Robert walked in the middle of the street, pinned in by the imposing snowdrifts on either side. By the rusted-orange light of the street lamps, Robert could see the wind carrying fat wet snowflakes at a sideways angle to lay siege on the small Maine town like a plague of locusts. The neighborhood, otherwise intimately familiar to Robert, had been rendered foreign by the storm. Lines of shrubs were now barren hills; glowing houses were fragile sanctuaries. The temperature hovered at freezing exactly, making the precipitation as heavy and sticky as can be. This snow did not crunch–it squelched under Robert’s boots. Flakes clung to his lashes and there was a persistent drip coming from his stubby nose.
Passing by on Robert’s right was the street’s abandoned house. Snow totally obscured its driveway and the steps leading up to the front porch, which itself, though mostly protected by an overhang, was taking on accumulation on the perimeter. It was a plain white one-storied building with windows on either side of the front door that configured a face out of the entrance of the house, the expression of which struck Robert as dumbfounded and naive. Robert didn’t know who had lived there before, but he hadn’t seen any activity on the property in at least a year.
The modesty of the house appealed to Robert. It was the sort of house he could see himself in. Robert wasn’t a man who asked for much. The only things he wanted were things he needed. By his estimation, thirty-three was too old to be living with his wife in an apartment. It was humiliating. A man needs a house.
At the end of the street was Robert’s apartment, a refurbished second-floor of a garage, what Robert’s father called a mother-in-law spot, “where you stuff her and forget her.” The garage’s next-door two-story home was leased out to another couple from out of state that Robert had never met. Julia’s car was buried in the driveway, looking like a cupcake with a too-generous helping of icing. A day’s worth of plowing had erected a wall of snow at the foot of the driveway that reached Robert’s chin. The snow was solidly packed, and in places resembled a mound of boulders. Robert grumbled and cursed as he scrambled to the apartment’s entrance at the side of the garage.
Once inside, Robert dutifully announced his arrival in a series of loaded noises: the slamming of the door, the clomping up the staircase and the stomping on the welcome mat, each step shedding gritty ice and snow from his boots’ ragged soles. At the top of the stairs he sloughed off his winter clothes and slouched towards the kitchen, where Julia was cooking up beef and potato stew with biscuits. It was their first meal in a week that hadn’t been a scrounging of odds and ends, and his wife’s effort softened Robert ever so slightly.
“Hey baby,” he sighed, collapsing into a chair at their dinner table. He could’ve fallen asleep right there. Clasping his hands behind his head and closing his eyes, Robert held his breath and imagined for a few precious seconds that he wasn’t there presently and wouldn’t be there later.
“Hey.” Julia stepped from the stove to deliver a small peck on Robert’s forehead that sheened with sweat and snowmelt. Julia had worked from home that day. Her position was half-remote, which meant she could go into an office building when she wanted to, but Robert rarely saw her do so. Most days she opted to work in her pajamas at her desk in the living room, hunched over a laptop with headphones on. Robert wasn’t sure exactly what his wife did for work. He couldn’t swallow the notion that a computer-job was a real job. He felt that a job on your personal computer in the comfort of your home only served to cut you off from all the little uncomfortable everyday things that made you a competent human. Computer-jobs sprouted up left and right while their local grocery didn’t have enough employees to have more than two checkout lanes working at a time. Robert was proud to work at the Prompto Oil Change. He felt lucky to have found a service job that kept his dignity mostly intact. You had to have specific skills to do the job Robert did, and he had the privilege of having coworkers he could call buddies and that he saw in the flesh, not via screens. Robert saw people every day. People knew him and needed him. Every morning he left home to go out into the world and came home at night tired and with grease on his hands. Julia made five more dollars an hour than Robert.
“You ever seen that abandoned house at the end of our street?”
Julia looked over her shoulder, then back to the stew. “No, what house?”
“One story. White with a front porch. Walking home I noticed it’s abandoned.”
“I never noticed.”
Computer-jobs had robbed Robert’s wife of her ability to observe the world around her. He silently watched her cook. He couldn’t see her face but he could picture it: Round and childlike, mouth usually open but not agape, head topped with a frizzy halo of colorless hair. Glasses made her inset eyes look normal-sized. They’d met in high-school and decided to invest.
Robert scratched at the razor burn speckling his fleshy neck. “We could move in and no-one would notice, I bet.”
“Mm.” Julia took the biscuits out of the oven.
“Just put our stuff there. Make new accounts for water and electricity. No rent. People will think we always lived there.” Out the window, snow continued to accumulate, shaping a new topography of the backyard. “I’m only half-kidding.” He audibly grunted as he stood to go to the bathroom and take a shower.
“Were you talking to me?” Julia called when he closed the door.
For weeks Robert’s thoughts returned to the abandoned house. Fantasies where he broke in and started anew sprung up at common moments of frustration or disappointment. Constantly Robert walked to the precipice of commitment and looked over the edge. His father would have done it. Often he told Robert about the pains he’d taken as a young man to achieve consistency and comfort, the stolen appliances, fibs to landlords and risky gambles that paid off bigtime. The canvas of his father’s life was a direct reflection of his character. Robert longed to interface with his own life in the same way, in a direct series of actions and reactions, rather than submitting to a vague fate that was decided day by day. His life was a series of holes he’d fallen into and made the best of.
“Well, no more,” Robert decided one day on his walk home. “Julia doesn’t get it–I don’t care. I’ll at least see if I can get in, take a look around. Worst comes to worse, a realtor is pissed. That’s nothing.” He proceeded like this for a while, talking to himself out loud to gas himself up, when he saw a light on in the window of the abandoned house. His house. The light was muffled slightly by blinds drawn shut, blinds not drawn before, but it was there, steady and real. No shadows moved behind the blinds to betray a sign of life. Staring in disbelief, Robert stood stock-still in the middle of the street, his breath coming out in wavering plumes of steam. He habitually moistened and re-moistened his chapped lips. Someone had gotten the guts to do Robert’s idea before Robert. A scowl spread across his face like an oozing pool of oil.
“It’s been taken.” These were Robert’s first words to Julia when he got home. She was at her desk in the living room, headphones on, doing something on her computer.
“What has?” Julia asked like Robert had diverted her attention from something important, even though Robert could clearly see she’d been clicking between tabs of email and social media.
“The house I’ve told you about,” said Robert, raising his voice.
“Doesn’t surprise me it went fast. You see how properties have been going left and right around here. Climate crisis,” Julia added, as if this explained everything. Her eyes never left the screen.
“No!” huffed Robert, “It hasn’t been sold–it’s still all broken down. I just saw a single light on.” He walked into the kitchen has he continued to speak in a raised voice, and irritably noticed that Julia hadn’t made any moves to start dinner. What else did she have to do with herself? He stalked back into the living room. “I think it’s squatters. Probably crackheads.”
Julia made a show of considering the possibility, pointing her eyes up as if there was a projection of the supposed scenario on the ceiling, then shrugged with exaggerated physicality. “Honestly, that wouldn’t bother me. It’s not like the government is doing anything to help these people. More power to them.”
“Really?” Robert was indignant. “You’re alright with violent freaks holing up down the street from us?”
“Didn’t you also want to squat there?”
“You know how it’s different. I’m not a crackhead. I can’t believe you’re fine with living on the same street as crackheads!”
“Or maybe they’re refugees,” Julia mused. “People who need it more than us.”
“Or refugee crackheads.” Fuming, Robert took the five steps from the living room to the bedroom and slammed the door.
Night after night Robert saw that light in the window. It felt like an attack, like a hateful flag was hanging there. It reminded Robert of every opportunity he’d ever missed. His whole life he’d been two steps behind, and just when he thought he’d gotten ahead of the curve, this happens–junkies stumble in and apparently it’s justified. It seemed that only those who lived in extremes, rich or poor, were catered to in this world. Guys like Robert who stayed on the straight and narrow were, at best, left unserved, and at worst, punished, when all they did was put in the work. All this time, should he have invested his efforts in fringe opportunities? Neglected his duties as a citizen? It was maddening–Robert’s fantasy of the house had been hijacked by the crackheads. Stirring visions of resourcefulness had morphed into demented depictions of destitution: five or six dope fiends splayed out on the living room floor that was carpeted with trash and needles, a neglected child in the bedroom, out of sight out of mind, too malnourished to summon the will to cry. Freaks like runt chickens sitting on Robert’s golden egg.
Throughout the winter the house sat there atop its raised slope, one light on in the window, no other signs of life, no sign of a realtor. Julia’s apathy on the subject endured. To her, nothing was wrong. She had given up, Robert decided grimly one day. Everything about their circumstances–tiny apartment, underpaid jobs, stagnant marriage–seemed to suit Julia just fine. She desired nothing. It was depressing. One night Robert asked her if she ever considered downsizing to a coffin, to which she chuckled stupidly. Robert gave up trying to relate to his wife. She was made of computer parts.
An inescapable slurry of mud and ice announced the arrival of March and of Maine’s gross and slothful melting season. The sun was preternaturally present on this particular workday in early March. It melted at least half the mass of the crusty heaps of snow that huddled in corners of parking lots, casting glittering rivulets of ice water across the asphalt that looked like the veins of a sleeping pavement giant. Robert was at the Prompto Oil Change. It was conveniently located next to an on-ramp to the highway, meaning customers could pull out of the garage and usually get on the highway without stopping. Most customers stopped by on their way to work.
Robert was in a foul mood. His landlord had notified him ahead of his lease renewal that rent would be going up to a price that Robert and Julia couldn’t afford. They would have to find a new apartment. The prospect of moving again felt more catastrophic than the threat of death. Robert wasn’t suicidal, but he did yearn for death. It seemed like such sweet relief to be dead, to be totally purged of life’s endless agitations. Death’s promises were Robert’s only solace.
He beckoned to the next vehicle in line, a pristine new Hyundai driven by a youngish, smartly dressed woman with shiny hair and red lipstick. As he guided her to park squarely over the pit, Robert clocked her as someone with a computer-job, like Julia, but a much better paying one. Her blazer and makeup suggested office hours. She was texting when Robert approached the driver’s side door.
“Morning. Just an oil change today?”
Nothing. There was an airpod lodged firmly in the ear closest to Robert. The woman was hurriedly typing something on her phone, mouth slightly ajar so as to be prepped to communicate once the text was done. Robert dutifully stood by. The relative heat of the day induced a single trickle of sweat to travel down the clammy valley of his spine.
She looked up. “Sorry, I just had to respond to something; yes, please, thank you, just an oil change.”
“Alright, could you turn your key one click so I can check the odometer?” She turned the engine on. “Back one click, ma'am, just so the electricity is on.” The car turned off. “Okay, now just one click forward.” Eventually she got it and Robert recorded that there were five hundred miles on the odometer.
“I’m sorry I’m so stupid.” The woman offered Robert a pained grin, a pathetic expression he’d seen so many times on so many customers that it had long ago ceased to mean anything to him. Instead it registered in Robert’s brain as something to ignore, as if the woman had suffered an involuntary spasm in her face.
“Not a problem, ma’am. I’m going to get your new sticker while you get serviced and then we can get you on your way.” Robert took the woman’s card and retreated to the office to print off her receipt. He glared at the printer as it shuddered and processed his request. Something was happening inside Robert. A frightening volatility was building, like his body existed in the space between the flash of lightning and the clap of thunder, a quivering, violent edge. Robert wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. When the receipt was done printing he walked back to the Hyundai, unsteady on his feet like he was drunk. It occurred to him that this would be the last time he ever gave someone a receipt. His jaw was clenched tight as a vice. The woman took her card and the receipt from Robert, oblivious to the danger that had presented itself to her.
“Thank you, and if you don’t mind me asking, how much longer do you think this will take?”
“Only a few more minutes, ma’am.” Robert heard his words like someone else had said them.
“Okay. It’s just that I’m late in meeting a contractor about fixing up a property I just possessed. I’m a realtor,” she explained, humbly.
Robert’s breath imperceptibly quickened. He heard the voice outside his head ask, “Whereabouts is this property?”
“Oh, it’s only one exit down from here, a quiet suburban spot.”
She was talking about Robert’s house. His neighborhood was on the come up.
The woman thought she saw the oil-change man’s lips ever-so-slightly begin the shape of a snarl, before snapping back into neutrality. “Hold on one moment,” he said abruptly. While another worker slammed shut the hood of her car, the man escaped her view and descended into the pit. The woman sighed and texted her contractor that she would be late. Finally the man re-emerged. “Alright. Just had to check one thing.”
“Is everything alright? I just bought this car.”
“I thought I saw something with the brakes, but it was nothing.”
The garage door slowly opened. The woman was eager to leave. She suspected that the strange man with the clipped speech was saying cruel things about her in his head. But then again, the woman reasoned, her sister had always accused her of narcissistic tendencies. He was probably thinking about rent like the rest of us, she chided herself. Smiling thinly at the man, she mouthed ‘thank you’ as she pulled out of the garage and accelerated onto the highway. She saw him wave in her rearview.
Robert told the guys he was going home to eat lunch. He sprinted block after block, breath coming out in ragged gasps. The soles of his boots, at a critical point in their wear, slapped loudly against the wet pavement, an echo of Robert’s footfalls that suggested a pursuer. He would grab a few things from the house, catch a bus and then keep grabbing buses until it wouldn’t be worth it to the authorities to track him down. Cut breaks aren’t even necessarily a death-sentence for the victim. Thankfully Julia was at her office. They would be better off without each other. It was high noon and the spotless blue sky spread itself like a yawning maw.
Rounding the corner of his street, Robert was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of the house. Its white paint, dull as it was, combined with the snow, caused Robert to squint. He could still make out the light in the window. For a moment Robert stood stock-still in the street, staring at the house with vibrating eyeballs as his chest heaved up and down uncontrollably. Then he broke into a sprint once more, like a predator whose prey had leapt from the brush, except this time it was up the driveway of the house and towards the entrance. He took the porch steps all at once, and in one fluid movement, slammed his body against the door while testing the knob. It was locked. Without hesitation, Robert kicked the decrepit door again and again. His vision appeared to him as if at the end of a long tunnel. The door bulged, splintered, then gave, toppling inwards at a janky angle, the bottom hinge still holding on.
As Robert followed his momentum and tumbled into the house, the first thing he noticed was the smell. Images of rancid sewage and spoiled dairy flashed in Robert’s mind as he involuntarily gagged and pulled his jacket over his mouth a nose. Dust and chunks of drywall littered the floor, accompanied by miscellaneous scraps of tape, paper, nails and rodent droppings. The light-footed, electric adrenaline that had powered Robert thus far was replaced by a rich mass of horror that nonetheless compelled him to move forward on shuffling feet. He followed the stench to the kitchen, where he saw a few scattered chip bags that moved around his footsteps like autumn leaves, as well as a cast iron skillet on the stove. The fridge was empty and turned off. Nothing in the kitchen was the source of the sour, omnipresent stench. It was as if Robert had entered the rotting corpse of some long-dead beast. Leaving the kitchen, Robert followed the scent down the hall to the left. One door was open to reveal a derelict bathroom. One door, the one at the end of the hall, was closed. Just as Robert saw the door, he heard a sound beyond it: soft, muffled crying, steady and high-pitched. The crying, once perceived by Robert, re-ignited his rage, and he charged down the hall and pushed open the door to behold the house’s single occupant.
If the thing was human, it had been badly deformed, disfigured beyond recognition. There was no doubt that this was the source of the stench. In the room it was overwhelming, wave after wave of the putrid aroma making Robert’s eyes water. The thing’s skull was humongous and malformed, with a protruding forehead. There were crude clubs of flesh where the right arm and right leg were supposed to be. But the thing’s most heinous feature was its skin, which came down in drooping folds all over its body, gray and with the texture of cauliflower. It sat on a mattress on the flower, head on its knees, sobbing with fear. After a minute of silent horror, the thing raised its eyes to Robert, dark, glittering and deeply inset. Its lips were gnarled and chapped, and what teeth it possessed were jagged and misplaced. And yet, despite monstrous appearances, the thing was pitiable. When it and Robert made eye contact, its crying was replaced by a watery, high-pitched whistling sound that Robert came to understand as an attempt at speech. Unwanted tears sprung to Robert’s eyes as he leaned in to interpret the creature’s garbled speech, and eventually he understood that it was repeating just one thing, over and over, as it rocked on its mattress, shuddering and coughing, “Where can we go?”
Illustration by Liam Stride, @yikespanthercooze on Instagram
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