There isn’t a rifle in the closet, but I find a shotgun in the bathroom and a spilled box of cartridges. The girl in the bathtub doesn’t startle me, my nerves already cooked. I’ve never seen her before. She’s maybe twelve, thirteen, her neck covered in bruises; a spray of blood on the opposite shower wall like someone took a paintbrush of red and flicked it at her.
The windows are closed, the bed is made. The room remains undisturbed. Whatever she was trying to keep out must have found another way in.
Or it was already here when she hid.
Thank God for Judy and Gary being a thousand-years-old. I mix a drug cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics subscribed for hernias, osteoporosis, and bladder infections, and swallow with prune juice. I pocket the medications and slip out into the hallway without a prayer. I don’t know who lives across the hall. After knocking three times and getting no answer, I smash the butt of the shotgun against the knob, expelling it of its duties, and make my way inside.
No one is home. I flip switches and get no lights. It’s a studio. Hardwood floors. A kitchen to my left, bathroom on my right. A box of cereal sits out next to a laptop computer on the kitchen counter. The place opens into a single living room, couch, television, and bed. Nothing more. Three bookcases lined with movies. Mostly action films. Two shelves dedicated to video games and pornography. And not the type of porn you should be proud to put on display. There’s a DVD case on top of the television. A crappy Kurt Russell movie from the eighties.
I use the barrel of the shotgun to push open the bathroom door. There’s hair in the sink. He doesn’t have a toothbrush holder, and leaves the thing lying on the counter with an open tube of toothpaste. I pull back the shower curtain. The tub is empty.
I open a few drawers and check tabletops for a cell phone, but only find an iPhone charger.
It’s as though the occupant simply vanished, grew tired in the middle of getting ready for bed, and without question or hesitance, walked out from this life and onto the next.
I return to the hallway, holding the shotgun like I know how to use the thing, looking for any wolves acting askance, or terrorists declaring biological warfare.
“Hello?”
I barely breathe the world.
I shout it. I scream it until my voice tears at the back of my throat, demanding an official pardon before my next mental breakdown.
In all my exhaustion and adrenaline, I cock the shotgun and squeeze the trigger. The blast deafens my senses, and the kickback slams the butt of the gun into my shoulder hard enough to knock me back and loosen my grip on the weapon. I’m sure it hit the carpeted floor with a thud, and I’m sure I cried out in both shock and pain, but I’ll never know over the ringing in my ears.
My back to the wall, I slide down to the floor like I’m the one who’s just been shot and not the ceiling. I can’t feel my right arm, and I’m not sure if it’s a result of my drug overdose, the werewolf bite, or the shotgun. Pieces of plaster and drywall make their way from the ceiling down to the floor. My legs sprawled out in front of me, the barrel of the shotgun smoking between them. I stay like that until the last of the ceiling falls, and the ringing subsides.
Not a single door opens, nor a siren sounds.
No one comes to my rescue.
Not even the wolves.
I enter the next apartment with the intent to find more drugs. It’s just as empty as all the rest, but it’s been recently remodeled. Fake hardwood floors blanketed with IKEA furniture and fixtures. It’s very gender neutral, but smells quite a bit like strawberries and watermelon. There are pull-up bars mounted in the frames of every doorway. Free weights of all different shapes and sizes sit nestled under every coffee table and end table. The giant blue exercise ball in the corner of the living room is floating and rotating like a miniature planet earth. I blame this on the cocktail of prescription drugs circulating through my bloodstream. I need a drink. I open the refrigerator. Coconut milk, apples, and hummus. In the freezer I find half a bottle of Vodka.
I slip the sundress off my shoulder, wincing because it should hurt, but I don’t feel a thing. The blood has gone cold. I drop the dress in the sink, crack open the bottle, and drink until it burns before pouring the rest of the alcohol on my shoulder. I saw someone do it in a movie once, and it seems about the best idea I have right now. I scream, and instinctively hurl the bottle across the room. It shatters against the wall. I slump over against the counter, whimpering, holding back tears not so much from the pain, but over how badly for the first time in my life I just want someone to talk to.
In the bedroom I discover whoever lives – lived – here was a woman only by going through the drawers and finding her underwear. Even in the wake of the Apocalypse, I still have to fight the desire to reach my hands in and bury my face in a pair hoping to feel something, anything.
There is a clear chest of plastic drawers in the closet, each one filled with what appears to be post-workout remedies and ointments. Instead of using another sundress, I apply half a bottle of Neosporin and wrap a flexible bandage used for sprained joints around and around the wound, pulling it tight, and leave.
I knock on one last door before returning to my apartment.
A distressing, fetid smell hangs thick in the air, seeping out of the walls. I nearly vomit for the second time today.
I knock again.
Still nothing.
There’s a whole lot of nothing and everything all at once in my life this afternoon, and it’s proving to be quite the volatile combination.
“Leslie?”
I press my ear to the door and listen for bacon sizzling on the stove, hairdryers, and talk show television hosts.
I grip the shotgun like you would a pole if you happened to be a firefighter, and bring the butt of the gun down upon the doorknob in one swift stabbing motion. The knob falls off, clattering to the floor. I push the door open with the barrel of the gun, my finger wrapped around the trigger.
The place is empty just as all the others. Leslie’s life remains, but she does not.
Floral pattern couches and throw pillows. Picture frames clutter every corner of every surface. Dried up red roses dead in a vase of brown water. A television my grandmother probably owned sits in the corner, complete with bunny ear antennas. It smells overwhelmingly delicious in here, like flour and sugar and frosting. It’s a welcome reprieve to the odor now roaming the halls outside. If this is what led to Hansel and Gretel’s demise, I don’t blame them.
A pizza box, the contents half-eaten, sits on what looks like a coffee table made from tree stumps and glass. I’m sure someone, somewhere, once considered it art.
The faucet leaks, protesting dirty dishes and a cluttered counter.
I say hello.
“Leslie?” Pause. “It’s your neighbor.” Pause .
I step into the kitchen, sugar crystals crunch and roll beneath my feet. I twist the cold and hot water knobs as far to the right as I can manage. Dried cake batter and stale chocolate crusted along the edge of the counters, Leslie seems to take her work home with her.
The faucet drip remains despite my best efforts.
I find mixing bowls covered in cellophane in the fridge. A case of soda. A door dressed in condiments.
I click on the air conditioning, telling myself that Leslie would hate to come home to an apartment this hot.
The bedroom door is closed, and even though I know she isn’t here, I knock anyway.
Receiving no response, I crack the door.
The bed is unmade, the curtains drawn. A small sliver of light shoves its way through, making its best attempt to illuminate this tomb, this place once full of life and now suffering from abandonment. A box of empty tissues and its contents, used, lay scattered about the perimeter of the bed as if to keep out ghosts and bad luck. Every other framed photograph is turned down. I approach the nightstand, picking up one of the overturned photos resting between a bottle of lotion and an alarm clock. I handle it with my thumb and index finger as though it were a snake I found in the garden.
It’s of Leslie and a man I do not recognize. He is strikingly handsome, his arm around her.
I return the frame the way it was discovered.
I open her dresser drawers, telling myself there might be a clue to today’s disasters, but I’m really just looking to see if her underwear is as sexy as I imagined it to be. I go for the top drawer first. It’s all mismatched socks and panties—none of the black lace and pink bows I’ve been fantasizing about.
I’m overcome with a tingling sensation in the back of my head, a roller coaster drop in my stomach— like I’m being watched. The place is empty, but I’m not alone. I quietly close the drawer, stepping back from it as though I’ve discovered a hidden camera in there. I leave the bedroom exactly how I found it—sickly dark and sad—and return to the living room.
I head for the door, opting not to look for any more clues regarding Leslie’s potential disappearance. She could have left this morning, never made it home last night, or is still at the bakery. Only time will tell.
I’d have made for one shit detective, that’s for sure.
Sorry, Leslie.
I contemplate the roses—their last days—then leave.
I instinctively reach in my pocket for my keys, and realize I never took them with me. My door is unlocked. I enter with confidence the way a man should be able to enter his own home, a place of refuge and familiarity. A place of safety where no foes or disasters await him. I set the shotgun on the counter and close the door. When I look up, I find what I have just spent the entire day looking for right here in my own apartment: another human being. This one is alive, standing in my living room, browsing my book collection, and wearing a gasmask.
7
THE MAN FROM JUPITER
There’s a man in my apartment. At least I think it’s a man. He could be from Jupiter. I wouldn’t put it past today. It’s hard to tell what’s going on under all the rubber of the gas mask he’s wearing.
The mask unnerves me more than the actual individual invading my apartment. It’s not the kind of mask I can imagine anyone handing out in the event of an emergency. It’s the kind with a menacing snout protruding from the place where his mouth should be. It’s the kind of mask you wear with malicious intent. When you know something I don’t. Or when you’re visiting from Jupiter.
I hold my breath until I realize I’m already dead if there’s something in the air. He’s looking through all the books on my shelf, turning them upside down and shaking them out like there might be money between the pages, and I’m wondering who has rightful ownership of any bills he finds. They’re my books. Odds are it’s my money he’s going to find. I should have thought of that ages ago.
There’s a pile of ripped up pages and hardbacks at his feet. When I happen upon him, he’s got a hardcover mystery novel in his hands that my father gave me as a birthday gift two years ago. I never read it.
The man doesn’t look surprised to see me, which is an odd thing to say, I know, considering the mask. His casual demeanor says he might have been expecting this. I wish someone had informed me I’d be having guests this evening. I’d have cleaned up a bit. Put on some pants. Regardless, I’m more than thrilled to see him. I can forgive the thievery. Basic looting is to be expected in the event of a natural disaster. My plan was to start robbing these folks sooner or later. I just hadn’t sorted out my priorities as quickly.
I’m hoping it’s someone I know. Maybe Doc Jones down in 118. He was overseas testing biological weapons, or something of the sort, about ten years back. I had needed to borrow a tie—I was taking Valerie to a show—and I stopped by his apartment to inquire about neckwear. I recall a gasmask just as eerie hanging on a mannequin dressed in military fatigues.
I hold up my hands in an act of surrender, though I’m not sure what I’m surrendering to. My intruder doesn’t appear to be armed.
“Mr. Jones?” I ask. I smile.
He drops the book. The mask tilts to the left, inspecting me.
There’s a name on his black jacket: Roderick.
“Do you know…”
A gun in his hand, he steps toward me.
“Whoa! Hey!”
He fires.
An arrow—not a bullet—slams into my left shoulder, vaulting me back into the door. I’m momentarily relieved I haven’t been shot. Then my vision begins to blur, and I wish it had been a bullet.
Roderick stops in his tracks, waiting, gun raised. I’m against the door, poking at the piece of metal tagged with a red, rubber stopper on the end. My arm is going numb. I look back at my assailant, and he’s doing that thing again he was doing right before he shot me, where he tilts his head, quizzical, like I’m the one from another fucking planet.
“The whole world’s dead, and you’re going to kill me?” Tired, I decide to slide down to the floor with my back against the door. “I’m sorry, Valerie. I’m so sorry.”
I’m feeling less and less of my arm. When Roderick gets close enough, he grumbles something like, “Identify yourself,” which he could have asked before shooting me with a poison arrow. I’d like to tell him I live here, but I opt to slam the business end of my boot into the section of his leg where the shin meets the ankle and another dart breezes through my hair, planting itself into the door.
Roderick stumbles back. I scamper into the kitchen. He comes charging around the corner, but I’m ready for him. I bring a frying pan down on his hand, sending the gun to the floor. I rear up for another swing, but he plants a fist in my gut, another in my throat. He’s got the frying pan and the gun now. I guess I should have seen that coming. I land on my tailbone, but it doesn’t hurt as bad as I would have expected.
When Valerie left, I took up suicide as a hobby. I never really committed to the idea, but just incase I drank too much one night and started to take the whole thing seriously, I hid pills and knives and other objects that end lives in places I don’t normally go. Under the sink, I hid a set of steak knives next to the bleach and Drain-O. I open the cabinet, grip one by the handle, and plunge the blade through the top of Roderick’s boot. He yells, though it’s hard to tell through all that breathy noise the mask makes, and I think he shoots me in the back, but I can’t feel much of anything at this point. I just plow into him with all my weight. We go stumbling out of the kitchen, and the gun is out of his hands. I get myself up, and for some reason go wandering back into the kitchen, barely recalling that I’ve just been shot. All I can think about are french fries.