Oliver following a suspicious smell, sound, or object to the bottom of it.
There are now eleven small orange eyes along my windowsill, and none of them blink at the same time, which I have decided is the most unsettling part. She brought them in coiled around a cardboard spool, a long black cord with these little plastic bulbs spaced along it like beads, and I assumed, reasonably, … Read more
There are three knocks a person can give at a door, and I have sorted all of them. There is the soft, apologetic knock of someone who already suspects they’re not wanted. There is the brisk double-knock of someone with somewhere else to be. And then there is the knock that happened today, which I … Read more
She came into the living room holding something small and black between two fingers, the way you’d hold a bug you weren’t sure was dead yet, and said my name in the particular tone she uses right before something is about to happen to me that I haven’t agreed to. I have learned to recognize … Read more
She came in this afternoon carrying a paper bag with something heavy and round in the bottom of it, and I want it understood that I was there for the whole thing — the bag set down, the rustling, the moment she reached in and produced it and set it in the middle of the … Read more
There is a closet in this house I have never once been invited into, and tonight she opened it and pulled out a hard black case I did not know existed, shaped like nothing useful, with a handle worn pale where a hand has gripped it many times before mine ever touched this house. I … Read more
There is a particular rectangle of floor near the baseboard in the living room, between the leg of the bookshelf and the edge of the rug, that has been mine on good mornings for as long as I can remember paying attention to such things. Today it did something I did not care for. It … Read more
It got dark earlier tonight than it had any business doing, and she turned on the lamp by the window before she turned off the big light, which is a sequence I have never liked and have never been consulted about. The room went soft and yellow in the middle and black at the edges, … Read more
The top of the refrigerator has been in my peripheral vision for weeks now. Not the side of it, which is nothing, a flat white wall I have no interest in, but the top, which I can only ever see from an angle, from the floor, looking up past the cabinets. There is a wicker … Read more
She moved the coffee table today. Not far — maybe two feet, enough to clear a rectangle of open floor in the living room — but far enough that it now sits half over the vent, which I consider a separate offense entirely and plan to address later. First things first. I needed to understand … Read more
She brought out a flat cardboard box this afternoon, the kind that arrives folded nearly to nothing and has to be coaxed back into a shape with your thumbs along the seams. I watched her do this from the hallway with some suspicion, because boxes in this house have a way of either containing something … Read more
