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
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 were four extra shoes by the door before I even understood what was happening, and that should tell you everything about how prepared I was for this evening. Four shoes means two people, and two people is not nothing. One person arriving is an event. Two people arriving at once, within minutes of each … 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
It started with one knock. A single, deliberate sound, metal on metal, from inside the radiator in the back room — not the window, not the wall, the radiator itself, as if something had reached up from underneath the floor and rapped its knuckles against the pipe to get my attention. I was sitting nowhere … Read more
I was asleep against her side, which is where I am most nights now, when the wall above the dresser lit up and something long and pale slid across it sideways, stretched itself tall against the corner, and then was gone before I had even finished sitting up. I want to be fair to myself … Read more
There is an order to things when she comes home. I did not invent this order, I only noticed it, the way a scholar notices a pattern in old texts nobody else bothered to read closely. Keys first, into the dish by the door, a small metallic clatter that means she has stopped moving forward … Read more
I found it in the sunbeam by the window, the good one, the one that moves a little earlier across the floor now than it used to. At first I thought it was a hair of hers, one of the long dark ones that turn up everywhere and that I generally regard as litter. I … Read more
She sat down at the kitchen table tonight with a coat across her lap, a small plastic box I have never seen before, and a spool of black thread, and I understood immediately that something was wrong with the coat and she intended to fix it with a weapon. I want to describe the weapon … Read more
There was a thread sticking up from the arm of the couch this afternoon, pale against the darker fabric, no longer than a whisker, and I want it understood that I did not go looking for it. It found me. I was simply walking the length of the cushion the way I always do, checking … Read more
