Agoraphobia

“It’s been a year today.”

A year? No. It couldn’t have been a year already.

I hadn’t seen my sister in so long. I hadn’t seen the sun in so long.

“You hear me? A year today,” my sister spoke over the phone. Her voice always grew warped by static. I used to think she was just perpetually travelling through a tunnel, but lately I realized that my basement caused the issue. Ever since I moved the house phone into the basement, people always spoke to me through static. “Do you need help?”

“No,” I answered, quick to deter her over-worrying. She had that tendency, with me especially. I was going on thirty-nine, but she still insisted upon mothering me. “I’ve just been tied up in this project. It’s almost done, anyhow.”

“I hope so. We’ll do lunch soon?”

“I promise.”

“I miss—”

Click. The phone cut out.

“Shit!” I cried. “Goddammit.”

I slammed the phone into the receiver and heard its plastic casing crack in response. The damn thing always did that. I didn’t deserve this. I paid my bills, didn’t I? Maybe it wasn’t meant to field calls through a concrete ceiling, but it should for what it cost.

I stayed put on my swivel stool, waiting for the phone to ring again. She wouldn’t let me go without saying she missed me. Besides, I still needed my ‘love you, see you soon’ today. I needed it even though the next time and place she proposed for lunch would miraculously conflict with my schedule anyway.

The clock on the wall ticked at me for about fifteen minutes before I decided she wasn’t calling back. Either that, or I’d really broken my phone this time.

Oh well. Back to work it was.

A man in a button down shirt whose teeth were too white smiled at me from my computer. Hundreds of frames of his face littered the screen in my program. My hiring manager sent me the raw footage last week, and needed it clean cut by tomorrow. It hadn’t taken very long to add graphics and work around the shitty audio, but it was only a singular piece of a mind-numbing series that never seemed to end. For the entire summer, I somehow got myself stuck editing this instructional DVD collection. How much instruction did it take to keep these corporate assholes from assaulting their coworkers anyway?

I couldn’t complain. It paid plenty to sit in this swivel chair and work in peace. I had a mortgage after all.

Besides, I dreaded the search for another employer once ‘Allen Capital Partners’ had no more use for me.

The computer screen flashed bars of blue and red, cutting through my program with its technical seizure. I used to panic, scrambling for a disk to save my work on. But I knew better by now. I sat back and allowed the driver to whir and throw a fit.

“You done?” I said when the program calmed down again.

I rewatched the man in the button-down explain the importance of Human Resources three times before I accepted that there was no more work to be done. My computer taunted me with its slowness as I opened my email. I refreshed the page fifty times in under a minute, convinced that another project would be underway soon. There was nothing.

The monitor blacked out entirely. I sighed and looked at my reflection in the computer screen.

I had a beard. Now when did that happen? It used to be trimmed and smooth and black. Now it looked as though you’d get a splinter from touching my face. The hair was all wiry and spiraled like a Brillo pad.

My razor must have been in the upstairs bathroom. Ah, it wasn’t worth it. I could rock the lumberjack look just fine.

The basement’s bathroom had just a toilet and sink. Deodorant, a toothbrush, and a rag sat on its counter. There wasn’t a door, but privacy wasn’t much of an issue living alone. I usually worked by the light of the bathroom anyway because the overheads burnt out awhile back.

There were bags beneath my eyes too. Now when did that happen?

I had a twin mattress down here, but I wasn’t using it enough. Most of my time was spent in front of the screen, and maybe that wasn’t good for my eyes, but I loved to work. That’s why they kept hiring me. No one else was going to put in as many hours as I would. All day. All night. I worked. That’s why I got paid, and all the other editors got pushed to the side. Because I would get it done.

My stomach gurgled audibly, and I winced at the ache it brought. I looked at the clock on the wall. Not even close to dinnertime, but I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch. Maybe if I ordered food now, it would arrive by dinnertime. I didn’t want to have to search the phonebook again. If only the damn computer would wake up. It didn’t usually take this long, so I mashed the keyboard to no avail.

The other night I had hot wings, but they didn’t agree with me. The lingering smell of them made me nauseous, and I had yet to toss the delivery bag. When I first discovered online ordering, I found that I could avoid answering the door by marking the basement with a sticky note and leaving special instructions to place the food there.

I supposed that meant my front door was always unlocked. But I hadn’t answered the front door in a while, and the basement had its own lock.

It wasn’t the inside of my house that I had to worry about anyhow. The public proved to be far more dangerous. Times were crazy in this city.

Hell, the last time I went to the corner store by myself, I got my wallet stolen! And it was the middle of the day for christ’s sake.

Now, wait. I wasn’t by myself, was I? No, my sister was in town then. She visited home that weekend, and we spent the whole day together. I showed her all the old haunts that she’d forgotten about. Nothing was quite the same though. The dog park was paved over for a mall. A Bank of America bought out what was once our favorite arcade. A couple that was younger than me moved into our parents’ old home. And our parents moved into the crematorium.

She wasn’t even at the funeral. My sister. She said she was busy.

It all turned upside down when she first left. She couldn’t just leave her hometown; she had to suck all the life out of it before she went. I never understood what her big, innovative tech job was anyway, or why it had to be on the other side of the goddamn country. But she loved it, and that was enough.

When we were kids, she told me we would live right next door to each other. That was a laugh.

But she came back after all, if only for the weekend. It was just a shame that guy had to ruin our day and mug me. He must’ve been pretty desperate for the twenty dollars in my pocket.

I never caught his face, but thinking about him made my stomach ache again. Some sickness wrenched at my abdominals so tightly I had to crawl to my mattress. I wrapped both arms around my stomach and curled up by the wall. The clock ticked on a few meters above my head.

That guy really ruined our weekend. My sister didn’t do anything when it happened. What could she do? She ran into the corner store and hid while some girl working the counter called the police. But me? I was left on the concrete outside, and it was scalding. Last summer, the sun burned uncharacteristically hot. I could’ve sworn I heard sizzling as my blood poured over the cement.

He took the wallet but left his knife. That was stupid of him. He ran away unarmed, but the police never caught up to him. That idiot had my credit card and my driver’s license and my family polaroid which was creased down the middle, yet he ran free.

I cried and cried out for my sister, but she wasn’t there. No one was. At least, she showed up once I got to a hospital. She took an impromptu week off to stay with me, then had another flight to catch back to the west coast.

My stomach ache wasn’t going away. In fact, it got worse. I groaned and stood up and tore that annoying clock off the wall. I meant to take out the batteries, to pause its incessant ticking, but a pang in my abdomen forced it from my hand. It’s casing shattered on the floor.

Shit. What a laugh. I was barefoot too.

I wished to have some Pepto-Bismol on me. I ran out ages ago, and I couldn’t bear to wait for another grocery order to ship.

That lingering smell of hot wings made me want to vomit. It wasn’t even the sauce; it was just the stench of meat rotting off the bone. I didn’t have those just the other night, did I? I ate those last week.

They were the last thing I ate.

Hell, my stomach was near eating itself now. The projects just took over like that sometimes.

My computer blinked back on and played a little start up tone. I lumbered towards it. The screen rendered. My program’s toolbar sat idly above a blank, gray canvas. A new project canvas.

I rushed to the mouse and searched through my files, but the HR rep whose teeth were too white was gone. All I had was raw footage again.

“Fuck you!” I shouted at my computer. The screen flickered in response. “You can’t do anything right.”

I ripped the monitor from its power cord and tossed it into the wall. It just blacked out. A thin crack ran down the middle of the screen. There went my paycheck.

The doorbell rang upstairs.

“What now?”

I made for the stairs but stepped on the glass innards of my clock. A palette of shards went into my left foot, and I yelled obscenities toward the floor. I didn’t bother picking the glass out of my foot. I just limped to the stairs and made my escape.

When I swung open the basement door, the stench of my own house made me heave and cough. Who the hell died in these walls? I limped on, passing a hallway of framed photos which I barely recognized. One picture gave me pause. It was old, old, old. I must’ve been around eight, and that would’ve made my sister about twelve. It was a Halloween picture of just the two of us, after our candy haul on the 31^st. She was dressed like a pirate. I was in a red and white striped sweater, like in the Where’s Waldo books. Our parents thought I was clever, but really I just didn’t want to put any effort into the costume. Maybe it was clever. We each held up our pillowcases of sweets. Hers was full; mine was a quarter full. Our mother made her share with me anyway.

That photo was my favorite, I thought.

The doorbell rang again.

“Just a minute!”

My foot started bleeding. I hoped it wasn’t anyone imposing at the door. I couldn’t bear to meet with some goddamn evangelist while I was in sweatpants and a shirt that’d gone from white to a stark yellow. I shouldn’t have said anything. Now they knew I was home.

I peered through the peephole of the front door. There stood my sister, glancing left and right as if unsure whether she had the correct house. Holy shit. That must’ve been a five hour flight. There had to be terrible news for this sort of surprise. Her husband died. Or she lost her job.

Oh God, why would she come to me?

The door was already unlocked. I opened it just a crack, enough to see her smile.

“Is that you?” she said.

“Who else?”

“Well, open the door, little man.”

“Don’t call me that.”

I let the door swing open on its hinges. Her smile dropped immediately. She looked so much like our mother when she pursed her lips and crossed her arms. She wore a suit, gray and expensive. It couldn’t have been the job, so she must’ve lost the husband. Or maybe it was my niece. Oh man, I didn’t even think about her. Was it a terrible accident?

She sighed. “Are you okay?”

Oh.

It wasn’t her. It wasn’t the job or the husband or my niece.

It was me.

I looked past her shoulder, into the neighborhood that I hadn’t laid eyes on in so long. The summer sun made the leaves on the trees seem too crisp. I squinted my eyes, trying to keep the sting of daylight from invading them. The light hit the tarmac in smoldering beams. My foot bled profusely, and I could’ve sworn the blood sizzled when it hit the ground.

“I was just—um—”

I couldn’t find the words, but she waited. Damn her. She looked me in the eye and waited. The surface air became suffocating. It was far too hot. Rancid, even. The ground rocked and swayed beneath my aching feet. My heart pattered away in my ears.

“I think I need help,” I told her.

“Okay.”

I stepped out into the sunlight. She wrapped her arms around me, and I buried my head in her shoulder.

“Oh fuck, I need help.”

I wept into her expensive suit, and she shushed me like I were a child. Despite how I must’ve smelled, she stood there and held me close forever. Stuck under that rancid sun.