The Apartment
I
It had been three days since I left my apartment. Three days since he had appeared, sitting there in the rocking chair near my front door. Gently rocking. His cold eyes never blinking, staring as if into my soul, knowing some unfathomable wrong about me that even I myself wasn’t aware of. I had no recourse but to run, to hide. But living on the 24th floor, and with my only means of escape within arms reach of this ghoulish thing, slowly rocking, never blinking, the bathroom was my only refuge.
I first saw him, or saw it I suppose I should say, late Thursday night. I had stepped out of my room, with the safety of my bed, my blanket, and the connection to the rest of sane humanity through my computer left behind, I walked across the living room which divides my apartment to get to the kitchenette. I noticed nothing until I opened the fridge. That small light popped on, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the glint of his eyes, of its eyes. The reflection was but a small flicker, but I turned and saw him sitting, staring.
The glass slipped from my hand and I fell to the floor. My legs had decided to leave without me, without even the common courtesy of giving me a warning, much less a head start in whatever direction they had decided to flee. My only path was then down, down to the floor beside and on top of the broken glass which had predicted my painful trajectory. Shaken and shaking, I peered around the island in the middle of the kitchenette to see him still there, rocking, never blinking, staring at me.
Scrambling and doing even more damage to my legs and hands as I shuffled for the bathroom door, I slid into the small facility and slammed the door shut behind me, only faintly aware of the crimson streaks I left behind mingling with the milk from the broken glass. A marble pattern of pain and horror. The door locked, my back firmly against the lower portion of cold wood to hold fast against the inevitable assault I was sure would come, I waited. And I waited.
For what seemed an eternity I waited, but the savage attack on the frail door never came.
II
“What the fuck do you want!” I shouted again. “Who are you and what do you want with me?”
I had stopped crying a while ago. Though I sobbed, my eyes had long given up any fluids to expel. Red eyes burning, I screamed, then whispered, some variation of the same theme hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. “Who are you?” “Why are you here?” “What do you want from me?” I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It felt like days, but the sun still wasn’t up, so I figured it couldn’t have been more than 4 hours.
The sun, that’s what I needed. The mere thought of it gave me a sudden surge of hope. Sunlight would make all this better. Sunlight would make all this go away. With this newfound wave of courage, I once again peeked through the keyhole of the bathroom door. And there he still sat, rocking slowly, never taking his unblinking gaze off my direction.
That courage was fleeting, and left me yet again. I rushed to the toilet and my intestines felt like they were violently trying to crawl up out of my esophagus. There was nothing to bring up however. The initial shock had caused me to hurl my stomachs entire contents long ago. That time I wasn’t lucky enough to make it to the toilet however. I ran some water and washed my face, also taking the opportunity to take a few sips to settle my reeling stomach. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, the swollen red eyes, and the dark rings to accompany them, I looked as bad as I felt.
All he had to do was wait me out and I would likely die in here, I thought. I certainly wasn’t opening that fucking door, and it looked like he was in no hurry to leave. He looked as if he had no need of anything but me, my soul, my blood, whatever the fuck he was here for. I was certain at that moment it was blood. It all came flooding back to me. I had seen this before. It had haunted me as a child. That movie, that dead man slowly rocking, the scratches at the window. For weeks I couldn’t sleep with the lights out, and for months longer still I would wake from a nightmare and rush to my parents’ room.
Eventually I rationalized the absurdity of it all. Between my formative years of my parents telling me how stupid those movies were, and years of my own realization that monsters weren’t real, I had finally put that image long behind me. An image that was now staring at me just on the other side of this frail wooden door.
I couldn’t look again, I dare not look, but I couldn’t get the image of him out of my mind anyway. The bluish grey skin, those black deep eyes. The slight smirk on his face and the menace behind his hollow stare. I was nothing but a meal to him, maybe not even a snack. No one had sent him, he just happened to find me the most vulnerable morsel this night. Low hanging fruit. But the 24th floor is not very low for fruit to hang.
There was no window in the bathroom anyway. Just a few narrow slots with natural light reflecting in by a series of mirrors and fogged glass. Maybe he could get through, turn into smoke or a fucking bat or cockroaches for all I know, but there was no way I was getting out of this bathroom except that door. The door with him, with it, just on the other side.
But there were windows on the other side of this door. Floor to ceiling windows. They weren’t going to face the sunrise. Places like these charged a premium for that type of luxury, a premium I had no means nor desire to pay. But the sun would rise, and those windows would flood with light, and if there was any justice that thing would leave or die.
III
There was no clock in the bathroom. There was little of anything. A toothbrush, a razor. Some soap and some rags. Two towels and a nearly gone roll of toilet paper. It had always driven me a little mad when I still lived at home and someone let the toilet paper roll sit empty. How hard is it to keep a spare nearby? How hard to store the extra rolls under that damn sink? Every time someone in the family shouted for help, screaming for a roll of toilet paper, it infuriated me. I was always purposely slow getting to the hallway to grab them an extra roll. That would teach them to let it run out.
And yet here I sat looking at a toilet paper roll almost gone. No spares in the bathroom, because the steam of the shower did a number on them, so out in the hallway closet they sat. Just like at home. And some dumb ass always let it run out. Just like at home. Only here, this asshole had no one to blame, and no one to help them when their literal asshole needed the paper this figurative asshole forgot to keep stocked.
Nothing in this room could be realistically viewed as a weapon. Even the towel rack and shower curtain bar were both cheap plastics. Maybe whatever the creature outside my bathroom door was had an extreme phobia for fuzzy bath mats. What the hell was I thinking when I chose something fuzzy for a bathroom anyway?
All these thoughts were a distraction. I knew it deep down, but I ran with each of them. Every little stupid spot of toothpaste spittle speckling that mirror became a reprieve from thinking about the actual horror sitting in my living room. Waiting. Slowly rocking. Never blinking.
The hours certainly had passed. From the tiny slot of natural lighting I could see that dawn was approaching. The glow emanating reassuringly, growing ever so slightly. This high up I never had the sound of birds or crickets or even cars to let me know that the world outside was changing. Only the light.
Just then, one of the very few other trappings of the outside world that could make its way into my little corner of hell made its way into my impenetrable cell. A deep, low rumbling as thunder shook the entire building. In disbelief I heard the sound slowly settle to a whimper and then nothing at all, and noticed the light in my slot of salvation, that tiny slit to let in the sunlight into my porcelain tiled tomb, fade to grey.
IV
“No!”
“No, it’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair!”
I screamed, I thrashed. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening. My only hope of survival, of salvation, was being taken away and there was nothing I could do about it. I hit the mirror, hard. I felt some indignation, I had sure shown that piece of shit mirror not to hang on the wall when I am upset. The spider web of cracks showed me looking back at myself, a dozen different glares of disbelief. Of despair. I swung again, and then ripped down the shower curtains. Turning, raging, I stopped short as my fist was swinging toward the door. That fragile piece of armor between me and the evil that sat on the other side.
As I stood with my fist extended, the realization that the mirror had fared far better than I had set in. Blood was flowing rather freely from a dozen small but deep cuts in my hand. I grabbed the towel and immediately wrapped it around my bleeding and painful paw. Should I get that towel wet? Do I need to elevate it? Is there glass stuck in it? My head was swimming, and no single thought or idea seemed to take charge and quiet the others to be clearly heard.
My body collapsed to the floor, still not quite understanding the relationship between its desire to cry and my tear ducts level of barrenness. Like an infant, the power of even crawling not yet mastered, I dragged myself to the doorway and laid with my back to that door. Certainly, the noise, and added to that the smell of my fresh blood, would be all it takes to prod the creature in the next room into action. That door would be no match for its imminent savagery. Maybe I should accept it. Save the energy from fighting it and welcome its horrible embrace. But some part of me still sought survival. Still cried out that it did not want to die, and my back pressed firmly against the door to provide any extra bit of resistance my broken form could muster.
V
I awoke groggy. At first, I didn’t comprehend many of the sensations I was feeling. Hunger I had known before. I had also known the burning of eyes that had cried far too much. It seemed life had not spared me those lessons, so perhaps this was my test to see if I was paying attention. The smell of vomit, although stronger than I had experienced in the past was also not unknown to me. But its acrid smell was tinged with iron, the smell of an open well.
As I opened my eyes and tried to sit up, that’s when the sensations got even more disturbing. My eyes, burning from the hours of tears, and further ours of strain, were blinded by the light flooding into the room. I knew the bathroom couldn’t never truly be that bright, so it must be the shock of waking up from such a bad dream that had made me sensitive to the light. My head pounding, the drumming a painful metronome counting out each of my painful actions.
But the tearing and pulling was something new. The sticky feeling and the slight sting as the right side of my face pulled away from the horrible grip of something underneath it. It all came back with a suddenness then. The mirror, the towel, my hand, and the thing in the next room. As the dried blood which cemented the towel I had laid my head upon pulled more at my skin, my hair, painfully separating itself as I arose, the reality of it all sunk back in. I had lost a lot of blood. Too much blood. And my doom sat just on the other side of that door.
I was dehydrated. With the amount of blood I had lost, and tears and vomit, I needed water. I stood on uncertain legs and used my wounded and horribly bandaged hand to shield my eyes from the painful light. Turning on the sink, I used my left hand to make a cup to drink. First, I let the water run over my hand, the water cascading over it taking away the filth, washing it down the drain. Out the pipes of this building to freedom. Even those dark and dirty sewers a better escape than I had available to me. Then I drank, and with each gulp I could feel the cold water go to my very core. Each drink giving me a measure more strength, awakening me a bit more with each draught.
I splashed a bit more on my face, and then the realization came to me. The light. The painful light which was cruelly adding to the throbbing of my head, burning its way into my sensitive eyes, was bright. The sun was up. And that thing outside the door was now gone or dead.
Quickly I rushed to the door, slipping in the vomit and excess water, the slide helped me into the crouch I needed to get my eye to the keyhole. And as I scrambled to align my view, hope swelling my heart, I saw him.
There he still sat. Not rocking now, but sitting still, the sun full on his face, his hands, his body. There was no blistering. There was no smoke, or snarling, or screaming. Nothing. Just cold unblinking eyes and a slight smirk of knowing evil.
VI
It was a long time before I looked again. How long I couldn’t say, but the sun was no longer quite as bright once I worked up the nerve to actually look. To actually see. He was gently rocking again, but his face, his eyes, unmoved. His hands lay rather limp over the ends of the arm rests of the chair. That chair had always been comfortable, but rocking chairs were rarely practical, so I sat it near the entrance for occasional guests to use. It didn’t face the television, nor the windows. The angle of the room required it to face the kitchen area, and this damned bathroom door.
His skin, as I had noted before, was a greyish green tint, and his eyes black as the pits of hell. But now, in this new light, I saw more details. His hair was spotty, with patches either fallen out or pulled out. There was a slight tearing of the skin around his eyes, and at his lips. And his fingers, the blackened fingernails seemed more like talons. The cuticle had receded pretty far up those fingers, and the bones of the first knuckle were starting to show beneath frayed and ragged flesh.
I hadn’t spoken aloud in hours. I hadn’t screamed or pleaded with the beast from hell in the next room, knowing after the initial attempts that it was futile. But yet he never moved to act upon his advantage. He seemed content to sit, and wait, and torment me with each passing moment. The sunlight, my one hope, my one salvation, was nothing but an unrelenting spotlight shining down to show just how bad my situation actually was.
If he was going to ignore me, then I was going to ignore him. Ignore it. I went to the sink and started the slow and painful process of cleaning my wounds. It wasn’t until this moment until I realized just how much damage I had done. My hand had well over a dozen small to medium fragments of glass embedded in it. My legs and arms, lacerations from the glass I initially dropped and then decided to rut around in. Some of the wounds were closed well, others sprang back to life as I removed the glass slowly, painfully.
I had some medical supplies in the bathroom cabinet, but not much. A dozen band aids helped, as did the peroxide and alcohol. But I had to resort to tearing strips out of the second towel, the one that wasn’t yet a solid mass holding itself together with my dried blood. As I was finishing my gruesome chore, that’s when the odor hit me again, this time the hardest.
It had the faint smell of rotting fruit. It had the less faint smell of putrefying meat. It was as if someone had set out all the ingredients to prepare a meal, and then let it set in the sun for a week. The scent was overpowering, and tugged at the back of my throat to rid myself again of any contents my stomach may have had hidden in reserve. Dry heaves were all I had for the effort however. The stench was almost unbearable here in the bathroom, with my eyes burning even more, my nose feeling as if acid was being gently sprayed into my nostrils, I didn’t want to imagine just how bad it was on the other side of that door. With him. With it.
Thought I tried to fight, with each slight breeze, the sting of acrid air hit my eyes and nostrils again. The breeze, the slight movement of air, coming from the vent. I normally left the vent to the bathroom closed, but just enough air was forcing its way through to carry the foul stench to my damnable cell. That or the thing was moving closer to the door, finally lumbering in for the kill. At this point, I wasn’t sure which option was worse. Slowly I moved back to the door, to the precious few inches of wood that kept all of hell at bay. My eye to the keyhole, I looked to see if he was still there. If it was still there.
VII
Still rocking, ever so gently, there he sat. His eyes still unblinking, the smirk still as unsettling as ever. He would wait for me. The scent of death, stronger than ever, assailed my nostrils. But then a slight reprieve, the odor subsided. Not completely, but enough to where I didn’t have to hold the bloody towel on my mangled hand up in front of my nose to breathe. And as the smell lessened, he stopped rocking.
This was surely it. Now he would rise, and that damned door that had given me this false sense of security would be nothing more than splinters. As would my bones. Would he beat me to death? Would he bite me? Maybe he would draw out the very essence of my soul, calling forth my vital energy like the vapor emitting from a humidifier, drifting ever slowly toward his all-consuming maw. Or maybe toward his outstretched hand. Maybe his damned eyes, those unblinking eyes, for all I knew. But if something was going to happen, why wasn’t it happening yet? Why linger?
Wiping and blinking at my burning eyes, I turned again to the keyhole. And there he sat. Still grinning, never blinking. But he had stopped rocking. Taking a moment to survey the area, this spaced I had lived in for so long, new details became apparent. Angles and placements, distances and surfaces. The chair was close to the front door, and there was a slight step up toward the entryway. The whole area had carpet, but just outside the bathroom, and toward the kitchenette was linoleum. Would I slip if I ran? Did I need shoes? Did I lock the front door?
As these thoughts fought for dominance in my mind, two details fought harder and grabbed more of my focus. The first was the door, or more specifically, the deadbolt on the door. It was indeed locked, so that would add precious moments if I fled that way. I could easily grab my keys on the way by, sitting on the table just outside the bathroom, so that if I made it out past that thing, I could certainly make it to the garage. To my car. To freedom.
But the second detail was grabbing hold of more and more of my attention. Just behind the chair where the dread thing sat, always staring, never blinking, was a vent. I had always thought it an intake, but looking now I saw that it had angled slats and was not a grid, slats to direct air. Air coming out. And the sweltering heat was starting to rise outside, so once again the cursed air started to push the foul stench my way. It wasn’t coming from the vent after all, but was coming from underneath the door. A foul putrid vapor, clinging to the ground, pushed from the air in the living room, creeping along the floor, under the door, and to my assaulted senses. And as the stench hit me again, gently, he was rocking. Slowly rocking. Staring, never blinking.
VIII
This happened two more times before my addled mind put together the clues. He only rocked when the stench was strong. Realization exploded in my mind, and hope sprung forth. He wasn’t rocking. That cursed foul thing wasn’t moving the chair under his own power. It was the vent. Every time the air kicked on, the chair itself would gently rock. That thing was merely an uninvolved passenger. And if it wasn’t rocking the chair, then what was it doing? It wasn’t moving. It wasn’t talking. It wasn’t blinking. It was doing nothing.
Elation came over me, and I almost grabbed the doorknob at that moment and casually walked right out of that door to freedom, but something stopped me at the last minute. Even if that dead thing, a thing that had been dead for quite some time, was inanimate. Even if it wasn’t moving, or stalking, or even actively grinning, how the fuck did it end up in a rocking chair in my living room? Who put it there? Why? With as many questions still unanswered, perhaps even more questions now than before, I decided to play it cautious.
Slowly I turned the knob. Gently I cracked the door, and immediately regretted it. The wet putrid air in the other room came rushing in, bringing with it a wave of nausea. Since I had kept the vent in the bathroom closed, it was a somewhat isolated space, and opening that door normalized the pressure. With that cooler air that came rushing in came the sickly moist stench of death. Sweet and rotten, acrid. I had to press on. I had to do something. The dead thing still hadn’t moved, and I was going to try to take my chances getting to the kitchen sink. Maybe I could grab a knife or some other weapon. Maybe I could open a window.
But as I cracked the door a bit farther, the white and brown marbling on the floor reminded me of all the shards of glass still in that direction. Without shoes, I would not only reopen any wounds I already had, but would add more. More wounds to limit my speed, my mobility. More pain as I tried to get away from that damned thing that sat in my rocking chair. Sat there grinning, never blinking.
The better course of action would be to get to my bedroom. My phone was charging in the kitchen, but my computer was in the bedroom. So were clothes and shoes. So was a window I could open and get fresh air. The decision made, I slowly opened the door the rest of the way so I had a free path toward my bedroom, and then I walked. Perhaps hobbled is a better description with how softly I tried to step with each foot fall. Not for stealth but to try to ease the pain my mangled feet felt with each pace. I grabbed my keys, and within 8 paces I was into my bedroom.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I cleared the door and turned as I closed it. As I glanced to the living room, there he still sat. The air had kicked on yet again, but now that I had been exposed to the full force of the deathly odors, it was far more bearable than before. And the thing in the chair sat there gently rocking. Staring. Never blinking. I let go of the door for a second with a start, but then quickly shut the door. Had he turned his head ever so slightly to stare at me as I had moved? Was that grin, and his unblinking eyes, actually following me?
IX
No one would believe me. I had to get out of there, that was sure, but as I sat at my computer, who could I call? Who could I contact? Is there an emergency services number for dead guys in your apartment? I had two pair of socks on to give my feet some relief, and decided on some slip-on sandals rather than full lace up shoes. I knew that might limit my speed if I had to run, but the damned thing was just sitting idle. Once I made it out of the apartment, assuming my whole building hadn’t become some holding area for dozens or hundreds of dead guys, I thought I would be OK to make it to my garage. The power was still on, so the elevator should still work. There was no way I was going to walk these many floors of stairs with my feet in their current condition. Then again, fear is a great motivator.
I had opened the window and the air in here was mercifully easier to breathe. I had even considered lighting a candle, something to break the stench any further, but that was me just being irrational. I had to focus on a few priorities, and aromatherapy wasn’t one of them. I had to get my feet taken care of, and now they were. I also put on fresh clothes, and even used a few socks to both wrap my injured hand, and then wear one sock over top of it for extra bandaging. Trying to use the computer with one hand, my bad hand at that, might have led to me giving up on using it to contact someone faster than I might have otherwise. I had my keys, and the sun was going down, it was time to move.
With a last check to make sure everything was in order, I opened the door. And froze.
My head swam and the room felt like it was spinning at an odd angle. Not as if my feet were on a record player, but perhaps I was on some amusement park ride where my feet were going one way, my head another. Neither deciding on the same speed or direction to spin. Maybe I had stood up to fast. The blood loss and the stress of the day both conspiring to drive any hope of escape from my frail form.
The odor was certainly strong, but that wasn’t what had my head spinning. A wave of fear, of revulsion, of shock and of panic hit me all at once. My vision was darkening at the edges, leaving only a spotlight of a tunnel, ever shrinking, forcing me to sweep my head wildly to take in the surroundings as I finally lost consciousness. The dank room, with the light of the sun dying quickly. The chair by the door, now empty. The mouth pulled back into a rictus grin. The eyes staring, never blinking, of the thing now standing in front of my apartment door.
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