The unwelcome guest

It was Friday evening when I entered the living room with a bowl of noodles and found a person sitting on the carpet. It was raining outside. Or was it snowing? At least, it was a cold season. It is not important. The days and months had blended into one for me by that time. What mattered was that it was a Friday evening. All this long workweek just to enjoy a sprinkle of fun that weekends used to be before my unwelcome guest’s arrival. 

I was confident that the door was locked. But then again, I had become forgetful lately. My wife complained about me heating up and forgetting food in the microwave. It took a couple days for the laundry to be turned from the washing machine to the dryer. 

Somehow, having a stranger in my apartment didn’t freak me out. I sat on the couch beside him. He didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. He kept sitting- his legs stretched, his arms propping up his body, shoulders relaxed. Usually, either a chest or a belly moves when breathing. But his whole body was motionless. He might as well have been a sculpture. His eyes blinked only a couple of times.

It felt like I was watching a movie in slow motion. It was as if five seconds of a movie scene had been stretched into five minutes or more. I wasn’t a participant, just an observer. And the movie wasn’t even interesting; it was the kind of film you put on to keep your mind off tiring thoughts.

 Lately, I have had a lot of thoughts. It took an effort to single out one thought that was supposed to be the most relevant to this situation. A stranger walked into my apartment. I was supposed to freak out and call the police and order him out. But I did neither of these. I fell asleep instead. It was a good sleep—deep, blank, and uninterrupted. 

I woke up with neck pain and was in the same sitting position the following day. I threw away the cold noodles and brewed some coffee. My wife walked into the kitchen. I brewed her coffee, too. She didn’t comment on my sleeping in the living room. It was as if she hadn’t noticed it at all. I decided not to mention my weird dream about the strange, unfamiliar person. We drank coffee in silence, then continued with our days. We would go to work, return, have dinner, and sleep.

The wife worked at a cosmetic brand store, sold these seven or whatever number of layers of care, a product that did something to your skin, and another one that canceled out what that product had done. Not really needed by most, but kept afloat by beauty standards. I worked in the finance department of a pharmaceutical company. I dreamed about Excel tables and medications at night.

In the evening, we met in the kitchen. 

“I’ll fix us something,”-she said. 

She grabbed vegetables and started peeling them. She talked about her customers. Or her friends. Or that boring TV show she had picked up on lately. Just a meaningless conversation. She gestured occasionally and looked at me to see my reaction. I didn’t really follow. I couldn’t. I was thinking about that strange dream. I followed just enough to know when to put occasional uh-hughs and “oh my god,” working hard on making them sound concerned enough. It seemed to be working.

Then she put a plate in front of me and sat beside me. The soup tasted blend. I looked up to grab a salt shaker without her noticing, but she had been gone. Her dirty plate was in the sink. Even with the salt, the soup tasted like air. I threw the soup into the trash can, washed the dishes, and went to the bedroom. The bed was empty, and something about the darkness in the room made me want to walk out of there. I found my wife in the living room.

She had just peacefully turned on Netflix on the TV. She asked me what I wanted to watch.

“Anything,” I said.

She put something on. The logo appeared, and then the screen went blank. My wife stared at the blank screen, laughing occasionally or inserting remarks as she usually did. I sat there. Staring at anything didn’t feel tiring; I had enough thoughts to keep me busy.

Next Friday, when the strange guest paid the second visit, I knew it hadn’t been a dream. Just like before, he sat frozen and silent. Then he’d be gone. I would fall asleep or get too deep in my thoughts to notice him leaving. Soon, his visits became more frequent. Whenever my wife wasn’t home, he’d emerge in the hallway, come close enough so that I could see tiny black dots on his nose, and sit next to me silently, staring into the emptiness. 

I have learned of the things that indicated his presence. 

First, the temperature dropped. We never had to turn on the radiators to the max. Our apartment was in one of the newly built residential complexes, which had better insulation in its walls, and all our windows faced south. But now, even if we did, it did not help. Surprisingly, when it got colder, my wife’s body temperature got weird. She’d walk around in a T-shirt while I breathed cold steam and pulled out a duvet at night. 

Then I’d feel like I was in a bubble, like in one of these water balls, people get in in waterparks or beaches and try to walk. It muffles all the outside noises. Then, suddenly, I’d hear this loud grating sound. Similar to one when an awkward classmate scratches a board with a chalk. When I was in school, they used whiteboards and markers. So, I only knew what it sounded like from movies. 

Let me explain how my guest looks. When I first saw him, I had a sort of Deja Vu. The face looked strangely familiar, but it was probably because it was the most average face. It got blended with all the other faces, and it became difficult to recognize it. You would most probably walk past it on the busy streets. It had an indistinctive facial expression. You could not possibly guess if it was happy or sad.

At first, he’d just come and sit. But sometime later, he started doing weird things. 

The last time, the kitchen started smelling of something rotten. It was like that gut-wrenching smell that appeared in my grandparents’ summer house when a mouse died behind the couch. I threw away the trash, but the smell stayed. It was getting stronger and stronger by the day, so we moved around all the furniture and found that the guest had shoved a few of the leftover pizza slices behind the fridge. The green mold grew on top of it.

The other time, I couldn’t find my bathroom belongings. Even though my space on the bathroom shelf takes up less than a fourth of it, and my wife occupies most of it with her endless care products, it took the only three things I had: my toothbrush, my face towel, and my shaving creme.

The wife didn’t comment anything. She’d just give me an uncomfortable look.

Now, you couldn’t say I hadn’t done everything I could to eliminate that strange guest. 

 “Who are you?” I asked. 

The guest acted as if he didn’t hear me. 

“What do you want?” I repeated louder.

The guest remained motionless, not even an eye movement. In fact, he completely ignored my presence. He looked so authoritative that soon enough, I started doubting if it was me coming to his apartment unannounced. I opened the front door and gestured fiercely towards it.

“Go! Leave!” I screamed.

No reaction. Then, something unexplainable happened. When I grabbed him by the shoulder, my hand went right through it. He looked solid, not different from a regular person, except that he wasn’t material.

The police fined me for a false call. By the time it arrived, the guest had been gone.

I had nothing better to do than to call a friend. We had been buddies since middle school and the best men at each other’s weddings. He had scratched someone’s car really badly and was dealing with lawsuits. 

“So what did you say, some guest at your place?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I replied. “We were just having guests over tonight to play board games.”

 By that time, I had to somehow deal with this alone. People were of no help. Even my wife. I couldn’t find a way to explain to my wife why I couldn’t kick him out or get rid of him otherwise.

Soon enough, my wife threw her clothes in the suitcase and told me she was going to live in her parents’ house for a couple of weeks. “Water my orchids twice a week. Put some sugar in the water,” she said. Then she slammed the door. Maybe she didn’t slam it. I don’t really know. But I remember her leaving was loud, and the apartment has desolated since then.

She must have been disappointed about my failing to eliminate the unwelcome guest.

Thoughts started hurting my brain, so I grabbed a random newspaper. Soon enough, I forgot what I was reading and started over. It was in English, but the text made no sense. So I put it aside. What else? A friend from Delaware had sent me an email. She had passed her bar exam and was moving towns. I couldn't craft up a response. I typed a sentence. It didn't sound what I wanted to say at all. I deleted it and typed it again. But no lack. It was like my thoughts and the typed words were disconnected. I couldn't bring myself to write. So, I turned on my laptop with no particular purpose. 

After a while, my stomach started hurting, and I realized I hadn't eaten. The fridge was empty except for a can of half-drunk Pepsi, two lemons that had grown blue mold on them, and some leftover rice. I ate the rice and drank the rest of the Pepsi. The silence was too loud, so I put on some random YouTube video that appeared on the recommendations. It occupied my brain for a while.

The next day, I passed that guest in my office building. His lack of distinguishing features made it hard to recognize him anywhere else outside of my home. I was walking toward the water cooler when he walked out of the office kitchen. Later, the guest entered the office and sat in the corner armchair. 

I opened the office fridge at lunchtime and saw uneven bites on the packed sandwich. I opened the lid of the bowl, and two spoons of soup were left on the bottom—well, maybe three. I looked at the sandwich for a while, then threw it in the trash can. Then, I washed my bowl in the sink and put it on the dryer rug to let it dry.

“No appetite?” asked one of my colleagues.

I glanced at her and, maybe a little more aggressively, shook my head. 

 My colleagues continued chatting when I left the kitchen. 

At work, the day passed as always. I only pretended to listen. My mind was all the unwelcome guest. I had mastered the concerned and attentive look, frowning my eyebrows just enough to show I was thinking hard but not overdoing it to not seem like I was having a bad day. 

None of what was happening made sense. Did everyone know about him? Maybe my wife had known about the guest all along, too. This is why she made no mention of his presence at our place, which confused me even more. Who was this guest, and why did he start coming to my apartment?

One colleague left his seat and entered the hall to get coffee from the coffee machine. This guy had entered the company not long after I did. Sometimes, we used to grab a beer together at the bar across the street after work. Even though I stopped taking the invitations after the guest's appearance, we would still exchange small talk during the cigarette breaks. He was shorter than my wife and had to tiptoe to reach the shelf where the sugar was. I stood near.

“No sugar for you?”

“What? Oh. Yes, Please.”

“It looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while,” he complained. “I already called my wife.”

He handed me the coffee I never wanted. I thanked him.

“Oh, this new guy who came today is silent as hell,” I launched off, and then cut myself off. A premonition told me I had better not bring up this topic. He blew at his coffee, took a loud sip, and walked away. He didn't hear me. Or pretended not to hear. But from the tense and uncomfortable atmosphere in the kitchen, I knew enough not to ask. I poured my coffee down the sink, put the cup in the dishwasher, and walked down the corridor back to the office. For the rest of the afternoon, he avoided looking at my side.

When I got home, the apartment was dark. It smelled of cold. The story of my life: I would drink till I passed out, would wake up with a taste of alcohol in my mouth and a headache pounding in my head, would take aspirin, and would head to work too late to have breakfast. Then my wife would get on my case about it. She made me change that habit of mine when we married. Three years ago, it was. But now she was not here, and I drank all I wanted. 

The next day, the boss called me for an individual meeting.

“You haven't been keeping up with your work lately. You submitted the quarterly report four days late.”

I was silent. 

“Care to explain?”

“Well, you see, there is this guest in my house,” I started but cut myself off. 

“Whatever is happening in your house should not affect your work. The fine will be deducted from your salary. If you don't bring yourself to senses…”-he didn't finish his sentence, but he didn't have to. I knew exactly what he wanted to say. 

When the wife returned from her parents, she rushed to the window to check her flowers first. Only then did I remember their existence. 

She nagged, "What was so difficult about watering them? It's not like I asked you to water them with Fillico Jewelry Water*!"

I didn't reply to anything. That night, the guest didn't leave at all. I didn't sleep. In the morning, my wife left for work, completely ignoring him as he stood right next to my headboard and paralyzed me. I was lying on my bed, waiting for him to leave.

Then the door opened, and the wife turned on the lights. I didn't notice how dark it had been. I couldn't understand how the evening had come so fast; it felt like only an hour had passed. My head was pounding as if someone tiny and very mean lived there and stomped, scratched, and punched me from the inside. That someone really hated me.

“You didn't get up today at all?” said my wife.

Her voice came to me slowly, a bit delayed. I heard it as if I was underwater. 

She said something else afterward, but I didn't hear it. I couldn't. I had to watch the guest who was still standing by my headboard. Somewhere, something deep inside me got mad at the wife for not acknowledging the guest, but tiredness was stronger. Then I couldn't feel angry anymore. Then I thought I was probably fired by now, but this thought didn't ignite any emotion in me. My insides had gone numb.

“You’ve become so different lately,” said my wife as she turned off the lights and closed the door, leaving me in the darkness.

I couldn't understand the wife's reaction, and I didn't understand why the coworkers had acted the way they had. All I knew was that this strange visitor was tied to me, and everyone else seemed to ignore that.

 Then I sat on my bed, which shook from the sudden movement. I knew why the guest looked familiar. I had known him when he was a kid. He was probably my age. I saw him first at my mother's funeral. After that, he'd be sitting outside in the schoolyard motionless, and I'd see him in the window from the classroom for years.

The memories of those years after my mother's death were something my mind had tried to suppress. Then I moved towns, entered the university, and met my wife, but he has been gone until now. 

When I woke up, I had a bad premonition. The apartment looked empty and smelled lonely. The clouds that had been swirling outside broke, and thunder began. The rain was aggressively knocking at the windows. I turned on the lights. The wardrobe door was slightly open. I found the other half of it empty. I rushed to the living room's window. The flowers by the window were gone, too. 

I walked to the kitchen and poured myself a drink. That was the moment when the guest walked in and sat opposite me. I poured him a drink, too. And for the first time, he looked straight into my eyes.

 “Help yourself to a drink,” I said. “It’s always been just the two of us. You’re not a guest anymore; you’re my roommate.”

*Fillico Jewelry Water is one of the most luxurious bottled waters in the world. It is sourced from a spring in Kobe, Japan, and is known for its high price.