The Haunted Hikikomori

by Pearce, Lawrence

  I sit up; the noises of a city embroiled in night time dangers sift through the railings that surround my balcony. I peer through them at the cars and figures below, spotting a young man walking fast down the road, possibly heading to the tube station at the end of a few drinks after work.

  Pinching my finger and thumb together, I level them up with the man’s body. The trick of mischievous perspective makes it look like I am holding him between my finger and thumb, like King Kong amused by the tiny human in my grasp. I parody a horror scream under my breath, and then squish my finger and thumb together, at once flattening the poor victim. I let my hand drop again, and he is gone. I frown, looking further down the street, but there is no sign left of him.

  A police siren fills the air, and as if I really had just committed a murder, I jump up and rush back inside. I close the French windows to the balcony, shutting out the siren.

  2.2

  It is now generally understood that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up, rather than slowing down. On earth too, the average lifetime doubled in less than fifty years during the 20th century and is growing still. The Internet age is enabling knowledge to be passed around more freely than ever before, and the rate of technological development is increasing all the time. And me? I'm standing still.

  I am thirty years old and I have made procrastination an art form. I am ashamed to say that the world wouldn't miss me when I die. The world doesn't even know I exist.

  ‘I do,’ she giggles as she prods at my tummy, mocking me. ‘You're right there my little Hikikomori.’

  She is rubbing my tummy while her feet are inches away from my face, thankfully they don't smell. I have been in this handstand for over five minutes now. I like seeing my apartment upside down. Objects lose their familiarity when they are viewed from an unusual angle; it keeps things new for me. She curls her toes up and down. Her toenails are painted girly pink, and I have decided that when I stand back upright her hair will be braided. I stand upright. She is finishing braiding her hair. ‘Do you like my hair like this poppet?’

  ‘Yes, it's beautiful. What made you choose to wear your hair like that sweetheart?’ I ask with interest. I like making her feel good.

  ‘I don't know, it just came to me,’ she states with a smile. ‘Good choice then.’

  She is eighteen today, yesterday she was twenty-six. I guess I wanted to feel some innocence after the weird events of last night. Do eighteen year olds really have any innocence left these days?

  The mirror episode had sent a shiver down my spine last night, and if I weren’t such a sleep hound, I would have had an insomniac day that’s for sure. But I didn’t, I slept well.

  I had put it down to a momentary hallucination caused by too much staring into the mirror after a quick browse on Internet forums, reading similar experiences by equally insane sounding people. I feel reassured; a moment of madness, nothing more.

  I head to the kitchen and she doesn't follow. I fill the kettle and flick the switch; teatime.

  During the browsing, I read one post from a woman who described her experience with mirrors. When she was fifteen or sixteen, she was looking into the mirror doing her hair or popping pimples or some other thing teenagers do in mirrors, and suddenly she felt herself disconnecting from her body. The reflection no longer felt like her, it just looked like the face she was used to seeing. Her facial features no longer felt intrinsically part of her, but rather mere flesh and bone.

  She felt like she was watching someone else. In the post she describes this as a terrifying experience, one that she sensed if it went too far she would disconnect completely and not be able to return to normal consciousness.

  For the rest of her life, she avoided mirrors, for every time she had to look in them again, she would feel this same disconnection starting, separating from her body.

  I have decided, I am never looking in that mirror again.

  2.3

  The kettle begins to bubble inside, the hot water rising and splashing against the inner casing.

  It is now that I realize there are two cups on the counter top. One is my trusty faithful that I have just rinsed in the sink, and the other belongs to Sarah. Her cup is purple with sunflowers dancing around the curvature. I never use Sarah’s cup and never, ever, move it from its spot in the cupboard where she left it.

  I move over her cup, to look down to the bottom; tea, drying and staining. I reach my finger inside and smear my fingertip over the tea. It stains my skin; it is fresh and still warm.

  Steam rises from the kettle spout and the switch flicks down, the red in-use light switching off.

  As the bubbling begins to subside, I can still hear the sound of hot water rumbling and splashing, but farther away. I follow my ears and they take me across the apartment along the hall and towards the bathroom door. As I slowly push the door open, the steam hits me. The room is full of mist and the temperature makes my skin redden.

  I love my shower; it is formed of thick walls of green glass with air bubbles trapped inside it, that spiral into the middle where a large shower head hangs over the cobbled floor, like a circular maze or a snail’s shell. But right now, I’m not feeling too fond of my shower. I am feeling my gut wrench.

  The glass is hard to see through, with the running water and the steam hindering the transparency, but can I really see the fleshy tones of someone standing in there? My eyes must be playing tricks on me again.

  Despite the heat and humidity in the air, my body goes cold. Goosebumps prickle my skin, as I edge nearer the shower. Perhaps I absentmindedly left the shower running I tell myself, but I quickly remember I haven’t taken a shower yet tonight. Whatever, or whoever, turned the shower on, it wasn’t me.

  ‘Hello?’

  No reply.

  I take a few more steps until I am at the maze like entrance, now telling myself that a faulty handle on the shower could be the cause, if I hadn’t tightened it enough. The water is falling hard; this is no trickle from a leaking showerhead, this is a full on blast.

  Without care for my cosy pyjama bottoms I make my way in, surrounded by green glass as I follow the spiral in to the middle.

  ‘Hello?’ I call once more. ‘If there is anyone there, I’m coming in!’

  My heart is beating hard as I hold my breath.

  I cannot see the flesh tones through the glass from this angle now, the light reflection of various surfaces manipulating the colours.

  Building up the courage, I take my final step and enter the centre of the shower.

  It is empty.

  The hot water, raining down relentlessly, swirls down the plughole, draining with an echoing gurgle. Some of the water turns to steam as soon as it hits the stone floor. I reach in to turn the shower off but yank my hand back immediately; it is scolding.

  Hissing, I reach round as best I can and with a twist the force subsides and the water turns from a thunderous pouring to a meek drizzle, and then to nothing at all save for a random droplet escaping the now serene shower head.

  I gather my breath back.

  My face is wet from the moisture in the air and my skin starts to feel clammy, so I make my way back out of the shower area. I grab a towel; I have his and hers, but the hers is never used.

  As I widen the door to let the stream flow out of the bathroom, I dry my arms and chest of the water that splashed on to me.

  Looking down I catch the sight of wet footprints. The trail shows them leaving the stone floor of the shower and treading across the white tiles of the bathroom towards the door, where they disappear on the dark wooden floorboards of the hallway.

  I follow them out, dropping the towel to the ground. I search the entire apartment, but there is no one here. I am alone, as always.

  What is going on?

  I drop onto the sofa, and a large pent up breath exhales from my chest upon impact. I am zoned out, shutting myself off. This is too weird.

  2.4

  ‘Am I going crazy?’


  ‘No way, Jose,’ she pipes up, ‘you just have a great imagination, that’s all.’

  Of course, this is really me telling myself that it’s my imagination creating the paranoia inside me that I cannot deal with. The paradox of my imaginary girlfriend telling me that I was just imagining things is ridiculous I accept, but right now it will have to do, as I’m not ready to embrace insanity just yet. I have tea to make.

  I return to the kitchen and remember Sarah’s cup, on the counter, but it is no longer there. Swinging the cupboard door open, there it is clean and unused. No! I am not ready to accept insanity.

  Tea in hand, I sip anxiously as I peer around the frame of the door, into the bathroom. I feel like a little boy checking under his bed for the boogie monster.

  I scan the entire bathroom, including the tiled floor for the wet footprints. They have evaporated. Or perhaps they weren’t even there in the first place. I sip my tea once more, from a mug that reads ‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.’ Ha, like I do any work.

  Back by my laptop, I click play and a favourite tune of mine starts. Every time I hear this track, it makes me feel good and I find my toes tapping on the wooden floor. It is Stand By Me by Ben E. King.

  She dances for me, a perfect mix of seduction and silliness as she twirls about the room with a smile on her face and a mischievous glint in her eyes. Tonight she is a redhead, a braided redhead.

  I put my tea down and take this naughty redhead by the waist and we dance to the entire song. I bury my nose against her sweet smelling neck and drift away. She always helps me to forget. That’s what she has always done.

  As I watch the dark blue, light-polluted sky made brighter by the rising sun, with the artificial glow of London city losing its luminosity, I yawn and stretch.

  I fall into bed. I want to feel comforted. I stare at the photo of Sarah on the bedside cabinet. She is smiling, she still looks so sad to me and I feel guilty.

  I whisper, ‘Now that your body is a million miles from mine, and your heart several worlds removed, I can say it; I loved you.’

  ‘Ew, pass me the bucket!’ my imaginary girlfriend jokes, poking fun at me. ‘I’m kidding honey, that was sweet.’

  I fall asleep.

  3.1

  When the midwives yanked me from the womb into this world, I didn’t scream. I didn’t scream because I wasn’t breathing, so they rushed to clear my airways. Eventually I gulped in oxygen, choked on the post-birth shock, felt all my senses erupting with fear, and screamed my lungs out. The midwives high-fived each other in a brash celebration of victory. I have been screaming ever since.

  That is, until I met Sarah. I have just woken from a dream about Sarah, after avoiding the sunlit day in the dark confines of my apartment yet again. I sit up in bed and rub my face for reasons I don’t know, it’s just something we do when we wake up. I run my hand over my head, awakening my skull from hours of pressing down on the pillow (an ergonomically curved pillow ordered from IKEA). I then make my way to the kitchen. I swear, I am addicted to tea.

  The dream was a familiar one.

  I am dying on the street, lying next to her. We are recently engaged but she has been mugged and stabbed, left bleeding. She is lying flat on her back, breathing slowly and unable to move. I am bleeding heavily too and crawl closer to her. I use my last reserve of strength to lean over and give her one last kiss.

  This of course is a romanticized version of her death. In reality, two and a half years ago, she lay there dying alone while I was sat at home, cursing her after the argument we had just had prior to her leaving me.

  I remember watching her storm around our apartment, this apartment, grabbing her things and flinging them into a large bag, and then flashing me one more look before walking out that door for the last time. That look still haunts me.

  Her eyes were filled with such pain, looking into mine with burning anger, but there was also a plea in there; like a part of her just wanted me to hold her and make it alright again.

  I remember wanting to tell her that I was sorry and that I loved her, but I was too angry myself. So I waited as she stormed from room to room, and I waited as she wiped the tears from her red cheeks, and I waited, and then she was gone.

  The kettle boils and I make tea.

  I lean back in my grandma rocking chair, staring at the mirror while gulping down the silky brownness of my favourite beverage. I watch from an angle so that I can’t see my own reflection, I’m taking no chances. Watching it for what, I don’t know. It’s not like it is going to move, is it?

  Really, I’m just lost in thought and my eyes need something to focus on otherwise they might as well be closed. That would only be an invite for my imaginary girlfriend to come twirling by and I’m not in the mood. I feel positively in the opposite mood to imaginary girlfriend time. But she comes by anyway.

  ‘Poppet!’

  3.2

  ‘Guess what!’ she squeals.

  ‘What sweetheart?’ I sigh.

  ‘I’m feeling all bouncy, I just want to cuddle you and bounce with you all over this place.’

  She is practically bursting with fun and enthusiasm. I just sit here, rocking back and forth and back and forth.

  ‘I’m not really in the mood baby, how about you have fun for the both of us?’

  And she does, putting her feet together like a ballerina and launching herself into the air with her toes pointed. She lands and immediately takes off again, grinning from ear to ear and giggling like a spring-heeled imp. I can’t help but smile. She always helps me to forget.

  I move my bottom further into the rocking chair, settling in fully to enjoy the performance. She doesn’t seem to be tiring and the larger my smile becomes, the higher she bounces and the further she leaps and the faster she twirls. She jumps up onto the sofa and flies off it, bouncing off the Persian rug in the middle of the lounge.

  She floats past the mirror, and my attention is taken away once more for a brief second. My smile drops a tad as I focus again on the mirror, the reflection from this angle showing the open plan kitchen. I remember mirrorgate from two nights ago.

  From the reflection, I watch her walk slowly into the kitchen and open the fridge door; her black hair reaching half way down her back. Black hair? I jump to my feet startled, splashing tea on myself and dropping the mug to the floor. It smashes to pieces, but I turn immediately to the kitchen area. No one there to be seen.

  I snap my head back to focus on the mirror. The reflection is empty.

  A hand reaches for me and grabs my chin and with a gasp I turn to face my imaginary girlfriend. She strokes my cheek, frowning and looking at me with concern.

  ‘You okay my little Hikikomori?’ she asks, trying to read the fear in my eyes.

  ‘Did you see that, that girl in my kitchen? She was just there.’

  ‘There was no girl in our kitchen silly, just me entertaining you. Weren’t you watching?’ Her eyes drop and she pushes out her bottom lip.

  ‘My kitchen. And I was, but, but then I saw a girl in there. She, it, wasn’t you,’ I hold up her blonde hair to her eyes, ‘her hair was jet black.’

  My imaginary girlfriend steps back and then turns away from me.

  ‘I get it. You’re missing Sarah.’

  I can’t find the words to reply. It winds me like a thousand punches to the ribcage. I have never imagined Sarah before.

  Of all the different looks and shapes and sizes that my imaginary girlfriend comes in, she never has black hair. The whole point is that she does not remind me of Sarah.

  My imaginary girlfriend turns to face me and a lone tear runs down her cheek.

  ‘I get it honey, I’ll leave you alone for a bit now,’ she says.

  I feel bad, and I reach out my hand and step forward to hold her. A sharp pain runs up my leg and freezes me to the spot. I hiss as a sting takes over the sole of my right foot. I reach down and pull a piece of ceramic, broken off from the mug I dropped and smashed, out of my foo
t. It has penetrated deep, and the blood flows readily now the wound is open and free.

  I grit my teeth together and look up again. She is gone.

  3.3

  I hobble over to the kitchen and find a plaster in the medicine drawer. It is always fully stocked up. I have enough medical supplies to run a hospital for a week, yet this is only the third time I have needed that drawer in two and a half years.

  The previous times were for a band-aid to wrap around a sprained ankle after I tripped over the coffee table, and antiseptic spray for when I cut my own hand swinging a short Samurai sword (bought from a black market Internet seller with broken English).

  The antiseptic spray and a large plaster come out and I slide the drawer closed again.

  As I turn to make my way over to the sofa, to treat my wound, I catch sight of the fridge door. It is left slightly ajar. I stare at it for far too long, and then push it shut. A quick look around for the black-haired girl again, before the sting in my foot spurs me on towards the sofa.

  Sitting here, the plaster so tightly stuck on that my foot is going white from lack of blood circulation, I ponder to myself; why would I suddenly, after all this time, be imagining Sarah in my home?

  As my brow furrows and my jaw clenches, music starts to play out. It sounds like a haunting solo from a string instrument, possibly a harp. The notes trickle, teasing out a slow, sad melody. The tune captivates me, and even though I feel uneasy that my laptop is shut. I am still drawn into the music.