This moment felt different. That wasn’t surprising. After all, he was experiencing a memory, though B had no recollection of it. Even if he had control over his choices, the decisons that had been made were years old, crystallized by the chill of time.
It wasn’t quite the claustrophobic place he recalled from his days of fervent plotting and extreme discomfort. Now, at the very least, he had room to breathe.
It was strange. He remembered this door with its odd matte orange coat of paint over it. Though he could not place this specific instance in his mind, perhaps that wasn’t surprising. He had hundreds of memories standing in front of this door. Despite the gaudy color, seeing it had always filled him with a sense of warmth, as more often than not, she was waiting on the other side.
It was a small studio apartment, wedged into an odd corner in the building, giving them a view into the three of the neighboring apartments on her floor. Small, and oddly shaped, she had a defensive love for her first apartment. Even though it was hers, Calvin thought of this place when he tried to picture his home. His own room was little more than a storage unit at this point.
All these thoughts rushed back to B. Thoughts and feelings stored in some pocket of his mind, now brought to the present. Along with it was the feeling of dread. It felt like cold water had been poured down his back, his spine straightened, his hair raised.
That must be why they were still standing outside. His hand was in his jacket pocket, gripping his keys in a fist. He ran his thumb back and forth over one of the key’s teeth. It could have been the key to this door. It began to hurt as he pressed his thumb down harder. He vaguely wondered if it would be possible to saw his thumb off with those blunt teeth.
He couldn’t stay out here forever, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to try. He was successful, at least for the moment which was surprising. It wasn’t the narrow, subservient space he had been forced to inhabit for so long, but he wasn’t in control either.
If he didn’t exert all his effort into walking away and leaving, he knew that they would already be inside. They were rooted, made motionless by equal tensions pulling in opposite directions. At least for now.
He could feel his control slipping away, and all his efforts to hold on tighter only left his palms ripped up and burned. His hand emerged, as if by fate, holding the key to the door.
All at once, he felt the familiarity of this position. A viewer, not a participant. They turned the key and walked through the door.
Clara was perched on the windowsill. She held a book in her lap, but her eyes were shifting to something taking place in a neighboring apartment.
“Shh. They’re at it again.” Her voice was so quiet it was hardly a whisper.
“32, or 33?”
She placed her hand against the wall. 32.
For a moment, he forgot why he was there. It was the look on her face that stopped him. He knew it was a reflection of his own. It wasn’t the fact that they could communicate so easily with so few words that had stopped him, but the thought of losing her that caused him to pause.
She motioned him in, tapping the open space on the window sill next to her.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He turned the door knob, shutting the door without a sound. Then he leaned back on the narrow perch with her, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Did she miss garbage day?”
“No, he left an empty milk in the fridge again.”
It wasn’t the first time they’d heard this fight. When they had discovered that their neighbors rarely worked through their issues behind closed windows at appropriate volumes, it had made it more bearable to make games out of it. This one was a draw. Neither of them had picked empty milk jugs as the cause of the next fight.
They seemed to be winding down, and Clara got up, carefully shutting the window as she did. “Everything ok?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You were out there a while. I was wondering if someone was spying through the peephole.”
“Oh, right, sorry.” B could felt his stomach roiling. This was it, the dams about to break. They were passing a point of no return. It was like finally seeing the other side of an optical illusion. What was once there now appeared as something entirely different, but nothing in the image had changed. It was always there, even if he couldn’t see it.
“I need to tell you something.”
Clara moved to the foot of her bed, but this time did not gesture for Calvin to sit next to her. She knew him well enough to sense the gravity of what was coming.
“Remember back when we were freshmen in college, and we had that big fight.”
She said nothing.
His mouth kept moving, as he tried to read her thoughts through her penetrating stare. “I mean, it was bad, remember?”
Still nothing.
“We hadn’t talked in days, and well, I messed up.”
Nothing. Not out of her mouth, or behind her eyes which appeared to have darkened as he spoke.
“After the fight, I—I slept with someone. I’m so sorry, I…” And all at once he had run out of things to say.
She let out a long, tired sigh. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I thought it was the right thing to do.”
She buried her face in her hands, and Calvin wondered if she was crying. Though when she looked up, it was clear that she wasn’t. It was somehow worse, to see that look of pain without tears.
“No, the right thing to do would have been to tell me back then.”
“That seems a little unfair.”
Her look was enough to shut him up. “Telling me back then would have been for me. This is for you.”
“You’re saying that I shouldn’t have told you?”
“Christ, Calvin, I’m saying you shouldn’t have fucked someone else.”
B felt as if someone had taken a bat to his gut. A force that pressed him into himself, his stomach recoiling, his lungs forcefully expunged. It felt as if the walls around him had been waiting to pounce the second he collapsed in on himself. And what were these walls? Not Clara’s first apartment, not the walls from his childhood bedroom, but walls of oak. They closed around him.
His eyes were watering from the blow, and he couldn’t make out where he was until it was too late. The lid of the coffin was being lowered from high above him. He knew that he had to get out of here. Who knew where he would end up if he was shut in there?
And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to get up. There was no force holding him there, only his own thoughts.
Didn’t he deserve this?
No, of course not. He had no agency in the decision to tell her. In fact, I had been trying to stop it.
You’re smart enough to know that’s not the real sin here.
He shook his head. It wasn’t my fault. A witness to a murder is not the same as a murderer.
You’re sure that you were only a witness?
Yes? Yes. I fought for the control I had. I earned it, and now I can fix all the mistakes he made.
If that’s the case, why don’t you get out of here before it’s too late?
…
They’re coming back now, aren’t they?
B wanted to get out, he wanted to run, but now it wasn’t his thoughts, but his memories that wanted him to be entombed. Memories from a past he hadn’t quite forgotten. Forgotten implying that it was something passive, beyond his control.
He was nearly shut inside, only a foot of space between the top of his coffin and the lid. Yet, he was paralyzed by all that he had repressed. The best he was able to do was to lift his head up so that he could see out of the shrinking gap.
More than anything, he wanted to see him there. Not the shell of A that he had seen dissolve into the ether, but the monster who had kept him locked up for so long. If he saw him there, then he could at least guarantee his own sanity, before this forced march down memory lane. But as the gap shut, closing him into an opaque blackness, he was able to see clearly. No one was there.