Tenant

Knock, knock.

I came to. Unaware that I had even drifted off. Was that knock real or had I dreamed it? The rain played the evening’s soundtrack. Calm. The clock said twelve, but it always said that. It’d decided who it was.

The knock returns, this time with an extra tap, as if to show — yes — it is in fact sentient and not a dream. I had a small panic attack. A visitor? Really?

I rose slowly, my mind raced. Maybe it was just a prank, or someone with the wrong address. I placed an eye to the peephole. Tall, gray suit, expressionless; holding a letter. He adjusted his stance, slowly gliding his index finger and thumb over the letter’s fold. I turned the knob, then snatched the door open.

“Delivery for Mr. Gladwell,” he said, his tone polite but condescending. His eyes straight ahead. I moved around a bit to see if I could break his focus. But his eyes never moved. I reached out my hand and he handed me the letter.

My name was in bold black letters. No return address.

I looked up to speak but the tall man was gone. Vanished without a trace. No footsteps. No vehicle.

Spooked, I shut the door and locked it.

The rain began to hush, like the slow fade out of a song on a record player. I tore open the letter, expecting a bill or perhaps a summons. Instead I found a sheet of parchment stamped with a strange seal — a key with an eye at its crest.

NOTICE OF EVICTION.

It was written in bold at the top, followed by lines of text:

You are hereby ordered to vacate the premises of Memory Parcel 14-B.

Occupancy exceeded authorized duration.

Effective immediately.

I read it seven times. Memory Parcel? Authorized duration? I don’t owe anything.

Who had this kind of time on their hands?

Who would do this to me? I don’t deserve this. I don’t bother anyone.

Pranksters. Anything for a laugh.

The Next Morning.....

I stare at the letter on the kitchen table, wanting to dismiss it. But the high strangeness lingered. Even my coffee tasted funny.

I became distracted by her photo in the sunlight. Dark hair, tossed aside. Tiny mole near her cheekbone. I told myself one day I would take down all her photos.

I still tell myself that.

From the kitchen window I noticed a billboard I've seen more times than I cared to remember, only...it was different. Parts of it were missing entirely. I rubbed my eyes and walked closer to the window. The face of the actor on the billboard was featureless, like it hadn’t yet been rendered. All the words were missing except one phrase...

Time’s—Up.

Mug falls. Shatters.

This was the moment. The moment a small tear in the fabric becomes a door to the other side. You tried to ignore it. Pretend it wasn’t there. And now its staring at you and only you.

I ran outside to draw in air.

No sound.

No traffic. No birds. No trains. No planes.

Just up the street, I saw the back of a woman I recognized. “Ms. Lopez!” I called, jogging up to her. In desperate need of some familiarity. “Sorry, I just wanted—”

I fell back on my hands. Breath stolen. Her face was featureless. Half-rendered.

Sound the alarm. I have officially been taken hostage to the outer limits of sanity. At gunpoint.

I ran back inside my apartment, slammed the door and pressed up against it. Why? What was I hoping for? To shut something out or keep something in?

My mind stutters. Distortion. I’ve been pushed off the ledge.

Free-fall.

I begin frantically searching for familiar things to hold onto. I reached for her. She always knew what to do. How to calm me. How to reconcile any disharmony. Like magic.

I grabbed a photo of her off the fireplace. I clutched it—crying. Uncontrollably.

As I did, my tears smeared the features of the background, of her face. Until all that was left was a blank white frame.

Empty.

The bookshelf pulsed with novels that displayed blank spines in rows. Indistinguishable. I pulled one down, opened it. Every page was gray static, like a television with no signal.

Even the air itself felt thinner. Like it was being pulled apart.

I ran beneath the living room clock and fell to my knees. Faithfully it stood tall at twelve. Unwavering. My compass.

Dear Sanity,

I’m sorry. We haven’t always seen eye to eye. I’ve done a lot of drugs. A lot of self-deprecating.

But I miss you.

And I’m unraveling.

Please.

Then I heard a buzzing sound coming from the kitchen. I angled my head and peaked in.

The eviction letter vibrated on the kitchen table. It moved around as if it was battery powered.

I walked up and cautiously opened it with my fingertips. In bright red ink it read:

VACATE IMMEDIATELY.

Knock, knock!

The sound came from directly inside my head. A fist pounding against my skull.

When I turned, she was there. Standing in the archway between the kitchen and the living room. As if she’d just walked out of the scene of the photo she disappeared from.

She looked better than I remembered. My mind’s remake didn’t do her justice. Incapable of rendering her details with the required skill.

“Jasper,” she said feather soft. I hadn’t heard her voice in years.

A crime.

“You knew this day would come.”

I shook my head, crumbling the eviction notice. “No, This—can’t be happening. This is my place. You can’t just walk in and—”

She smiled, with sincerity. And heaviness. “This was never yours. You’ve been living here on borrowed time. You know that.”

The bookshelf warbled, gurgling like digestive acids as it swallowed the blank books from the shelf.

I stumbled back. “You can’t just erase me, Cassie. Forget I existed”

She cradled me in her gaze. “I’m not erasing you. I’m reclaiming myself.” She moved to the window, dragging her finger across the glass. Where she swiped, the cityscape vanished. Like it was drawn in magic marker, and her finger was a dry eraser, revealing the blank white beyond.

The floor began writhing underneath me. “It’s not fair. I loved you. Does that mean nothing?”

Her hand lingered on the window frame. “It meant everything, once. That’s why you lasted this long.”

The clock on the wall melted like candle wax. Though it never wavered. Twelve and sure. It faded with honor. My hero, I salute you.

“You’re evicting me,” I said. The word was coarse. Scrapping.

She didn’t deny it. She only stepped closer. The ache in my body filled the entire room.

“I carried you long enough, Jasper. You’ve become a squatter in my memory. And I can’t move forward while you’re still here.”

Her voice cracked and cut through the ache. Not with cruelty, but with the cold mercy of a hand forced to apply pressure to the blade.

“Cassie, no—please—” I wanted to argue but my voice changed to white noise, like the words were crushed to salt as soon as they left my throat.

She reached for the light switch on the wall, and when she flicked it off, the whole room went dark.

Empty.

Flash....

The scene was picturesque. Blue water and evening sky. I recognized this beach. I used to visit this memory daily.

Cassie appeared in front of me, hand above a light switch hanging in midair.

“Wait, wait!” I shouted. “We don’t have to do this. Not like this. I can stay quiet—small. All I need is a corner. Just a corner of you, Cass.”

She studied me, lowering her brow the way she used to when I pushed against boundaries. “You don’t understand, Jasper. Even quiet tenants take up space, create emotional feedback loops. I feel you every day. You haunt me.”

“Haunt you?” My laugh was sharp and bitter. “I was part of you. All the stories, every plan, every stupid fight—we built these memories together. You can’t just take them from me.”

She turned and looked out over the water. The air became chilled, and the sky warped into to gray storm clouds. “See?” she whispered. “Even the good memories collapse under your weight. You’ve made them dark. I can’t touch them without crying.”

I grabbed her wrist to feel her warm skin. “We can make new ones. New ones as—as friends. I’ll stay in the background, I swear it. Don’t throw me into nothing, Cass.”

For a moment, I thought she might waver. Her eyes blinked softly. A tell that used to signal surrender. “That’s what you don’t understand. I can’t keep part of you and heal. You’re not just some object, like in the outside world, you know? In here, you are malware.”

The sand began falling through an invisible hole beneath us.

“You owe me,” I snapped, anger grinding against fear. “Without me, who are you? Who do you get to be that I didn’t help you become?”

She arched back—then stood straight, fortitude I’d forgotten she possessed. “Without you,” she said, voice low and stiff, “I get to be whoever I want.”

I felt heavy and pressed down.

“I can stay here. Cass I can stay here! I can—”

I could hear the doors as they slammed shut. One by one. Closer and closer.

I ran.

Jumping through random streams of consciousness.

But they weren’t like before. Only leading to empty streets. Back roads. Dissolving space.

I ducked into an alleyway and stopped to rest. All around me, the lights flickered and blinked out. Encroaching darkness. The plug had been pulled.

I dropped down to the ground. This was really it. She wanted to erase me. For good. O’ heart of mine...farewell. For on this day, we meet true death. Cast forth into oblivion.

“Don’t make this harder than it already is,” she said, as she walked toward me.

“Harder for who?” I was desperate. “You’re erasing me. You’re doing this. You’re destroying everything. Everything we were.”

“We were already gone, Jasper. You’re just a fragment. And fragments don’t get to stay.”

The buildings spontaneously combusted, spraying glass. Soundless. Becoming blackened and curled like burnt paper.

I lunged to anchor myself to her. Selfishly. But when I closed my arms to embrace, they went right through her.

Her body rippled like water.

The ground opened like a mouth. White—endless, light.

I fell through.

The fall didn’t stop until I thudded against something soft.

I lay there, in a pile of debris. Shoe boxes of photographs with missing faces. Black letters fell from the sky at random and shattered like glass. Half-sentences slithered across the ground like severed worms. Toys, watches, mismatch shoes. An endless graveyard of abandoned meaning.

At first, I thought I was alone. But then, I saw them.

People wandering, hunched over and faded. Some carried envelopes with no addresses. Others carried empty bags. Their faces smeared and distorted, like sun-damaged film.

One of them brushed past me, and whispered in a voice that was almost familiar, “Do you remember me?”

I shook my head and kept moving.

This was the overcrowded home of the homeless. The abandoned and evicted. Wanderers of desolation.

On the ground ahead, I saw a broken clock with no hour or minute-hand inside, just something written on it in what looked like red lipstick.

I stared into its cracked face:

MOVE ON.

“Follow the sound of my voice. I’m going to count backwards from five, by the time I get to one, you will come back with full awareness of where you are and who you are. Five, four, three, two, one.”

Cassie is awakened on a red couch.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel...rejuvenated.” Cassie lifted her arms and exhaled.

“That was a very good session, Miss Rivers. Your emotional feedback during memory recall was overwhelmingly progressive. No negative trauma response inspired by, you know who? Looks like you may officially be in remission.”

Cassie expelled a heavy laugh. And smiled.