Micah

I really wish I wasn’t here right now. Amir offered me a ride back to his place, but it was too early to leave, and everybody at the party seemed so nice. But now it’s past one in the morning and I’m lying on the floor in the living room: unable to sleep, trapped between the couch and the cat tower, equally frustrated and impressed. Amir said he would leave by eight-thirty and that he wasn’t driving all the way out to Tola’s house twice in one night, and he’s done exactly that. My phone, pressed against my thigh, has been silent for the past hour-and-a-half.

And Tola, the one who invited Amir, hung around for one more hour before vanishing without a goodbye. Maybe there’s a second party out there? Or maybe he’s found an even better place to spend the night? And is either scenario with or without Amir?

Odds are that both of them are more comfortable than me at the moment. Once people started trickling out after midnight, Dara and her boyfriend Niko, roommates two and three, offered me an air mattress that deflated within ten minutes of use. They also gave me one of their throw pillows from the couch, plus a spare sheet from the dryer that hadn’t been put away yet.

So now my ribs ache as they press against the floorboards; the mattress’s thick rubber skin doesn’t provide much padding while the checkered bed sheet pulled up to my chin rattles against the air vent beside me. Something brushes against my feet every couple minutes, and I’m a prickly bundle of nerves as I wait for something to fall from the cat tower leaning over my head: I debate staying inside this refrigerator till morning, or braving the humidity and mosquitoes all the way back to my place.

It’s too bright in here as well. All the curtains are drawn, but this massive TV eclipses the wall ahead of me with all sorts of consoles and disc players stacked on either side of it. The entire room is flooded with a purply alien glow while the TV’s screensaver slowly, maddeningly, bounces between all four of its corners.

And on the other side of the couch, down a darkened hallway jammed with unopened Amazon packages, the kitchen light slices through the living room’s sleepless, indigo twilight, piercing my eyelids with flat, yellow blades no matter where I turn my head. Niko, Dara, and a fourth roommate whose name I don’t remember talk in low tones as they sit around their dining table.

Denisse

“I think I got it.”

Dara frowns at her fourth bottle of cider. She throttles it by the neck with both hands while Niko rubs his head against her cheek like a dog scratching an itch. His eyes are closed as he soaks up her inebriated scowl with a big, careless grin.

I don’t answer Dara right away. I’m staring at the living room at the end of the hallway, thinking I heard something rustling in the darkness when I grabbed another drink from the cooler; three of them are gathered around the fridge like lost sea turtles, each filled to the brim with ice water and floating cans of Faygo and Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

“We need to buy a whole bunch of infrared cameras.”

Niko throws his arm over Dara’s shoulder as I sit back down with a can of grape pop and a strawberry lemonade. I almost tear off one of my nails when I open both.

“What for?” I ask.

“For the Witch-Bitch!” Dara groans. “We’ll place them all over the house.”

“Of course…”

I wipe the condensation from my hands and check my phone again: Katherine still hasn’t texted back. Any-Hour Pizza doesn’t close until two, but she said that she’d pick me up after her shift with a stack of free slices for us to snack on. 

And if I’m gone by morning, Dara, Niko, and Tola, wherever he went, can clean up this mess themselves. I was tonight’s unwilling hostess, and I think I can make a proper getaway too. I can easily claim that I left before ten, but Dara needs to be twice as drunk as she is now. Or Niko needs to be point-five times hornier.

“What about the Witch-Bitch?” I ask.

I slide Dara’s seventh lemonade towards her, but her eyes are locked on the cloaked figure shining sky-blue-and-white in the kitchen doorway, haloed from behind by the purple glow trickling down the hall.

Astrid

It finally grows quiet downstairs. Pressing my ear against the door and hearing a handful of voices murmuring in the kitchen below, I double-check that all the locks are secure before unplugging the strings of lights dangling from the ceiling. Then, the curtains over the window are drawn tight and safety-pinned shut.

And before I close the pair in front of the closet door, I prepare the duffel bag inside: it lies in the center of the alcove, fully unzipped, with Ben’s flannel button-down draped on top like a magician’s handkerchief covering a birdcage. Once the closet door is shut and the curtains in front of it are fixed in place, I snuff out all the candles scattered around the room: one by the pillow, one at the foot of where I sleep, and two more on top of the plastic drawers that double as the dresser.

The air is blurry with the scent of molten wax as I pull my seat away from the window; it’s essentially a lawn chair but with one thick, aquamarine pad for a seat. I unfold it and set it in the center of the room, its back to the curtained closet door. After angling it just right, I take out a second safety pin. 

A wooden box with the Calgary Zoo bison on its lid hides under my pillow, and a single Polaroid lies inside, encased in a plastic sleeve that Chan lent me right before she left. 

The photo has been cut down to fit inside its protector, so all I can see is me and Ben squeezed together and smiling with his right arm draped over my shoulder. The wallpaper behind us is from his uncle’s basement: three columns of pheasants fly over a field as green and featureless as pea soup. Somebody’s hand clutches Ben’s left forearm, pulling him towards the edge of the frame. Both of us look wide-eyed and happy in the camera’s flash as we clutch emptied plastic cups.

This photo goes on the floor in front of the curtained window, exactly five feet in front of the chair. I thread the second safety pin through it and the carpet to make sure it’s secure before removing my top, shorts, and socks and adding them to the pile of clothes in the corner. The cold pricks my bare feet and needles my arms and stomach, but I refuse to wince at its widening grip even after unhooking my black lace bra and wriggling out of matching panties. I’m staring at the Polaroid again, where a black strap slips out from under the shoulder of my top and Ben hooks it tight with his right index finger. Faint black hoops peek over the waistline of my shorts, and Ben whispered on our way back to his place that his eyes were glued to my hips the entire night.

Fully naked, I sit down in my chair, its creaking joints loud against the silence. I wait with one leg thrown over the other and ten toes pointing at the Polaroid, which glistens in the gloom. My hands lie stacked atop my knees as I breathe in and out. I try to relax my shoulders, but it can’t be helped. I can never shake the feeling that someone’s standing right behind me.

Micah

Everybody stares up at me as I stand and squint in the kitchen doorway. I quickly wrap my bed sheet around myself, hiding my hairy legs and boxer shorts behind a soft blue checkerboard.

“What are you guys talking about?” I ask.

“Just the usual spooky stuff,” Dara says.

She and Niko look me up and down with crafty grins, like teenagers watching their younger siblings go to bed early while they get to stay up late. 

“Ghosts, ghouls, and creepy crawlies!” Niko laughs.

“And those things that go jump in the night!”

“Bump in the night, Dara. We’re not talking about kangaroos.”

The girl on my left, the fourth roommate, leans back in her chair and rolls her eyes as Niko snickers at Dara blowing on the mouth of her cider bottle. 

“Sorry, dude,” she sighs. “Were you trying to sleep?”

“Sort of…” 

I look back at the purple living room with a shrug. 

“Trying, but not succeeding.”

“You wanna join us?”

At the head of the table, the fourth chair seems to move aside on its own.

“Sure.”

I slip behind Dara and Niko and reel in my sheet as I go, making sure it won’t snag on anything. It hisses against the tops of the coolers congregated in front of the refrigerator as I narrowly avoid stepping in a bowl of kibble labeled “Beetlejuice.”

“You want anything to drink?”

I inspect the fourth roommate once I sit down: she has both arms braced against her chest, but now a can of grape pop glistens in one of her hands.

“No thanks. I’ve had enough for tonight.”

The wooden seat is cold against my thighs, even through the bedsheet.

“And I already brushed my teeth anyways.”

All I get are stares; even Dara’s bottle stops hooting. Then, Niko slaps his palm against the tabletop, making all of us jump. He stands up without a word and slouches towards the bathroom, leaving Dara slanted in mid-air with nothing to lean on. As the door slams shut and she recalibrates herself, my remaining tablemate sips her drink and narrows her eyes at me. I wonder where Amir is right now, and who he’s with, and if he’s still having a better night than me.

Denisse

“Didn’t Tola invite you?” I ask.

The guy from the living room wraps his sheet tighter around himself. The odds are fifty-fifty that his name is either Micah or Malcolm.

“Yeah. I came here with my friend Amir, but I don’t know where either of them went.”

He smiles, but there’s a sharp crease to his voice.

“Everybody just went,” Dara sighs.

Shoulders hunched in front of the overflowing recycling bin, she looks especially small without Niko glued to her side. I glance at my phone one more time before examining Dara’s eyes, wondering if she’ll start tearing up again.

“Nobody even said goodbye,” I speak lightly as I study the nutritional information stamped on the side of my can, “but I’m sure they’ll thank us in the morning.”

“They better,” Dara sniffs, sanded down to nothing but a runny nose and a vacant stare.

“Maybe Astrid scared them off,” I add.

Dara scowls at me, and I hastily hide my smile with a sip of pop. 

“What’s wrong? I thought we were talking about spooky stuff.”

“Who’s Astrid?” Micah asks.

Judging from his furrowed brow and Dara’s death glare, I’ve struck gold tonight.

“Our upstairs roommate,” Dara growls. “Unfortunately.”

Micah squints at the lightbulb burning above our heads. 

“I didn’t know anybody lived upstairs.”

“She didn’t come down today,” I explain. “Or tonight.”

“We avoid drawing too much attention to her, Denisse.”

“But only when it makes good conversation?”

Dara answers my question by draining her fourth cider and immediately reaching for the strawberry lemonade. Meanwhile, the toilet flushes down the hall. The bathroom door opens in the darkened corridor, followed by a cacophony of banging and rattling as someone kicks an empty can and sends it skittering into the alcove where we keep Beetlejuice’s litter box.

“Shit!”

A few seconds later, Niko’s head sheepishly pokes out of the shadows.

“Nearly pissed myself,” he grins. “Again!”

“Get in here, Niko,” Dara barks. “We’re explaining the Witch-Bitch to everyone. Again.”

Astrid

Cold air slithers up my legs. It splashes into my lap as I launch my vision beyond this single attic room and all its usual sensations. I leave behind the polyester seat slick against my thighs and back and the short-piled carpet bristling against the bottoms of my feet. Both sets of blackout curtains wobble in the breeze I make as I leap through drywall and gutters and up into space. And in that instant, it’s water from horizon to horizon: cool, dark, and topped with glimmering white shavings from the full moon overhead. Then, the landscape solidifies into a tempestuous plain studded with forests, bluffs, and lakes.

Flashes of color and thought flicker like lightning beneath me: highways slice through dozens of small towns before two massive cities sprawl around the banks of a slow, muddy river. Desolation follows with a second, smaller burst of humanity towards the end, all before a wall of mountains shoots up in front of me. Summertime blizzards splash against their peaks as I descend into a second, lower layer of blindness. 

It’s a darkness fashioned from closed eyelids burning under dirty streetlights. And every time I go searching down below, a large thumb presses against the back of my head, pushing me forward past countless houses and avenues with only slight corrections on either side. 

It’s an apartment building, just like last time, with the smell of home-cooked dinner lingering on the other side of door 217. And besides the bathroom, which is still humid from a recent shower, the apartment swelters like an oven as a faint rustling comes from a box fan squatting in the corner.

Two shapes lie beneath a single sheet in the center of the room: faces press against pillows and backs shine like snowbanks beaded with sweat. One has freckles all over its shoulders while the other has a butterfly tattoo stamped beside its bottommost vertebra. 

My hands stretch ahead of me, billowing above the waters, forests, and highways like twin flags heralding an undaunted army on the move. My fingers slide around Ben’s armpits before meeting and locking over his ribcage. I feel that familiar surge of energy, like a socket finding its plug, and pull back with all my might.

“What is it, Astrid?”

“Come here.”

“No.”

“C’mon, Ben.”

“Leave me alone, Astrid.”

“It’ll be quick.”

“No, it won’t.”

“I miss you.”

“You said that on Wednesday.”

“Because it was true.”

“I’m tired, Astrid.”

“I’m tired too.”

“So go to bed.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” 

I pull again, vibrating like an overloaded filament as I open my eyes. The darkness inside my room is absolute as the closet door behind me slowly slides open with a clack. Then, the curtains part in front of it, touched by something solid.

Micah

“Well…,” Denisse begins, then stops to take another sip of her drink.  “Dara, Chan, and I moved into this place six months ago.”

The sheet draped over my shoulders grows heavier with every word spoken, but it does little against the sudden chill swirling inside the kitchen.

“We decided that we needed a fourth. So, we put up some flyers and posted a couple things online. And that afternoon–,” Denisse snaps her fingers, and we all listen as the sharp sound instantly dies around us. Dara and Niko stare at her hand while I watch Denisse’s expression: her narrowed eyes belong to someone recounting a UFO sighting with only a touch of artistic license. “Astrid shows up on our doorstep with a duffel bag and a backpack. And nothing else.”

“We don’t know where she came from,” Dara interrupts Denisse by swinging her can of lemonade at me. “She was just standing there, ringing our doorbell at, like, four in the afternoon!”

“Dara and Chan were both at work, so I had to let her in. I showed her the room upstairs and explained everything that came with the bill. And she paid for it right away in cash. And then she closed the door in my face, since it was technically her room at that point.”

“And Chan went ballistic,” Dara’s eyes open as wide as they can go while Niko’s are squeezed shut, as if he’s struggling with a sudden rush of nausea. “She didn’t get a good look at her. And she was always so paranoid. She probably thought Astrid was a drug addict. Or a hooker.”

“So what is she?” I ask.

All three roommates freeze: two stare at their sweating cans while the third blindly studies the lamp suddenly flickering overhead. Each gives an answer after a while, with either a sigh or a whisper.

“She’s young.”

“She slouches.”

“And she’s white. And that’s all we can confirm right now.”

Denisse

Dara drains her can of strawberry lemonade, twists around in her seat, and tosses it in the recycling bin with a clunk. Then, with an index finger pressed against her lips, she starts her side of the story.

“I think she has to be a runaway. She only had a couple things with her, and she walked all the way to the home store on Dawes that night and came back with bags of stuff. Blankets, blackout curtains, fairy lights, and a chair. We were all in the living room when she came in with all this stuff. When we asked her if she needed any help, she just stared at us,” Dara points at the darkest corner of the hallway, right where the stairs begin, “and said no. We asked her if she wanted that air mattress up in her room, and she said she didn’t need a bed. But then, she stood there, still staring at us, and said that she’d ‘appreciate’ a pillow. So I ran and grabbed one from my room. I even offered to carry it up with her, but she still said no.”

Dara lowers her finger, but her eyes stick to that sliver of space as Niko presses his cheek against her shoulder. One of his hands slowly slides up and down her forearm while we talk.

“We started hearing these weird scraping sounds that night. And when Chan went up there the next morning, Astrid had put a bunch of locks on her side of the door.”

I tuck my feet under my chair and find Beetlejuice curled up into a ball; all of her hair stands up straight when Niko stops his petting, his hand glued to Dara’s wrist.

“She leaves her rent money on the counter on the last day of every month. And every two weeks, her cabinet refills itself. Protein bars, rice cakes, and an endless parade of sugary cereals.”

Micah nods along, then places a hand under his chin. His eyes are half-closed already.

“How long has she been with you guys?” he asks.

“Five months,” Dara growls. “And it looks like August is under the sign of Boo Berry.”

“She works at the Starbucks out by the highway,” I interject. “She walks there and back every day, even though I think she only works a couple shifts a week, and she never asks for a ride, or takes it when I offer one.”

I play a short rhythm on the sides of my can as I rub Beetlejuice’s back with my toes. His fur tickles my soles with long silky bristles, and warmth spreads across the balls of my feet, a welcome contrast to the tile floor.

“But, like five times a week, late at night, we hear this bumping and grunting coming from upstairs. And like magic, Astrid has money to spare on Fruit Brute and Count Chocula…”

“She must be pretty popular,” Niko yawns. “I haven’t found her page yet, but it must be, like, the best thing ever.”

Dara swats his hand, but it sticks to her wrist like a manacle.

Astrid

Ben steps forward. His stomach presses against the back of my chair before I close my eyes and breathe in slowly, not wanting to get too excited too quickly. His fingertips tremble as they touch the top of my right shoulder blade; their warmth is swaddled in a thin layer of cold air, like a fall day with bright sunlight and strong winds. 

“Please send me back.”

“No.”

Ben waits for another answer that will not come. Then, he swallows loudly as his hand slides up and over my collarbone.

I feel the sleeve of his flannel shirt rub against my skin before five fingers cup my right breast, his palm the texture of silk. Both of us soak in this familiar feeling before, with the same delicacy as all the other times, with the same slow progression through all the timid fractions of a single moment, his left hand does the same.

“I’ve already got a new girl, Astrid.”

“But she’s asleep right now. And so are you.”

“It still feels wrong though.”

“Haven’t you thought about me since we split up?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Well, not like this.”

“And there’s no proof it ever happened, so I think we’ll be fine.”

Both of his hands encircle me, as if on cue. I tell Ben to start feeling, and his thumbs and index fingers slowly roll my nipples between their pads. I sigh loudly right away, letting him know he’s doing great as I uncross my legs, lean back in my chair, and start fingering myself. I know his rhythm perfectly, and he goes for as long as I need him to. 

“You’ve still got it, Ben.”

“Got what? All ten fingers?”

“You’ve still got you.”

“Sure.”

“And if you start saying my name in your sleep, just say you were having a nightmare.”

I start to laugh, but the toilet flushes at the bottom of the stairs, followed by an empty can cartwheeling down the hallway. The party was too loud tonight, everybody stayed too late, and Dara is always bringing her boyfriend over: I constantly hear them through the vent in the corner where my pillow lies.

“Harder,” I whisper, trying to stay focused.

“Okay.”

Eyes still closed, I take his hands and stand up, holding Ben like he’s a sweater draped over my shoulders. I pull him around the chair and take one step forward. Then, I drop to my knees. Ben falls right behind me before I release my grip and get down on my elbows.

“Have you gone out this week?”

“I went to work. Then I went food shopping–.”

“I meant out to meet people.”

“It’s too hot out.”

Silence follows, bouncing between two different channels of breathing. My heart hammers in my chest as I open my eyes, and me and Ben stare back at me from inside the plastic rectangle hooked to the carpet. 

“Where are you now?”

“Michigan.”

“Still?”

“I like it here. It’s a great change of scenery.”

“Like staying inside all day? Compared to you staying inside all day up here?”

“It’s too hot out to do anything, Ben.”

“I thought you said this was going to change everything.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a little homesick from time to time. Or going back to your old favorites.”

I cross my eyes in order to see us both at the same time. My nose nearly touches the Polaroid’s glossy coating as I balance myself on one forearm, reach back, and find a handful of red flannel. 

“Just move on, Astrid. Find someone new.”

“Shut up.”

I let go, reach further down, and grip and guide Ben inside me. And once he’s in, with a tiny grunt, I tell him to start going as I rub myself faster and faster, trying to make our two portraits blur into one.

Micah

“Why did Chan leave?” I ask, wrapping myself up even tighter.

“Some friends of hers found a cheaper spot. And you’d be surprised: this place is kind of empty right now, without all of her junk.”

Upstairs, right above the flickering lightbulb, there’s a muffled thump, like a chair falling over. A round, dull rhythm follows, but I can’t tell if it’s real, or my ears straining themselves and finding my heartbeat instead.

“And that’s Astrid…” 

Denisse sighs as one half of her mouth curls downward. 

“A little late tonight, but consistent as ever.”

“Chan was a really good roommate,” Dara whines. “Whenever Niko came over, she’d put on her headphones and crank the volume up so high we could hear it through the walls.”

Eyes closed, she and Niko smile in unison.

“I guess she wanted to protect her hearing or something. So she left. And now our only audience is Astrid, Tola, and Denisse. And Beetlejuice.”

Denisse rolls her eyes and drains the rest of her can.

“It’s painfully sexy in here,” she says to me.

“I feel for you there. Even Beetlejuice?”

“No, she’s off the market. Which isn’t a bad route to take.”

“True, if you really think about it…”

I let my last comment linger in the air as Denisse pries the pull tab off her can. She studies it intently, then pockets it and squints at me again.

“Chan was also having really bad dreams,” she whispers. “Every night, she’d imagine these hands coming through the walls and grabbing her.”

“Like Freddy Krueger?”

“Sort of. They looked normal, except that the nails were pretty chewed up.”

Denisse stops. She tips her empty can to one side, then lets it fall back with a clang. The refrigerator stops humming behind her as the thumping intensifies upstairs, sharper now without the soft droning of the appliance underneath.

“She also said that she woke up one night, and this dude was standing in her closet. White as a ghost, wearing this red button-down shirt and nothing else. He looked like a scared little kid, but he also had this huge hard-on.” 

Denisse gives me an estimate of the intruder’s size, as if she’s retelling a fishing story that she has no personal stake in. Then she lowers her hands and continues, eyelids drooping as she goes.

“Chan asked him what he was doing in there, and the dude said he was hiding from someone. She asked him who, and the dude pointed up towards the attic. She asked him what his name was, but he put a finger over his lips: he didn’t want to say, in case she heard him.”

Beetlejuice hisses beneath us, and I hear his footsteps streaking towards the living room.

“Chan asked him where he was from. And the dude said, with this weird look on his face, ‘From a place much different than yours.’ She asked him where he was from again–,” Denisse lobs her can into the recycling bin, over the heads of Dara and Niko. Even aluminum clanging against aluminum doesn’t wake them from their sudden slumber. “And the guy smiled and said, ‘I’m from Banff. It’s right next to Calgary.’”

She sighs and stacks her arms on top of the table. She looks ready to drop her forehead onto them and fall asleep herself, but she manages to stay upright.

“Chan swore it wasn’t a dream. And then she started getting real paranoid those last couple weeks before she moved: ‘Oh, Astrid’s a drug addict, Astrid’s a camgirl, Astrid’s a witch, Astrid’s a Canadian…’”

The thumping worsens as Denisse re-checks her phone. A single whimper trickles down from the corners of the ceiling before the purple lights in the living room go out, plunging the rest of the house into darkness.

“But hey,” she says, not looking up. “As long as her money’s good, and she keeps ketchup chips out of the cabinets, I’m cool with whatever…”