Tuesday 10:52PM
He’s hunched over me but I’m not just lying here acting lazy with my legs slightly spread letting his hips do everything. My mother would say my active participation---wrapping my legs around a gentleman so I can buck myself against him while he’s inside me with one of my arms trapped beneath the tangles of my top sheet---all of this is not very ladylike.
She’s always had opinions about how ladylike I act. To this I say: I might be a woman, mother. But I am no lady.
I never wear dresses because I don't want to cross my legs, I cuss like a sailor and I fuck like I'm getting paid...
…And besides...Clay has never acted like a gentleman.
He’s so much better at what he does in bed than what he does in the cubicle around the corner. That’s why when he tells me to open my mouth at the beginning sometimes, I do it. I know why he wants me to and I think it’s absolutely fucking disgusting, but I let him do it anyway. You shouldn't ever yuck your partner's yum in the bedroom. Guy or girl. Doesn't matter to me. If it's not going to hurt me and it's not against the law, I'll try it.
If my mother knew about Clay---she’d faint. Mostly because I’m sleeping with him and we’re not dating. Get that very clear. Not. Dating. Got that?
Do you want me to keep going or not?
If I told my mother he was so good in the sack that I actually allowed him to spit loogies into my mouth sometimes, she’d physically die.
If you tell anyone at work that we've been fucking, I will fucking kill you. Do you understand? And if you tell them that we're fucking and that I let him spit on me, I will fucking kill you twice.
We keep moving against each other and I find myself staring at the vein appearing diagonally on his forehead. I’m thinking how his eyes squeezed that way makes him look like he’s in unimaginable pain.
He looks that way a lot and he’s not.
That vein---this face he’s making---they’re both good things.
He’s enjoying this as much as I am.
My eyes close and I hear myself moan quietly without meaning to.
My eyelids start to flutter and I---oh god--oh---
---wait---what the fuck is that thing doing here?
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING DOING IN THE DOORWAY AGAIN?
Something---I don’t know what---is standing in the doorway and I’m choking on my own gasp because Clay is moving himself back and forth inside me and I don’t know which thing to feel---pleasured or petrified---so I start choking. This thing, when it watches from the doorway, is so tall.
Too tall.
It’s thin in a way that doesn’t make sense, like the shadow of a rubber band stretched just a little too far. So far that it doesn’t remember how to bounce back.
This thing---
---is a thing that has forgotten how to unstretch.
Every part of it looks slick. Oily. Like it’s been dipped in something or climbed up, up, up and out from the sliminess of the endless night of a sewer grate.
It gleams everywhere. Always everywhere except the eyes. Where there’s supposed to be eyes, there’s nothing there. Nothing that sees is there seeing me from the place it seems to see. It’s just two holes---mismatched in shape and size.
Two empty torn spaces.
Dry and dark.
Just holes. Vortexes. Pits of emptiness. It’s watching me. Watching us from the doorway with two gaping voids for eyes that have somehow not forgotten how to stare---
---how to see us simply by manipulating a memory it keeps
about the time before
when it still had eyes to use for seeing the sights.
I make a sound---I don’t mean to. A tiny scream that catches in my throat and comes out as something softer for Clay to hear and he doesn’t interpret my tiny scream as I meant it to be. He interprets it as encouragement, so he groans and starts pushing harder.
My eyes snap open.
There’s nothing there, where I saw it.
The doorway is empty again.
Wednesday 2:39AM
When I wake up, I can’t remember falling asleep. My chest is cold because I fell asleep tits-out, like an idiot. I reach for the sheet that Clay and I tangled. I can see it in the same damn knot that had my arm pinned under it earlier. Now that he’s gone the bed seems wider than it should be. I’m where I was, the sheet where I left it---still twisted into that stupid shape, but I can’t reach it without crawling for it. How did it become so far away without moving?
Then I see it.
It’s in the doorway again. Standing. Learning how to look---at me, at the way I crawl, naked, across the bed for my sheet. I clutch it against myself and crawl back to the place I’d been sleeping and as I lower myself into the bed again and rub the disbelief out of my eyes. I rub them hard. Once. Twice. It doesn’t move.
It’s still there.
It stays---but time doesn’t.
It glitches. Speeds up, then crashes.
Time moves like a ride I don’t remember getting on.
Bumper cars, maybe. Spinning, then slamming into the side of me.
I watch it start to step forward.
One slow bend of an agonizingly long leg---with more than one knee---bends into the room.
I count seconds in my head while it takes that first step---forever long---towards my bed.
I reach twenty. Then twenty-five.
But when I glance at the clock, it’s 3:52.
It was just 2:41. I know it was.
All I’ve done is watch it cross the threshold.
All it did was watch me back.
I watched it leave the doorway and enter the room, slow and deliberate. We didn’t blink. Its eyes---those empty vortexes---locked onto mine. Time shifted again. I saw it jump without looking away. Another step and the floor that usually protests stays silent. It shouldn’t---but it does.
I inhale sharply as its second leg follows. It's at the foot of the bed. It’s here.
It’s back again. Too close. Go away. Please? Time resets and the clock tells me it’s only 2:45.
I brace myself, expecting it to come closer but instead, it lowers---bending---folding.
Legs. Elbows. Everything moves at the wrong angle.
The torso flexes in half, dropping a bit too far.
Then the head tilts down.
It presses itself flat against the floor like it’s trying to vanish into it and I lose sight of it---so I sit up. It’s still there---but it isn’t tangled anymore. Now, it spreads out, thick and black and slow, like oil on the hardwood. The floor is thirsty for it. The floor wants it.
It can have it. I think as I watch it spread.
Please. Take it.
It stretches toward the window. I follow it---and that’s the mistake.
Fuck. I looked away.
It’s gone. All that’s left where it was is the curtain’s shadow, moving in the breeze. There's only the faintest outline of light around where the puddle dissolved. It's the single trace of whateverthemotherfuck that thing was in the spot where it vanished and I know the stain of it will glow till morning comes.
I get up and shut the window.
I keep asking myself how many times I have to do this before I just take it on the chin and find another place---another place that will for sure cost almost twice as much---how much longer am I going to let it do what it does?
"Forever" I whisper to myself as I collapse beneath the sheet, "if you have to." They didn't tell me about the thing, but there's a reason why they wouldn't tell me why the rent was so low when I asked.
"What's wrong with it?" I said as I signed the lease.
And the guy asked me what I meant.
"Why is the rent so cheap?"
This is why…
…this thing.
...and it keeps doing the doorway shit every fucking time I try to fuck. That’s the fourth time I’ve watched it now, since I moved in a little over a month ago---almost every time Clay leaves.
I just want to get laid in my own apartment in peace.
“Fuck you, you awful fucking thing, whatever the fuck you are.” I whisper.
It doesn't scare me. It never really did except for the one time.
I spun that moment on its head as fast as I could. Laid down the law.
I can handle it over there. I can even handle it when it lies down right beside the bed. Sometimes.
That can’t happen all the time.
It’s too creepy.
But what I won't put up with is---I won't put up with the bullshit it tried that first time.
If it does what it did that night when I brought that sloppy-drunk girl, Misty, from The Taverna Room home ever again I'll kill it---again---maybe. I mean, if it's a ghost or something. I'll have to kill it again because it's already dead. Or maybe it's not a ghost and it never lived. I don't know, I guess. I know that right now, it's not alive.
Alive things don't fuck with time when they come into your bedroom uninvited and sink into the floor.
Either way, I meant what I said when I yelled at it.
I didn’t see it trying to remember how to watch us as my face was buried between her legs, but Misty screamed and I mean a real scream. Not a quiet one like the noise I made tonight with Clay.
I didn’t know why she screamed, but the sex was done immediately. She left very fast.
If it ever does the thing it did that night again, it will not do anything again. Ever.
And I'm not talking about scaring away house guests either. I don't really care about that girl, Misty. She was weird. Hot, but weird.
I'm talking about the thing it did to me: that night was the first time I saw it and the final---and only---time I woke up to find it next to me in bed.
I awoke to find the shape of its hand, of its cold, paper-thin, dead hand, gently wrapped around one of mine.
I shot up, jumped out of the bed with a scream and stood in the corner.
I stared at it and it stared back. (I think?)
It never moved.
I tried to look into its eyes. I had to make sure it understood how quickly I could shift from horrified to furious. Before that night, I’d yelled about a lot of things that people have done. They listen better when you make direct eye contact and you keep it.
Now---that’s the key. Don’t ever look away when you’re yelling at someone.
Same is true with other things. Think about it. Of course you're not supposed to yell at a dog when it does something bad but you look it in the eyes don't you?
Anything you want to teach a lesson, when you're teaching that lesson, the thing will listen better if you make eye contact.
Okay, great. Now, where the fuck we're it's eyes?
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to do that to a thing with vortexes or vortices or whatever for eyes.
I just did my best and made sure I looked at its head and made sure it knew I was pissed off.
“Look, you fucking thing, here’s what’s up: I work too goddamn hard to fork up over half of what I make for rent just because you want to haunt an apartment you don’t even live in. I’m fairly sure you’re not even fucking alive, is that right? That’s why Misty screamed and left? She saw you watching us. So you want to know how it feels to be alive? Fine. I can deal with that. I’ll live in a haunted apartment. That’s fucking fine.”
I pointed my finger at it and began raising my voice more, making sure it could really feel my rage, “We need some fucking rules here if you think you're going to haunt my place. Got it?”
“Number one is, don’t show yourself to other people. Especially don’t get seen by Clay. I can handle this kind of shit. He can’t. If you have to make somebody see you then I'm the only one, okay? I don't need my fuck-buddies screaming out of my door before I get off. Do you got that one?”
“Ok, good Number two is this: If I ever---and I really mean if I ever---If I ever fucking wake up again to find you touching my hand, I’m not going to run from this apartment. I’m not going to move out and just let you do this shit to someone else---do you hear me? I pay for this fucking apartment---not you---and you're not getting rid of me, so you better fucking listen: the next time you EVER do what you just did to me again, will be the last time you do anything ever again.”
I paused for effect, raising my eyebrows and lighting a fire inside my eyes as I said this: “I’ll burn this fucking place to the ground and I’ll do it with both of us still in it.”
“Haunted apartment? Who gives a fuck? It can be a haunted burned out pile of rubble and it will be if you touch me again. I’m not fucking moving. I’m paying what I’m paying for this place and not a penny more and if you fuck that up, I’ll stay here, just like you---forever. I’ll haunt you right back...If you think you want to haunt me, go ahead and do it then. That's fine. But if you piss me off you sure as fuck don't want me here forever fucking haunting you...I will make you miserable. Trust me. Don't fucking touch me. You do not have my consent.”
I asked again, low and sharp. “Do you hear me?”
It might’ve nodded. I think. I couldn’t tell---and I didn’t want to look harder.
“Goddamn right you do. Now get the fuck out of my bed.”
Now, whenever I see it---
---it always sleeps on the floor.
