The floorboards stuck to my back like a plunger as I clambered up from the floor, until finally the boards plopped off my back and wobbled for a while jelly-like before they turned into solid wood again. Heh. Solid wood. Right, off to the closet. It’s spring cleaning time. I’ve gotta roll out all the cleaning equipment and take inventory of what’s left so I don’t get surprised come time for next year’s spring cleaning.
The calendar on the wall said November but I couldn’t make out the year, no matter how hard I tried squinting the text was just a blur. When are they gonna fix that? Oh well, enough horsing around. I’ve got all the different detergents lined up on the table, sorted by height and colour. Took me twenty minutes to decide on a sorting method. I had of course started off by wiping the table clean before I piled the supplies on it, and then I continued by cleaning all the other surfaces. A little breather will do nicely after finishi–
I stopped in my tracks. I was like a lightswitch that had been flicked, a little click and everything went dark. I know those footsteps. The cadence and weight. And they’re getting closer to the door. Three… two more steps… The door opens and he barges in. Let us call him Mr. Denim. Before the door has time to close it happens. I know what’s coming next. Let’s rewind half a second. The stool I was standing on earlier to wipe off the dust from the top of the bookshelf is next to the door. As Mr. Denim flies through the door to enter the house he kicks the stool and his head swells up like a tomato as he starts shitting f-bombs from his foul orifice like someone slipped an extra potent laxative into his morning espresso.
I keep rewinding the fatal scene in my head a few more times, hoping it would play out differently. It never does. “The fuck?! Who left..? Fucking stool!” If I move the stool next time to the right side of the door… I should’ve started earlier so I could have been finished with the cleaning by now… “Velvet! What are you standing there for? I’m here to check on my favourite tenant.” He’s talking to me. He thinks he’s the landlord. He’s not. No trousers. He’s got his cock out again. It looks like a retired shrimp, sun tanning at some holiday resort for pricks, all curled up on the beach. Get a fig leaf, geezer.
“Eek!” I screamed within myself, hoping a shrill thought would pop him and make him disappear. Bloody windbreaker wearing weirdo. Hey! Don’t just go opening people’s fridges, you disgusting freak. My hands were glued to my sides. Had I wanted to move them I couldnt have. But since I couldn’t it must’ve meant that I didn’t want to. “Sit down, Velvet.” His mouth half-full of deli meat and breadcrumbs all-over the table I’d just wiped clean. “Say, what were you doing? Spring cleaning? In the middle of November?” I could hear the annoyance in every word of his remark. “This kind of negligence would not fly at my place. What a joke. Let’s talk about your rent.” That’s it.
Blood rushed from my toes to my head and the craggy peaks of my knuckles were like ski slopes during holiday season, waiting for unsuspecting skiers to get too brash and fall into the rocks to be mauled. I drew a sharp breath that cut my nostrils like mint. I was feeling fresh. I inhaled all the air in the room in one enormous never-ending gulp until I started sucking the walls like curtains into a black hole. The world was swirling rapidly and my emotions were flapping proudly on top of a flagpole.
I don’t know how these things happen but from somewhere in my skirt I had pulled out a knife. I pounced on the trouserless old man eating at my table, plunging the knife deep into his throat. I then proceeded to stab him eightyseven more times in the chest and lopping off various body parts, stuffing them neatly into a black plastic bag. Time to take out the trash, baby.
I clapped my hands and struck a victorious pose in the dark void that was my lair of despair. Behind me was a bright rectangular glow, a door into summer. My silhoutte contrasted against the white paper of the comic panel that was otherwise steeped in the darkest of inks. Not quite a two-page spread but an imposing panel nonetheless, drawn from a low angle trying to give a peek under my skirt for a pantyshot. Keep wishing, reader.
But, alas, as the law says, every elation must be quickly followed by deflation. And as suddenly as it changed the world was back to the way it was earlier. I started to feel queasy and dizzy. The floorboards were coming to meet me again and I could expect to swallow a lot of dust after I’d thump to the floor unconscious.
When I came to the dust had already started to accumulate visibly. Everything felt like a dream. The spring cleaning. The unsolicited presence of Mr. Denim. The murder. Did all that really happen? The calendar still said November and the year was still illegible. I didn’t keep track of days so for all I knew it could be December of last year or maybe I slept for a whole year and it was now November of the next year. That would explain the dust. No, not really. Nothing still makes any sense, but I’ve got no other choice. This will have to do.
It had been six years. Atleast I had counted the seasons passing six times and by that reckoning six years would have passed by, but what do I know. It had been six years since I awoke in this empty one-room cottage without memories. I was alone.
Seemingly so was the building. It had no furniture and it was a sad sight, sitting there on the muddy ground of a dried up riverbed. Had been for a while. Over time I made excursions to an equally sad city, not far from the cottage but devoid of people. Atleast I was able to haul some furniture back from there. The place gives me the creeps. I would rather stay in the cottage than spend any more time in the city than necessary, but I have to go there to gather supplies every now and then.
The area around the house was open with tall grass growing all around and there were old abandoned military vehicles from different eras all rusty and crumbling plotted here and there. They must’ve been thoroughly looted decades ago. No one lived here except myself. Time seemed to loop over itself again and again. Not in a way where the same day repeats itself. In this place time kept moving like normal. Well, not exactly normal. It didn’t really move either. How do I put this…
Life doesn’t happen moment to moment. There is no leap from one moment to another. There is only one moment that keeps stretching on to infinity, like a sheet that is being pulled from all four ends into different directions, it keeps stretching. And as it does, it keeps getting thinner and tighter. As life goes on and days accumulate, that one moment seems unfit to contain all of it.
I wonder what happens when it becomes too tight? Death? Or could it be the cause of my blackouts? Does someone let go of the corners of the “sheet of time” and then I wake up when they pick them up again? Why are they pulling it? Are they torturing me or are they trying to help me by changing to a bigger sheet before the old one tears in half? If they even know that I exist that is. Too many questions.
With no memories I didn’t have a clue what to do, but this decrepit cottage seemed comforting so I made it my home and we got along well. I was happy to subsist on what I found in the city and what little I found scavenging around the riverbed. The city never ran out of things to gather. It seemed like everytime I went there the whole place had shifted a little somehow. One could lose oneself in there without knowing it.
Then one day Mr. Denim appeared, claiming to be the landlord. He said he lived in a shack not far from the cottage but I never saw any shack. He would appear sometimes at night, sometimes early in the morning, always unexpectedly and uninvited. He was a block of granite. Nothing got through to him, like he was following a track on rails and couldn’t perceive anything else. I had tried to get rid of him multiple times. By fire, by water, by steel and by force of will. Nothing worked. Mostly I’ve just learned to ignore him. Mostly.
One time Mr. Denim spoke to me about something else than his delusions about being a landlord. “Velvet.” That’s not what he called me but I call myself Velvet because I don’t want to use his words. “D’you know what, or rather who, brought us here, us both? We’re not so dissimilar. The grass here sways because the Laughing Wind blows. She’s the driver behind this car wreck.” What is that supposed to mean? I was drinking at the time, warming myself outdoors around a campfire and I wasn’t sure if I’d heard right. Mr. Denim had never spoken like that before and he’s only become more consumed by his delusions since then. His delusions? Somehow I’d remained critical enough in this place to question if he were actually a delusion of mine. But since nothing made sense, by the logic of this place Mr. Denim’s presence made more sense than most things. His unpredictable coming and going was a constant. A constant pain in the ass.
There was a pain in my back by the time I got up again. The dust coloured gloomy forenoon had changed into a gloomy afternoon the colour of dust. Somehow I always ended up on my back when I blacked out. Like a reverse cat. Good thing I didn’t throw up, though I still felt a little queasy. The floorboards weren’t acting funny for once. That’s unusually normal. I bent down to take a closer look. As I ran my hand over the old boards I could feel a definite breeze coming from under there. Shivers ran up my spine like a squirrel up a tree. The breeze was whispering something. What? This shocking revelation made me forget all about the pain in my back. Well, not so much shocking as intriguing. I had to find out what’s under there. While still covered in a light layer of dust, in my excitement I got up a little too quickly and threw up all-over the floorboards. Goddammit…
I squatted and wiped my mouth awkwardly on the hem of my skirt and then got to work inspecting the floorboards. They were old and worn with deep grooves in some of the planks. I could just about fit half a finger between a few of them. Hmm… I thought to myself while thinking to myself that I was thinking to myself. After some fruitless consideration I thought I’d best pour a drink for myself and drink to myself. Cheers. Ahh, that hit the spot. I put the bottle back on my shelf and got back to my search.
–You need something to pry the floorboards with.
Yeah, thanks for the hint. Could’ve figured that one out on my own.
My fingers were as cold and stiff as the crowbar by the time I got back inside. I kept a bunch of junk piled up behind the building, that’s where the crowbar usually was, but the son of a bitch had rolled into the long grass and was hidden behind all the junk. I searched for it long enough to start nursing a deep hatred for November weather. But I’m quick to forgive. Live and let live. Whatever.
I jammed the crowbar between two planks and leaned on it with all the weight my tiny frame could muster. C’mon, budge you motherfucker. I had to take a break after a few tries. I was still panting when I decided, enough with caution, and threw myself against the crowbar. Something cracked, little pieces of wood and dust flew up in the air and the whole floor collapsed under me. I didn’t have time to be surprised.
I was falling.
And I kept falling.
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