful the moment was. Staggeringly so. I had forgotten what it was like to live without anyone else. I could see out the window in my position and thoughtlessly gazed at the clouded sky enjoying my own company for once.

The moon began to appear from an opening in the clumped sky and slid perfectly through the dip in the landscape to where the room stood. It glowed and painted the room with a gentle white and I watched as I saw the chaos sit still. Furniture and appliances scattered, but still.

It had almost appeared as if no one lived here. It’s as if someone were to simply switch the channel of a TV off and the once colourful, muttering and music of the scene snaps out of existence, while gently letting off its heat.

Cooling. Freezing into a blackness.

She was taking her time.

I turned to my side as I felt a growing pain in my stomach burning itself into the walls of my flesh. Indigestion? It was heavy like a boulder and uncomfortable, like a stone that gets caught in your shoe while walking. I turned back up to look at the ceiling of scattered dots of mold and scratches.

The walls had shrunken.

I held onto my legs, suffocating them in my grasp, tensing every muscle I could control in my arms, forcibly, with my eyes shut desperately. The temperature continued to drop as the moon moved over from the gap, blinding me further, leaving me helpless, pathetic. No memory of the past four months glanced at me. It was a painting. Another tool. Another trick.

There wasn't much light coming into the room anymore, apart from the reflections of street lamps, scarcely finding the window, giving only the slightest distinction between the blackness and tinting the corner of my eyelids. I prayed, quietly, to die once again. Or perhaps I wished to be revived. It was confusing. I only wanted something to change, for someone to come back to me.

She walked in, switching on the weak bulb as it paved a path to her bed.

The dim yellow, warm against my thinning skin, welcoming me to take a peek. It grew slowly and gently. With tears glossing my view, I looked. She hummed and waltzed her way through the room with a blissful smile. In that instant, while my attention was stolen by her presence, the backdrop had flipped. The blank white walls began to drip in gold as the bulb reached its peak, soaking the floors in its honey varnish, painting it a rich chocolate as phosphenes glittered my view. A flower field of yarn and cotton in the centre, with a candy bag of colours overdosing the cold floors. I sat up, drinking. Looking left, I watched as the light that bounced and gave, selflessly, reached the opposite building through the window, hitting a few roofs on its way, ricocheting back to us. The music followed. The reverberations of the arrangement swallow the frosted air as it fruitfully danced in the air. I dipped my head back and even the spots of mold and scratches on the roof turned into a museum of constellations that seemed to have ejected the planks to reveal our own night sky. My shackles fell and I reached out a hand, hesitantly. She turned to me, wide eyed and startled, but did not refuse my plea. I fell into her arms as they wrapped around my tiny frame, and nested into her neck, soaking her orange dress with my tears. It was warm and short, as soon after I felt myself disappearing. I made sure to let her knew she should take the bottles to the recycling and clear the empty plates on her bedside table, and get to sleep soon. She gave me a guilty smile as I left.

Mochichi~