I should get this out there. I’m not sure why, but it feels…important, to share it.
Recently, I’ve been in a bit of a rut. I’ve been working odd jobs and doing online classes for the better part of this year. All set up for a new job, until the company changed owners during my process, so now it’s in limbo if I’m even employed there soon or not.
I need to paint the picture fully so you understand why me sitting in pajamas, stoned out of my mind at noon and playing video games in a feeble attempt to distract myself from real life, is a fairly common sight if you look in my apartment window.
I know most of my neighbors, and they know me. We all get along in a passive way, where we know each other’s names and apartment numbers but not our favorite genre of movie or how many siblings we have.
Some of these people, God bless them, have children. I don’t know how many of you live in apartments, but apartment children just hit differently. The parking lot and patches of grass around the building that were their yards were common places for running around and shrieking. The parents would yell at them to quiet down, maybe once or twice, before giving up. At least it’s outside, they think, and not in my apartment.
Yeah, but what about me? What about my needs? Like, not wanting to hear the agonizing screech of a child with a skinned knee who thinks he’s dying? Not wanting to hear that at 5:45 am? Is that so wrong?
Some days though, nobody is outside. Days where it rains or snows, either in Wisconsin can be a lot to handle. Waking up and seeing clouds always put a smile on my goofy, introverted face. It’ll be quiet today, I think, opening the window a crack to listen to the rain while I sip coffee and search for jobs.
After applying to some random career moves I would never have seen otherwise, I smoked a bowl in my bathroom, plopped down with my laptop, and was set to just ignore the rest of the world for the day.
“Mommy? Mommy? Mu-mu-MOMMY!”
I groaned. A kid outside? Maybe the mom had picked him up from school or something? Kid went to get the mail and forgot which apartment he had to buzz to get back in. The thought made me grin in a sardonic way. I still have to hear kids screaming, but at least this one was also miserable.
I turned the podcast I half listened to up to drown out the kid, the rain starting to pour. Neither helped, little crotch goblin was going off in the parking lot.
“Mu-mu-mu-mu-mu-MOOOOOOUM!” The kid yelled again.
I groaned, walking to the patio window to see what was going on. Sure enough, some toddler was yelling in the parking lot, a lone figure in the pouring rain. I squinted my eyes to get a closer look. The kid was looking at my building, he must live inside. I could just buzz him up, but he wasn’t near the building, just looking at it.
In fact, it seemed like he was looking at me.
“It’s cold!” the kid yelled, seemingly forgetting about his mom. “Someone just let me in, he’s coming!”
That startled me. “Who’s coming?” I yelled out. I think I was more surprised than the kid. Yelling out, getting involved with strangers’ lives, just isn’t in me. I’d much rather sit back, let the world and everyone in it pass me by. So why was I engaging? Just let the mom deal with it, right?
The kid was still looking right at me. “You don’t call for help, remember?” His voice was quiet, but still someone carried over the rain. “You don’t do anything.”
“What? I-” Before I could continue, the kid’s skin began to change. Blotches showed up around his face and limbs, bruises decorating his pale skin. Blood began to drip from his nose and mouth, as well as little wounds across his body. As I began to panic, his limbs all just plopped off like dolls, dropping into a puddle with a loud splashing sound.
Then the parking lot was empty.
I sat back, drenched in sweat. Jesus, what was in this pot? Did I get a batch mixed with something else? I thought about calling someone, but wasn’t sure who I’d even reach out to? Hello, police, I got high and thought I saw a kid dismember himself in the parking lot. Please don’t show up 20 minutes late and shoot the neighbors dog.
Yeah, that’d go over well.
So I did nothing. I kept job searching, doing random bursts of homework as far the urge would carry me when it came, the usual stuff. I had some money saved up, so I could pay rent in an emergency, but I would really prefer not to. That said, I took a break from pot, in case any company still had the archaic policy of testing my pee for impurities.
Which is why, the next time it rained, when I heard the kid in the parking lot, I knew something weird was going on.
The same kid stood in the same place, yelling for his mom but looking right at me. “Do you live here?” I yelled out. “I can buzz you in, which apartment is your mom in.”
At this, the kid grinned. “She doesn’t live here anymore. She doesn’t live anymore, she followed me.” It was hard to see, but the twinkle in his eye showed excitement, the way a hunter would when their prey walks into the open. “You didn’t talk to me then? Why talk to me now? Mitchell, what good does that do?”
I bite my tongue to suppress a scream as the kid repeated his weird ritual, bruises and blood appearing rapidly before he fell apart. He knew my name, I revolted. How did he know my name?
The next day, I asked my neighbors if they knew who the kid was. They all describe a mother and son who used to live here, but they moved out a month after I moved in.
“Did I do something wrong?” I joked, and they laughed.
They stopped laughing when they told me that the son, Carlos, heard someone calling for him, and went outside to see who it was. Being only five, it was easy for him to forget which apartment he lived in, and he couldn’t recall which button to press to alert his mom to let him in. The mother said that, when she realized what had happened, she went outside to find her son, but he was gone, only an empty parking lot and pouring rain was waiting for her.
“So what happened?” I asked. “Where did the ki- Carlos go?” They shrugged. Whoever called him outside in the first place must have taken him. A stalker, child abductor, predator, who knows? The police had a few leads, but nothing ever panned out. They have no idea what happened.
But I think I do. I think I even know why he’s appearing to me. Over the rain, it would be hard to hear a child, even one yelling. Especially if you had your windows shut, which most people do when it pours.
Not me, I like to listen to the rain.
After I had moved in, I started experiencing the apartment kids, yelling and screaming in and outside the building. It’s one of those things that you learn to tune out after a while, and until you can do that, you just try to ignore it.
Just don’t get involved, that was always my policy.
I don’t remember the day specifically, but I think that’s the point. To me, some little shit was just shrieking in the parking lot. But to the kid, he was stuck in a storm, closed off from safety, with some strange person in a strange van wearing a strange mask coming out to get him. To beat him, torture him, dismember and hide the body?
He comes every time it rains. Sometimes he’s in the parking lot but lately he’s been in the hallways. I hear him knock on other neighbors’ doors, but they don’t answer either.
Because they didn’t hear him before, so they wouldn’t hear him now. Only I did. Just like back then, I ignore the knocking, I ignore the wet handprints on my window, I ignore the footprints soaked into the carpet in my apartment the morning after.
Between finding a job and school and inflation and everything else, I’d really rather just not get involved. I have enough of my own shit to deal with, right?