“One room apartment, move in ready.” The marketplace ad looked too good to be true: an apartment close to downtown and only eight hundred bucks a month. I was desperate after what happened with Mike and the baby. Well, there isn’t a thing I can do about it now. The new apartment, well the very old new-to-me apartment was in a ten-story brick building. It certainly wasn’t what I would call nice. The exterior was covered in grease and other strange stains of an unknown origin. The interior hallway lay somewhere between a seedy hotel and a hospital. The only decor was the suspect blotches of orange-ish red smeared into the otherwise plain carpet. The walls lacked any character of their own: plain white drywall devoid of any texture beyond the oopsies that people moving in or out created with heavy couches or large unwieldy tables.
I reached for the handle of apartment 10C, but the door opened before my fingers touched the small brass knob. In the doorway stood a short fat man. His ten hairs of comb-over poorly concealed his greasy pale skin. He smiled like a rat, his few black rotten teeth highlighting his crooked jaw. “Joan, I suppose?” he asked in a thick Slavic accent. “Yup, here to look at the place.” I tried my best to remain optimistic, I had no choice. “There are a few pieces of furniture left from the last guy. You are welcome to keep ’em.” The grease stain said as we walked around the apartment. The few pieces of furniture were a black pleather sofa, a small dining table, and, in the bedroom, a beautiful dark-stained armoire. It looked completely out of place in the otherwise derelict apartment. “Do you need a hand moving your furniture up?” the landlord asked. “No, my parents will be here in a few to help, but thanks!” The landlord nodded and walked off down the hallway, out of sight. Honestly, he wasn’t all that bad, just unpleasant to look at.
“Wow, Joan, the place has… well, it has character?” Dad grimaced as he looked around the shabby apartment. “It’s better than nothing. At this point, that is all that matters.” I tried to assure Dad. “You know you could always come back home with us, right? I mean, I get it you want to make it on your own but I really don’t want you to get taken in by the riffraff.” Dad’s eyes were a bit misty as he spoke. “That’s the cool part: only one neighbor downstairs. I have this whole floor to myself. This building housed students before the college shutdown last year, so it’s pretty much empty.”
Dad groaned the way only old men groan as we pushed the last piece of furniture, my old tattered couch into the living room. “Home sweet home. I suppose you want me to get out of here so you can set things up. If you change your mind, please call me. It’s not too late.” He gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder and a warm, slightly concerned smile.
The bedroom had no closet, so I went to work folding my clothes and stacking them neatly in the very old armoire. It smelled of pine tar and sandalwood. It felt old, like really old. I took a picture and fed it into Grok with the prompt “what is this and when is it from?” Grok told me it was an armoire, sometimes called a linen press, from the late 1800s. It was made of burl wood, possibly maple, and was worth approximately $1,500 or more in the right condition. “Jeez, why would someone leave it behind?” Exhausted from the unpacking, I needed a snack.
The kitchen consisted of a mini fridge which seemed pretty new, a small single-burner mini-oven combo, and my trusty pink microwave. I sifted through the one bag of food I’d brought with me. It wasn’t much just a few cans of tuna, a couple packets of chicken ramen, and ketchup. My stomach gurgled, demanding a sacrifice. “Fine! I will order Uber Eats. We deserve it anyways after getting moved in so quickly.” I patted my stomach and launched the app. There was a great Chinese food spot nearby, so I went to work ordering enough beef and broccoli to feed an empire.
A scraping noise rang out from the bedroom. It sounded as if someone had pushed the armoire across the flooring. Entering the room, I found nothing had changed besides the left door of the armoire, which hung slightly open. “She is such a disappointment.” The muffled sound of Dad’s voice, confessing a feeling I didn’t know he had, drifted in from the living room. His tone carried such confidence in the venomous opinion. Did he leave his keys here? Was he on a call with Mom? What the fuck is going on? Maybe he meant for me to hear those words, meant for me to hurt. I stopped breathing, listening for any more vitriol, but nothing came. “Dad?” I whispered out into the unknown. I took a hesitant step into the hallway, my brain focused on every tiny sound. What was I doing here? Creeping around my own apartment. It was probably nothing, probably someone outside on the phone. But still, I felt the weight of anxiety holding my feet with each sluggish step.
Two weeks had passed since move-in day, and I was really starting to get used to the place. My friend Kendra stopped in every couple of days to hang. She fell in love with the armoire. It was hard not to, with the beautiful hand-carved textures and swirling burl wood. “Look what I brought you!” Kendra said, holding up a bottle of clearish yellow liquid. The bottle read “Jim’s Fine Wood Furniture Polish.” “Oh bitch, let’s polish her up!” We started on the top of the armoire. With each pass, the wood shone more brilliantly. “Oh my fuckin’ gawd, I am so jealous you scored it for free. Why do you think they left it behind?” Kendra beamed at the progress we had made. “I don’t know, maybe it was too heavy for them.” I pushed against the sturdy wood. It felt bolted to the ground. “No kidding. Maybe a grandma owned it. Time for the undercarriage.” Kendra made a crude gesture as she knelt down onto the floor. “Weird, it says something on the bottom. Barraaddd, no, maybe borrod. Can you pass me your phone?” She was now lying on her back, hand outstretched, face concealed under the armoire. “It says boggard.” “What the hell is boggard?” I asked, trying to get a peek past her blonde mop of hair. “B O G G A R D. Beats the hell out of me. Must be the maker’s mark.” Kendra suggested. A loud snap came from underneath the armoire as Kendra wiggled her way out. “Fuck, I am so sorry.” She held out a small piece of splintered wood. “It’s ok. I’ll get some wood glue from Menard’s tomorrow. It’s on the way to work.”
Kendra was fast asleep on the couch when I woke up. My phone’s painfully bright screen read 2:56 AM. Fuck me, it is way too early. I could probably get a few more hours before work. “She doesn’t deserve it. After all, she couldn’t even carry her own child. Miscarriage? More like the baby rejected her.” Kendra’s words stabbed at my ovaries. How could she say such a terrible thing? She knew how much it hurt me. It was the reason Mike had left me. He called me barren, unfit to be a mother or a wife. Why do you think I am stuck in this shit hole apartment? Tears of rejection stung my cheeks, each one a reminder of the pain that night. I needed comfort. Mike saw it differently. He screamed at me, told me I was useless, and blamed me for everything. Kendra’s tirade ended as abruptly as it had begun, and after some crying I drifted off into a fitful sleep.
The sharp ping of an incoming text ripped me out of my slumber. It was from Kendra. “Sorry I had to leave so early last night. My mom needed my help, had to jet.” Wait, she isn’t here right now? I replied, “What time did you take off?” The phone sat still no response, not even the dots indicating she was typing. Was she not here, saying those awful things about me? Did I somehow confuse a dream for reality? My heart raced as her message appeared on the screen. The response floored me. “Well I made it home by midnight, so idk, like 11:30ish.” My hands shook. That was impossible. I saw the time and I heard her voice. No one not a soul lived on this floor.
I peeked out of a small crack in my door. The hall remained as vacant as ever. I heard the creak of old rusty hinges and the thud of something falling onto the carpet behind me. This only served to spike my adrenaline as the silence was broken. “Fuck!” There on the floor was the piece of the armoire. It had somehow fallen out of the closed door. Before I could register what was going on, the left door of the armoire slowly, deliberately swung open. I gently pushed the door. It swung back open. I pushed it closed again, this time with more force. It stopped with a sure dull thud and then swung open again. It’s been you. The realization punched me in the gut. This armoire housed some kind of evil. Anger and pain swirled in my chest. My hands began to shake and hot tears streamed down my face, landing on the old tattered carpet below. “FUCK YOU!” Before I knew what was happening, I grabbed the armoire door and began slamming it hard. Each time, a deafening bang echoed through the empty building. I let go of the door and crumpled into a pile. My wails almost covered up the sound of the armoire slamming shut. The abrupt change instantly shut down my sobs. Silence consumed the room. I waited staring at the armoire, expecting something to happen. Faintly, I could hear a high-pitched squealing noise from deep within the old wood. Like a pig squeal, but steady and rhythmic. With each second the squeal intensified until it was too much to bear. I grabbed the door with all my strength and tore it open. The source of the noise was all too apparent. Curled up in a bloody mess at the bottom of the armoire was the grotesque, poorly formed embryo of my child that never was. It was wailing out in pain. Its small black eyes stared piercingly into my soul. My fear was taken over by love and maternal instinct. Slowly, I bent down and scooped the little fella into my hands. He was no bigger than a tomato, and needed his Mama. I softly whispered to him, “It’s ok. It’s ok.” His wailing became gentle coos and his eyes closed. His malformed body turned to dust in my hands. By some unseen force, the dust collected into the air and shot back into the armoire. I carefully shut the door to the armoire, ensuring it closed all the way. “Sleep tight, little guy,” I whispered to the old wood.
Leave a Reply