[7. HAVE YOU EVER MOVED TO A NEW RESIDENCE? WHAT WAS IT LIKE?]

Never moved before. Me and Dad have always lived in that same dinky, old, rundown apartment. Dad never made much--just enough for groceries and to cover the bills. He always would say, “Chickpea, I wish I could give you a better life.” I’d get mad at him when he did. I never felt the need to have one. Life with Dad was always just, you know, home.

But I guess I’ve moved to a new place now, huh. It’s a weird feeling, being on my own all of a sudden.

~~~

The left half of the room, the living area, is pretty spread out. It doesn’t have much in it actually. There might have been stools along the counter at one point, but they’re long gone now. There’s a couch, of sorts, along the left hand wall. It’s the only furniture in this side of the room besides a really weird square pit in the middle of the floor and the set of sliding doors on the wall with the archway to the dirt room. I walk closer and look into it. It’s a fire pit, actually.

Pretty nifty. Strange that it’s just sitting here in the middle of the room, but still nifty.

Whoever made it took advantage of the whole room being on a raised wooden platform. They cut a hole in the wood and lined the edges with metal and filled it with sand. There seems to be some type of piping system or something branching outwards from the metal lining and hidden underneath the floorboards. I’m not exactly sure what that’s all for--I can only see the bits where it connects to the metal lining--but I’m willing to bet that it might have something to do with heating the air under the floorboards using the fireplace. If it does do that, that would be freaking cool, anyway.

The ceiling above the pit is a metal vent to let out smoke. Strangely enough, two thin, metal rods extend from the vent, following the ceiling, down the wall to a simple switch. Curious, I walk over and flip it. Cold air instantly flows into the room. Oh. It opens and closes the vent. Makes sense. I shiver from the cold and flip it closed again.

Nifty indeed.

I turn back to the couch. It’s made out a wooden frame. The seat and back of it is a loose weave of softened strips of some type of reed, maybe bamboo. It’s all in really good condition. Strangely good even. There’s even a blanket and throw pillow and all of them look, well not new exactly, but at least not even close to molding. They don’t even look weathered or moth eaten. It’s not really something I was expecting to find in an abandoned house, but can I really say no to a decent blanket? I’ll add it to my growing list of inconsistencies I’ve noticed since crash landing on this planet. Let’s ignore it for now.

Um . . . next then is the sliding doors. That’s the only place left to explore. I walk over to them. They’re kinda cool looking. The doors themselves are a wooden lattice wrapped in some kind of grainy paper. I touch the paper. Woah, it’s smooth and kinda slick. By how it looked, I thought it would be rough feeling. I give it a knock. It’s super hard. It doesn’t give at all like paper should. I lean closer. It’s got a layer of something coating it, kinda clear, kinda amber colored. Some type of resin maybe?

I open the sliding door. I’m baffled. I was not expecting that inside is a garden. Or rather, what used to be a garden. The room is a sort of greenhouse that’s connected to the house. Some of the walls are regular walls where the garden attaches to the house., The rest though, the roof and the remaining walls are made with the same lattice and paper covered in resin that the sliding doors are made of. They let in a very homey amber colored light, despite the layer of snow piling on the roof.

Just how sturdy is it? Shouldn’t the paper have cave with all that weight piling on top of it? Curious, I walk over to the wall and punch it. The wall shakes a little, but the paper doesn’t budge. I increase the strength of my punch, only to have the exact same reaction. Frowning, I pick up a rock and lob it like a trebuchet at the wall. The rock literally bounces back. I blink in shock. I’m not sure if it’s the materials of what makes the paper or it’s the resin that the paper’s covered with, but whatever it is, this paper’s strength is godly. No wonder it’s survived despite the ridiculous weather of this place. It’s hecka cool looking to boot.

Nice and sturdy, check. Nice atmosphere, check. Plantable area, check. It’s official. I’m in love. I’d be totally married to it if the plants were still alive. Most have them have gone the way of compost. There’s a few dry shells of plants curled up on the ground, but mostly it’s just dirt surrounding the rock lined path. That’s it. That’s all that’s here, despite the rather big space. But the potential is amazing.

And so, it’s been decided. By unanimous vote, I will be staying here from now on. Now that there’s a confirmed garden, the house is absolutely, positively, no doubt about it, perfect. Well, it will be once I find some seeds to plant. And a bed. I can sleep on the couch for the time being, but it’s not something I wanna do forever. It looks hard. Strange that there’s not a bedroom. Or even a bathroom (that’ll be annoying). It almost feels like a part of the house is missing somehow. Weird. I walk back inside and slide the door shut.

I walk over to to bench, skirting the fire pit in the center. I sit down on the couch and pull the blanket over my shoulders, giving it a sniff. It doesn’t even smell musty. I shrug and bounce on the couch a little. It’s surprisingly more comfortable that I thought, but it could still use some actual cushions. It’ll work for tonight, though.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Gosh I’m cold. I think I let in too much air. Let’s see if I can start a fire before I freeze to death. I hop up, letting the blanket slip off, and walk into the kitchen.

A more in-depth search of the drawers turned up what looked like a fire starter. It didn’t look like much. It was just a palm sized gray metal block with a silvery metal strip on one of its edges, but when I scraped the edge with a knife from one of the drawers, it gave off a few sparks. There was also a box full of replacement strips, which is nice. I put the starter in my pocket and searched through the stack of wood for usable pieces, dragging the ones I find into the pit.

It takes me a couple of tries to actually light the thing. The wood refused to light. I finally broke down one of the logs using one of the insanely sharp scythes. It wasn’t like cutting through butter, but it was close. The hardest part was not cutting up the floorboards, so I ended up doing it in the dirt room. Even after that, it still took some effort for the thinner pieces to catch since they weren’t really all that fine, but it went faster than it would have if I hadn’t broke up the log.

After a minute or so, I had a nice fire crackling in the pit. I sat there for quite a while on the floor with the blanket around my shoulders, leaning against the couch with pillow behind my back just watching the fire burn. The heat on my face felt nice, and I could feel the floorboards warming. Really, it’s such a nice feature. After a few minutes, warming up, I open up the vent a little, not much, just enough to let the smoke out--it’s getting a bit smoky in here.

Thinking a bit, I get up and walk to the dirt room, locking the front door. Then, I walk back to the fire pit and strip down to my underwear. (So I can get undressed. Are my clothes apart of me or not?) It’s been a pain to wander around in my soaked clothes. Wet sneakers is the worst feeling. I lay the clothes out on the floor next to the fire. It’d be better if I had something to drape them over, but there’s not really anything except the counter (too far away from the heat) and the chair in the dirt room (not touching that). Oh well. They’ll dry eventually.

I don’t really want to put out the fire since I just started getting warm, but fire safety says don’t leave a fire unattended. Wood floors around an open fire pit don’t spell safe, but somebody built this place. They must have had some countermeasure against burning the house down. I look around.

Oh. There’s a box by the wall in the shadow of the couch. I didn’t notice it before. I open it. Nice. It’s got fire pit stuff, like iron pokers and a rake and even roasting sticks (heck yes, s’mores). Most important, it’s got a wire mesh cover that fits perfectly over the pit. I grin as I cover it. I knew you wouldn’t let me down, house. Now I don’t have to worry about burning to a crisp in my sleep. I wrap the blanket around myself and fluff up the pillow, yawning as I lay down on the couch. I snuggle a bit to get comfortable on its woven reed slats. This place feels surprisingly safe considering it was once haunted. Well, I guess it’s still haunted. I smirk, then close my eyes.

Only, I can’t fall asleep.

My mind wanders now that I’m laying down, going to places I’ve been avoiding thinking about. Like how mismatched this house feels. Like how the different pieces of furniture and the utensils in the kitchen all feel like they’re from slightly different places, or even time periods: the wooden spoons and metal pans in the drawers, but the porcelain and glass jars in the cabinets. They don’t feel like they should exactly go together. Close, really, but no chocolate cigar. It’s like someone tried to make an accurate replica of a house from a hundred years ago, but put in things that dated decades apart or things that came from places a little too far apart to be logical.

Then again, this is a whole other world. Who’s to say that cultures developed the same as on Earth? It’s entirely possible that all the stuff in this house comes from the same place and time period. Climates are probably be different. Some technologies may have advanced more than others compared to where I come from.

It’s entirely possible, but something still feels off . . . There’s something weird about this place. Something subtly weird. Like it somehow doesn’t feel like it’s following the laws of physics, but I can’t put my finger what’s giving me the feeling.

Ughhhhhhhhh! I don’t know. How am I supposed to know? Frankly, I’m surprised I haven’t seen anything that screams “alien planet” here yet except for Jerkface, and well, he doesn’t exactly count since ghosts existed just fine on Earth anyway. It feels more like I jumped back in time rather than landing on a different planet. With just that, how am I supposed to figure out why I feel like something’s wrong with the physics of this whole place?

Speaking of something else that’s just wrong . . . where are the corpses? They weren’t in the dirt room. They weren’t in the kitchen or living room. They weren’t buried in the garden, were they? If they were, who buried them?? Was someone living in this house before me? Creepy, but it’d explain why some stuff is almost brand new (the couch, the pillow, the blanket, some of the knives in the drawers) and why some stuff is rotten sick or rusting to pieces (the wood spoons, the log pile, most of the pots and pans). But, well, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be comforted by the idea someone was here before me, or if I’d rather think about the possibility that the corpses just jumped up and wandered away. Either one sends shivers down my spine. It’s not like something came and ate them. Probably. Not unless it knew how to open the door properly.

I locked it, right? I locked it. I really did. I swore I locked it. Just to be safe, let’s check it again. I get up and checked the door.

Sure enough, it was locked. I breathe a sigh of relief. I walk back to the couch and lay down.

Well, if anything does come, going off of how Jerkface turned out, at least, now it seems like I can beat them up. Before I never tried. They were too freaky. Somethings tells me that I don’t think I would have been able to either. Whatever’s weird about this planet might make them solid in a way that they never were on Earth. Slightly comforting. It makes me feel like I’ve finally got a fighting chance against them that I feel like I never had before. Certainly, there was no chance with gigantic Mr. Demonic Eyeball or the stupid freaking ghoul. Here, at least, maybe I don’t have to be constantly freaked out by them. Maybe.

So watch out world, scare me and I’ll beat the crap outta you. Muwahahaha.

Whelp, no use thinking pointlessly about things I can’t do anything about. I’ll just wear myself out. I’m already worn out. You know what, let’s just go to bed.

. . . I say that, but it takes me a long while before I can finally fall asleep.