Tenants

by Christopher Motz

  "No, nothing like that. I was just wondering what it's for."

  That's not the only thing you're wondering, she thought. Get your mind out of the gutter.

  "It's a leftover from a previous remodel," Al said. "Your apartment and the one next door were once a larger suite. There should be no worries; the knob has been removed and the door locked. I don't think I even have a key for it anymore."

  "That's fine," she muttered. "It was more a curiosity than anything else."

  What else are you curious about? Go ahead... ask him!

  Linda cleared her throat and nervously dug in her purse for her keys.

  "Are you okay? Your skin is... flushed."

  "Yes, fine, thank you. I have to go. So much to do."

  "And such little time," Al added. "I know the feeling."

  Linda nodded and walked toward the entrance, so embarrassed she nearly tripped over her own two feet. She ran down the front stairs and took refuge in her Prius, chastising herself for being so silly.

  "He's your landlord," she said. "You can't become a giggling little girl every time you see him."

  She only hoped the dream would fade enough for her to talk to him without breaking into fits of nervous laughter. Then she thought of Lenny hovering above her and stealing what wasn't offered. She frowned, rubbed a hand over her face, and sighed. She thought she was taking things rather well under the circumstances, but there was no way to ignore what had happened. Lenny had left a mark, the kind that wouldn't go away until she got the answers she so desperately needed.

  Even then it would be something she carried with her for years... maybe forever. She hoped when he finally crawled out from under his rock, Theresa was there to give him the beating he deserved, and still, it wouldn't make up for what he'd done.

  Linda pulled away from the curb and turned on the radio, briefly getting lost in the strains of an old Sarah McLachlan track. She had things to do, a life to live. Neither Christian nor Lenny had a part in that anymore. Some bridges have to be burned so we can move forward, and Linda was never one for looking back.

  If she had turned at that moment, she would have seen Al Sterling watching her from the front steps of the Blackridge. His perfectly combed hair was slightly out of place. A fly landed on his forehead and crawled across his flesh, tasting his sweat. It paused, twitched once, and fell to the pavement. He smiled through a mouthful of teeth that had become the color of those belonging to a lifelong smoker. His flesh rippled and became transparent before solidifying. His teeth had returned to their previous shine. He ran a hand over his head and slicked his hair back with his fingers before returning to his office. Al slid aside a hidden panel in the wall and revealed a bank of television monitors that showed a dozen different angles of Linda's apartment: kitchen, living room, bedrooms, hallway, front door, bathroom, balcony, shower, and several others.

  He rewound the footage from Linda's bathroom and watched her shower.

  He saw her brief meeting with Audrey.

  Laughed as she found the door in the pantry.

  Groaned appreciably in his throat as the figure entered her bedroom and sat on the bed next to her.

  It wasn't Lenny, but close enough to get the ball rolling.

  "We'll do it again soon," Al said. "Next time you won't be so quick to stop me."

  He closed the hidden panel and smiled.

  "And if you do, we have ways to fix that as well."

  ***

  Linda found a Dollar General a mile from the apartment. After stopping for gas, she pulled into the parking lot and tried remembering everything she'd come for. She wished she'd made a list; with everything else going on it was difficult to get her thoughts in order, but as she walked around the empty store, she recalled most of what she needed.

  The air conditioning was on full blast, making the store feel more like a walk-in freezer. She rubbed the chill from her arms and walked up the aisle, dropping items in her cart as she went. She hadn't seen anyone since she left the gas station; the store was completely empty and half the shelves were in disarray. A quarter of the overhead lights were dark or dying, buzzing like angry swarms of bees. If this was the best they could do, she planned on finding a better shopping experience in the future.

  When she heard laughter behind her, she stopped and turned only to find the aisle empty.

  "Hello?" she called.

  She was answered by the sound of scampering feet a few aisles away. The light above her flickered and went out. From the corner of her eye, she saw someone peek around the end of the aisle and disappear before her eyes could focus.

  "Very funny," she said. But it wasn't. It was creepy. Small-town teenagers having a laugh at her expense.

  But where were they?

  She heard them giggling, heard them whispering from behind shabby displays. She saw someone dart across the aisle and disappear. A box of diapers fell from the top shelf and burst open on the floor, followed by deep, muffled conversation.

  Linda looked into her cart, made a quick mental inventory, and figured that whatever she hadn't yet found could wait for another time. If she wasn't so unnerved, she would have hunted down the manager and filed a complaint. If there was a manager. Surely something wasn't quite right here.

  She pushed her cart to the front of the store and found the only checkout with a light on. Behind it stood a young woman absently picking at her cuticles and staring off into space. She didn't turn as Linda approached. Her sizable stomach stuck out in front of her. Linda smiled and made small talk as she placed her items on the counter.

  "Boy or girl?" she asked.

  "Welcome to Dollar General," the woman said in a hushed monotone. "Did you find everything you were looking for?"

  "Uh, yeah, I guess." She emptied her cart and removed her debit card from her purse. "So when are you due?"

  "I'm not sure," she replied with the same vapid expression. "I don't feel it moving anymore."

  Someone barked a quick laugh. Linda didn't find it funny in the slightest.

  "You know there are kids in here making a mess of the place?"

  "They're always here," she replied, still avoiding eye contact. "Management doesn't seem to mind."

  "They let them run around and scare customers? That's not very good for business."

  "Your total comes to $47.38. Slide your card, please."

  Linda shook her head and did as she was told. A few seconds later, the woman handed her a receipt and sat on the stool behind the register. Linda looked at her name tag and leaned over the counter.

  "Melissa," she said. "Are you okay? Do you need help?"

  "You've helped enough," she replied. "You can go now."

  Her voice had become little more than a robotic drone.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Thank you for shopping at Dollar General. Please come again and have a nice day."

  Linda grabbed her bagged items and dropped them in her cart as Melissa removed a pack of cigarettes and lit one. She inhaled deeply and blew out a cloud of white smoke as she resumed digging at her cuticle.

  Linda thought she'd seen everything during her time in retail, but this was a first. The store had become a playground, complete with a pregnant, chain-smoking cashier. Melissa finished one cigarette in a matter of seconds and lit another from the smoldering butt of the first.

  Linda couldn't hide her outrage.

  "You're smoking!"

  Melissa finally made eye contact as ash fell from the cigarette and landed on her stomach. She absently brushed it to the floor. "I don't feel it moving anymore," she said again.

  "That's no reason to..."

  "Thank you for shopping at Dollar General," Melissa interrupted. "Please come again and have a nice day."

  Linda pushed her cart away from the counter, turning only once to watch Melissa light another cigarette and stare across the empty store. When the door slid closed with a hiss, Linda breathed a sigh of relief and double-timed to her car, tossing the bags into t
he back seat and glancing over her shoulder at the dingy store windows. She saw Melissa walk around the counter, flip the 'OPEN' sign to 'CLOSED,' and retreat into the shadows.

  "This is insane," she muttered.

  She slid behind the wheel of her car and closed the door, realizing she'd left her cart in the empty parking space next to her. She waved her hand and started the car.

  "I don't think they'll mind," she said sarcastically.

  As she pulled away, she checked her rearview mirror and sucked in a breath. Melissa stood behind one of the store's plate-glass windows, waving a hand above her head like a mechanical dummy.

  I don't feel it moving anymore, Linda heard Melissa say.

  She shuddered and pulled out of the lot; her hands were shaking and sweat had broken out on her forehead. She turned on the air conditioner and thumbed the volume control on the radio, catching the end of the traffic report. It took her several blocks to shake the uneasy feeling that had crept over her. She whistled through her teeth and laughed at herself for being silly, but it came out sounding forced.

  Her Wal-Mart buddies would love this. If only they could have seen Melissa's vacant stare and heard her haunted voice. She thought it was probably best not to say anything to them at all. They wouldn't understand.

  Linda recalled a series of dreams she'd had as a teenager. In them, her mother would drop her off at the doors of an unspecified location. Sometimes it was the mall, sometimes her middle school, and others a movie theater or bowling alley. Each time, those places were completely empty. Silent. Dark. She wandered through them, searching for her friends or any signs of life, but always turned up empty handed. It wasn't the thought of being alone that frightened her, but the feeling of being watched by someone or something she couldn't see. It was the wrongness of seeing such public places without the noise of conversation or the bustle of a crowd.

  It was the abandonment that scared her the most. The emptiness. She always wondered what happened to a place when there's no one left to give it life or purpose. Does it die? Does it go to sleep and dream of better times? Does it go mad?

  It was how she felt in the Dollar General - as if someone had kept the lights on but left only ghosts behind.

  "Never again," she said.

  When she returned to the apartment, she sat on the couch and turned on the Cartoon Network. Something safe, something innocuous to take her mind off the last few days. She wanted to get drunk but knew it would take too much effort.

  By eight that night, she got drunk anyway. She'd worry about the consequences tomorrow.

  ***

  Linda splashed water on her face and looked at her naked body in the mirror.

  She wasn't the only one looking.

  Al sat behind his desk and leaned closer to the monitor. Audrey stood nearby as her eyes crawled over the high definition video, watching Linda's every move.

  "She's a pretty one," Audrey purred.

  "Don't get any ideas," Al said. "There will be plenty of time to act."

  "If she plays along."

  "She will. She's young, adventurous, regularly intoxicated."

  "Yes, but what you did the other night... in her bedroom. You've put her guard up."

  "That wasn't me," he grinned. "Al Sterling would never do such a thing. Lenny on the other hand... he's been taken care of I assume?"

  "Of course."

  Al leaned close enough to the monitor for his nose to touch the screen. He stroked the image of Linda's naked body as she bent and spit toothpaste into the sink.

  "She's going to be fun," he said.

  "Don't waste time," Audrey warned. "It won't take her long to see things as they are."

  "She'll see what we want her to see."

  "As long as she doesn't cause trouble, you can have your fun. If she does... she's mine."

  "I'm glad we found this place," Al said, leaning away from the wall of security feeds. "It's like a free ticket to the carnival."

  "More like a peep show..."

  "She's going to need a friend, Audrey. Little girl in a new town and all that."

  "Oh, I can be a friend. A great one, in fact."

  "Her other friends may be a problem. Her ex-lover, as well."

  "We'll cross that bridge later. For now, let her get comfortable. Keep an eye on her, see who she's talking to, where she goes. Can't be too careful."

  "Let me do all the worrying," Al said. "Your job is to make her feel at home."

  "I'm rather good at that."

  "Yes, my dear, you are. If anything goes wrong, we open the gate."

  "We open the gate," she repeated.

  "Have the tenants watch her closely. Once things start moving, they tend to snowball quickly."

  "This isn't my first time, you know."

  "Just a reminder."

  Audrey nodded and exited into the lobby. The building was silent. Nothing moved. The tenants knew better than to draw attention to themselves unless they were called upon. They'd grown subservient. They too understood what was on the other side of the gate.

  And they knew once they crossed over, there was no turning back.

  ***

  Linda brushed her teeth and showered but still tasted the lingering sweetness of rum in the back of her throat. More than once it made her gag. Gagging made her gag more... breathing made her gag. She knew drinking was a mistake, especially when drinking alone, but it never stopped her before. Now, she had more reasons than ever: Lenny, Christian, pregnant, nicotine-stained automatons waving from grungy, forgotten store windows. She didn't have a drinking problem, she had a reality problem. When she got wasted, reality stopped yapping in her ear and allowed her to take the wheel. Unfortunately, reality was also a bastard of a back-seat driver, and even when she thought she was in control, the car steered toward the sheer cliff face of chaos and regret. The following day was always a struggle to climb back up to the road and figure out where the hell she was and where she was going next.

  To top it off, the apartment had a nasty, sour odor that she couldn't mask with scented candles. She hadn't vomited, and she hadn't yet bought any food that might have spoiled, but she couldn't find any other source that made sense. Eventually the smell dissipated on its own. Linda vowed to keep away from alcohol for the rest of the week. The price wasn't worth it, literally and figuratively. The cost was one she couldn't maintain if she had any chance of succeeding on her own. She wasn't about to crawl back to her parents and ask for money just because she couldn't keep her bar tabs at a reasonable level.

  Once she was dressed and feeling less like roadkill, she ate a bowl of cereal and watched the local news. By the time the weather had come on, her eyelids had already grown heavy. She forced herself off the couch, washed the bowl, and put the milk back in the fridge, spying a lone bottle of beer hiding in the back. She grabbed it, twisted the top, and poured it down the sink. One less temptation to worry about.

  For a while, Linda considered calling Theresa but decided against it. The situation was too fresh, too painful. Lenny's actions had put an invisible barrier between Linda and Theresa, and only time would tell if that wall could be torn down. For now, she thought she was better off leaving the wound heal instead of picking at the scabs. If her relationship with Theresa was as strong as she thought it was, they'd find a way to move on.

  It had been years since Linda had this much free time. She rarely took her vacation all at once, but with the new apartment and Christian's continued harassment, she thought it best to disappear for a few weeks and get her act together. Theresa and Lenny were the only people who knew where she'd gone, and Lenny was missing in action. There was no way Christian could find her without doing some serious legwork, and if that was the case, she'd involve the police again. Showing up at Wal-Mart had already been a violation of the restraining order. Was he prepared for round two? What would have happened if Al hadn't spotted her in the store and come to her aid?

  When she'd lived with Christian, she couldn't leave the house w
ithout getting the third degree: where are you going, who are you going with, when are you getting home, who are you fucking? It was endless. She couldn't even go out with Theresa for a night without Christian hunting them down, half loaded and ready for a fight. He'd drag her home, question her, call her a liar and a whore. Once he sobered up the next day, he'd apologize, buy her flowers, tell her how beautiful she is and how he'd never act that way again.

  But there was always another time, another embarrassing confrontation, another promise of a future where Christian would finally see the light and act like a human being. It wasn't going to change. When she had enough, and finally packed her things, she promised herself never to allow that to happen again. She would not live her life in fear, and she wouldn't be controlled by anyone. If that meant staying single for the rest of her life, so be it.

  Just as she'd begun feeling better, her sinuses revolted, making it feel like someone had stuffed her head with cotton. A quick scan of her medicine cabinet proved that she'd forgotten her Claritin as well, and she wasn't about to run to the Dollar General to buy some. If she never saw that place again, it would be too soon. For just a moment, she thought about the girl behind the register and wondered what had made her that way. She'd never met someone so completely disconnected. The whole thing felt like a bad prank.

  Linda thumbed the remote control, looking for something to watch on television and suddenly feeling very alone. The building was almost too quiet. She wished she hadn't poured that last beer down the sink.

  What if this was a bad idea? she thought. What if moving here was just another way to hide from my problems?

  "No," she said. "I'm not running. I needed a change."

  And is this the change you wanted? Not seeing your friends and sitting alone in this massive apartment wishing you still had alcohol in the fridge?

  "It's better than hiding from Christian all the time."

  Is it? All you did was trade one crazy man for another.

  Linda groaned and covered her face with her arm. Only a few days in the new building and already she was talking to herself. She never thought solitude could be so depressing.

  She grabbed her cell phone from the table and dialed. Theresa picked up on the second ring.