When I moved into my unit, I never thought that living on the ground level was going to carry any significance at all. I didn’t even think the fact that my windows were at a reachable height for any average size person, nor the front door opening directly outside from my tiny kitchen, was something to be alarmed about. Outside my door was a short driveway where I typically parked my car, with the rear end of the car just barely missing the threshold between driveway and sidewalk. The mere fifteen feet between my bed and the bustling foot traffic of Main Street was of no issue, that was more than enough space for me to foolishly think I was sheltered from the outside world. It was my first apartment all my own, finally I had a space that I was entitled to make decisions about. I had the big details like color scheme and furniture already planned out, with the accoutrement to be figured out as part of the journey.
When I first told my mother I was moving into my own apartment, the first thing she said was, “What happens if you choke and there’s no one around to give you the Heimlich?”
That was my worst fear for a while. The only part of the apartment I was not thrilled about was a small window on the top section of my front door. The door opened directly into my kitchen, meaning that if I was in my kitchen at the stove I was forced into view of the street directly outside. The window had no blinds or space for me to add them. It made me feel like I was on the display for the whole neighborhood. “Welcome to bachelor pad cooking with your host Oscar Walowitz!” The whole thing felt ridiculous. But it was still my first apartment, so in a small way I loved this quirky window that made me feel so exposed and vulnerable.
The only reason that I could finally afford my own bachelor pad was because I had just started a new job at XPollen Software. I had worked for the last four years hopping from startup to startup doing what I could to move through the ranks of the Software Engineering departments all leading up to this latest Senior Software Engineering gig at XPollen. XPollen would be the most money I had ever seen in a bi-weekly check, and it was the largest company I had worked for so far having quadrupled to 160+ people in the last two years alone. They were going to allow me to work on the most complex projects I might ever get to work on. It couldn’t have been more of a dream come true. Though I did have some slight reservations about the ethics of what the software would be used for.
It took me nearly the whole first month, but I eventually got the place to a state that I was happy with, the apartment finally felt like home. It felt like it was a small extension of myself. The walls were close to bare, but what was there was only mine. I had collected one large, framed painting of an old ship boat captain, three paintings of guitars, and a hand knit quilt that read “Welcome to the Waloworld” that my grandmother had given to me as a child. These were the only pieces I had, each acted as a bookmark for a moment in my life. I bought a toaster, a blender, 10 colorful plates, 3 secondhand mugs with funny messages on them like “Jesus was American” with a classic Jesus likeness holding a tiny T-Rex, 6 forks, 6 knives, 6 spoons, 2 spatulas, 1 whisk, and a handful of other items that were now dear to me. All these creature comforts made a home when I never thought I would find one again.
It was the first weekend of October when I first saw him. I was making myself some scrambled eggs when I first saw something outside threw that odd front door window. There were multiple irregularities in view. I had dropped off my Nissan at the shop that previous day, so the space in the driveway that was normally blocked by it was no longer obstructed, giving me a clear, full view of the sidewalk outside. At first all I saw was his back, and then I began to see more each and every time I looked out the window. I was almost positive it was a man I was seeing. He was old and the back of his head was missing patches of hair, the rest was covered in black, grey and white curls. At first, I thought the man was short, until I noticed that he was hunched over, looking downwards. From the back I could not see much but based on his arm positions it looked like he was peering down on something in his hands. There was a sickly look about him. It was as if he had just been pulled from some hell I didn’t want to imagine. Many of the homeless around looked like that. He just stood still amid the passing cars and buses in the street, the busy people moving somewhere in both directions. None of them seemed to notice the man, it was as if he was a piece of hardened gum on the sidewalk to be avoided. So, I finished my breakfast and pushed the image of the man from my mind.
A whole week went by without anything significant going on outside my windows. I worked at my desk for the first two days of the work week, from the desk I could see outside my bedroom window to another section of the sidewalk on Main Street. I saw people walking with sweatshirts on their backs and coffees in their hands. I saw old women walking the streets of the city with no place to be. There were children taking themselves to school as some city children did. But no old men with horrible posture and missing patches of hair were present. I worked in our clean and sleek downtown office on Wednesday, and then back home for the next two days. It was almost exactly one week later when I saw him the second time.
I had told my friends I would meet them out on that Saturday night. Some place downtown I couldn’t remember now, some place where the music was too loud to talk and the drinks were dizzyingly overpriced. It didn’t matter because I was not fully present when I was there. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had just saw. The second time I saw the man was in the same exact spot and position I saw him the first time. This time it was dark, night had fully set in, and the only light to see him came indirectly from a streetlamp. I froze in my kitchen, the man’s form was unchanged, but at that nightly hour there were fewer people moving about. Some of the automobiles passing tossed their headlamps along his ragged clothes. The worst part still was that as I stood them frozen, I watched my uber pull up right in front of him. I steadied myself by closing my eyes and breathing deeply, “nothing is scary, its just a man, be a man. He’s probably homeless, best to just ignore and keep moving” I told myself. When I opened my door, the man was gone. I was so taken aback I stood there in my open door feeling the Autumn wind pass into the kitchen. Then the uber honked its obnoxious wail and I snapped out of whatever haze I had been in.
I didn’t see the man for some time after that, but that didn’t mean he left me alone. I thought I saw the man countless times over that next month. I saw him lurking behind a dumpster in an alley I was passing. The man’s form would appear in bathrooms as I would enter, or when I looked up in the mirror from washing my hands. The most often false occurrence was when I would see him standing there, hunched over across the street from me as I was walking to the grocery store, to the pharmacy, or literally anywhere I was harmlessly passing to without care of where each step landed. November came in and so did the cold. The winters in the Northeast could be brutal, but this one wasn’t just yet, most days topped out in the fifties and gently slipped into the thirties at night. It was the first day that it dropped below freezing when the man visited me again.
I was lying in my bed desperate for some sleep after a long day of nearly 12 hours in code. After days like that, sleep never came easily. It was as if my brain needed extra time to ramp down, like an engine with hundreds of miles behind it. I could feel my body passing into a sleep state, when I was suddenly ripped from sleep’s soft embrace. Two loud slams on my front door screamed into my ears. I bolted upright in bed and felt my body go cold. I immediately started sweating and I could feel knots forming in my gut. Thud! Thud! Then it all went silent. Not even the bed made a sound as I pushed myself to the edge of it. Either that or I was unable to hear anything but my own interwoven thoughts of terror and dread. The alarm clock read 3:33AM. It couldn’t be! I must have been fast asleep for hour now, only to be woken up by the fists pounding at my door. Before the threshold I paused, steadying myself for what I might see through the glass. I was fully aware that this door of mere inches in thickness was the only thing standing between me and the street. Down the driveway where my Nissan was lying idle, out before the empty road beyond, was the same silhouette of the old man. He was in the same slouching position from our previous two meetings. Then I blinked and he was gone. It took me close to an hour to convince myself it had all been a dream, that being the only way my restless mind would allow my body to sleep.
My alarm clock rang out the next morning, ending a night of wretched sleep. My work started to falter as I become more and more conscious of this old man’s presence. I couldn’t get him out of my head. I could no longer tap into that special place I used my whole career to see the flow of terabytes of data without the stream of endless code giving way to that patchy head of gray and black curly hair. His ragged clothes and dirty shoes. But most of all, I had the painful curiosity of what the man might look like if he ever turned around to face me. I wouldn’t get that chance for some time, but I imagined every possible horror in the time that lead up to that day.
The day’s got colder and the old man took less time to visit me the next time. It was again at night, that following week 3 days after the night that left me ragged. Again, Thud! Thud! And then a third, louder Whack! The door shook on its hinges, and I could feel the vibration throughout the whole apartment. I wondered if this level of commotion might carry to one of the other units. The clock read 3:17AM. This entity, or whatever it was, because I was convinced this was no longer a man, I was not going to let it own me, not going to let it continue to encroach on my life as an uninvited guest. I steadied my resolve and jumped out of bed. This was it! I was going to confront whatever it was and make it known that I was Oscar Walowitzs and I was not to be pushed around by some sprit!
I stomped over to the front door and looked out, but there was no silhouette of an old man standing at the end of my driveway. I opened the door and took a step across the threshold onto my welcome matt. “Leave me alone!” I yelled to the empty street like a man gone mad. I saw nothing, I heard nothing. Silence had come again. Then my eyes began to pick up the slightest movement on the roof of the house across the street, something was moving slightly yet rapidly. I hung there in the silent, intense moments between seeing and perceiving. Then I realized the form on the roof had glowing orange eyes, my mind had mistaken them for the light of a streetlamp from the angle I was standing at. I could tell it was the form of the man starring down at me breathing quick, frantic, manic breaths. The man was practically gyrating, and his glowing eyes starred down at me. I could just make out that he was hunched over on the roof, starring down at me, I could see that he was holding something, but it was too dark to see.
Then he an eardrum shattering screech erupted from the man, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
I covered my mortal ears, yet it did nothing to down the sound of this other worldly creature. OSCAR! The man screamed, at this point I was writhing on the ground with my welcome mat scratching against my bare arms. I was too terrified to feel the below freezing temperatures around me. GIVE ME YOUR PAIN, I WANT TO HELP YOU OSCAR. It felt like he was screaming into my head. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” I yelled as loud I could, trying to shout above the screaming in my head that were louder than a jet engine.
Then it was over. The screaming was gone, and I was lying on my doorstep staring up at a night sky muddled by light pollution. I rolled over to look at the roof of the house that the entity had been perched on. It was just a roof. My body hurt everywhere, and I was just starting to feel the cold against my body that was only shielded by boxer briefs and a T shirt. I got to my feet and heard something else. It was the sound of a window opening, then a voice “Hey buddy!” I looked up and a man was standing in the window on the second floor of the condominium building next door. “Yeah?” I responded. “Shut the fuck up!” He yelled down, and then slammed his window closed.
I went that next day into XPollen HQ for a change of scenery. Another minute at home and I would have been sick. I had never felt more trapped in my life, it was if the walls of my studio apartment were shrinking inward by the day. Once the walls had secured me in place, not allowing me to move, I imagined the entity of that old man would come and slice me open from groin to throat. He would feed on me and move to the next poor schmuck. Or was there’s something about me in particular he found so appealing? He said he wanted “MY PAIN” he said he wanted “TO HELP” me. But why? And how? I did not feel like I was in pain, well besides the general ache of poor sleep, but that wasn’t really pain. I couldn’t stomach office small talk. How could anyone talk about the weather, our new business unit announced by corporate, Janice’s new veneers, or the price of gas when there was something other worldly haunting you? All these people with their novelty coffee cups stewing gossip that made their lives a modicum more interesting than facing their individual truths. Tech evangelists spouting jargon with no semblance of understanding of anything below the shiny surface level of their vapid world. The shine of the “tech” world was losing it shine before my eyes. I was having an existential crisis right in that new multi-million-dollar office building. I had to leave, I feared going home, but I couldn’t be there any longer.
I spent the rest of the afternoon at home between fits of rage, despair, productivity, and more despair. The thought, “why is this happening to me?” crossed my mind close to 1000 times. I didn’t look back on my life thinking I had been a bad person deserving of any of this. I had been a just person, I held the door for people after I had walked through, I volunteered for a couple hours each year, I ran a 5k once for charity, why in god’s name was this happening to ME!? And that’s when it hit me, what is this really was something in god’s name? Or in the name of some other god, maybe the devil? Maybe it was a pagan god or one of those Olympian one’s from antiquity. I decided to pray before bed to see if there was anything, any deity of any sort that would help me. I got on my knees and crossed my hand in front of me on the bed, lowering my head to meet them. “Please God, if you’re out there, if you really are listening and watching me right now. Please help me. I’m a good person I held the door for people after I had walked through, I volunteered for a couple hours each year, I ran a 5k once for charity and stuff. I don’t know what this thing is, but I need it gone. It’s ruining my life. Can you do that for me please God?” Then I got up, crawled under the covers, and went to bed.
That evening was not the restful one I had hoped for. Another Thud at the door clutched me away from my slumber. My body was sick from exhaustion and in a way, it was calming given the circumstances. I was at the point of being tired when my whole body and soul responded to any stimuli with “fuck it.” I went to the door, again there was nothing at the end of my driveway. I opened the door and peered over the neighbor’s roof across the street. A blistering sub-freezing breeze howled past me. There was nothing, I checked the other rooves, all lay silent and still as shingles. “You’re just going to slam on my door and run! Fuck you spirit! Fuck you, old man!” I screamed into the frigid wind. I walked back through my front door and locked it. Immediately I felt a cold rush shoot up my spine; it was the feeling of being watched, or when you stare into the dark recesses of the woods, or not being alone in a room you previously thought you were. I slowly turned from my front door to my bedroom. The form of an old man with his back to me, hunched over, wild patches of hair missing from his head, was standing in the corner of my bedroom. I could feel my stomach drop, my spit frozen in my throat. The man began to slowly turn, he could not have turned any slower, yet I was unable to move at all. I TOLD YOU. The voice was less of a scream now, there was a rasp to it that was lost when at full volume. I WANT YOU PAIN.
The man as now perpendicular to me, the orange glow from his too wide eyes reflected off the wall in front of him. Now that he was closer to me than ever before I could see new features to him than before. There was blood on his hands, on the front of his shirt, and there was even splatter along the one cheek of his face that I could see. I WANT TO FEEL WHAT YOU FELT I WANT TO DRINK YOUR PAIN INTO ME! The voice was getting louder now; the man was still turning ever so slightly. The man began to scream again as he did the previous night just as he was taking the last miniscule shuffling steps to face me head on. The blood was only on his left cheek, but it was all around his mouth. The front of his shirt was covered like it had pooled out from his face. GIVE ME WHAT I WANT OR I WILL MAKE YOU FEEL MORE PAIN MORE DELICIOUS PAIN THAN ANYONE ONE MORTAL CAN CONTINUE TO LIVE WITH! He was walking towards me now. All my body would allow me to do was face him and stand mouth agape in adjunct terror. This was a terror I had never felt in my entire life. There are no words that can describe it to an outsider. THE MORE PAIN YOU HAVE THE MORE I WILL CRAVE YOU THE MORE I WILL SEEK YOU OUT. He was now just a few feet in front of me, hunched over but looking at me face to face. It was as if he had grown taller but had not stood up any straighter. His mouth formed a terrible grin; crooked teeth decorated a mouth too curved to be human, beginning to open too wide to be possible. I could feel the urine start to trickle down my leg, powerless to what was happening. GIVE IT TO ME! With my courage fading to oblivion, I pulled from somewhere inside of me everything I had left to give into this one act.
“YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!”
A scream louder than anything I had heard previously erupted from the beast. I felt the horrid stinking breath from its disgusting maw blow my hair back from my head. I was forced to close my eyes to shield myself from it. Then with a strength I did not know I had, I pulls my hand into a fist and swung it forward!
My fist only connected with air and I fell to the ground from the momentum, twisting to the floor. I lay there on my back, again, soaked now in my own piss. But I was alive. I showered with tears streaming down my face, then crawled into bed still soaking wet and fell asleep.