Link to Part 2. Flatmate. Part 2. : nosleep (reddit.com)
I’m sitting alone in my flat. Alone - yet not quite. Not at all, in fact. The thought makes me shudder.
I have nothing else to do - well, I do, but it’s nothing I want to do - so I allow myself to drift, recalling how it all came to this. Beginning with how happy I had been to get my new flat, nearly three years ago.
I had bought it, you see. No more renting or staying with family, or even couch-hopping when times were really tough. Of course it goes without saying that it came with a mortgage but the very fact I had been able to secure a mortgage was a good sign wasn’t it?
It also goes without saying that the flat in itself wasn’t new, I had got it only because it needed a lot of TLC. But I was prepared and determined to give it that, and I did.
Now I wish I hadn’t.
Anyway, not to get ahead of my story.
Things went so well at first. The big day came when the last possible detail was put in place and I could officially give a housewarming party. It was a roaring success, apart from the very end when my girlfriend Sally got a sudden call about some emergency unfolding at home. She was quite a new girlfriend so there were no immediate plans for us to live together but she would certainly have stayed over on this most auspicious of nights if it hadn’t been for that call. I saw her tearfully out the door - she was tearful, I mean - at about 1am, and hoped the emergency wasn’t too bad. But, aside from my worries over Sally, I couldn’t help feeling a sensation of bliss, my first proper night in the first property I’d ever owned in my life. (Or sort of owned, what with the mortgage and all.)
Fortunately things settled down with Sally’s family and she arranged to come over to spend the night about a week later. I was very happy, of course, and can you imagine what I felt when on the way over some idiot drunk driver totalled her car and left her a nervous, if not a physical, wreck.
Actually, you probably can’t imagine. I felt relieved that she wasn’t physically hurt, but also - how I hate to admit this - I was sort of relieved that she wasn’t coming over to spend the night after all. Or any other night as it turned out. Physically she may have been alright but emotionally she was out of commission, certainly as far as I was concerned. She kept babbling about all these bad things happening whenever she was about to stay overnight in my new place.
I told myself off sternly for being relieved for the wrong reasons. I tried to be there for her, and to gently disabuse her of any superstitious notions but it became clear it wasn’t going to work between us. And as time went on I began to wonder if she was right. About my new place.
The next notable thing that happened was lockdown. It hit a few days just before a couple of close friends were due to spend the weekend. I wasn’t that bothered about lockdown myself but everyone else I knew seemed to be. So for quite some time I had plenty of peace and quiet in my lovely new flat.
TIme to get to know each other, the thought involuntarily came into my head once, as I stood staring out at the lovely river-view the front windows afforded.
Time to get to know whom?
Ridiculous I thought. There’s no-one else here!
I stood for awhile then shrugged it off. Maybe it was just a subconscious thought popping up about how in times like these, it was a great chance to get re-acquainted with yourself or something. After all, everyone was waxing lyrical about the break from the fast pace of modern life and how wonderful it was that the fishes were coming back into the Venetian canals and everything. Maybe I was getting infected too.
Anyway, lockdown was finally lifted and people started trickling back again to visit and all. Family, friends, the usual deal. True, the two close friends that had planned to stay before lockdown didn’t seem to be so close anymore, at any rate they kept on finding excuses not to show up. However, caught up in a perfect storm of renewed sociability I allowed one group of friends to stay while I was out of town for a few days. It all went off swimmingly but about a month later the whole group abruptly broke up and were no longer friends. I don’t know what happened.
Then some family stayed over while I put up on the couch, and again it all went great but a few weeks later they all became ill. They recovered, but that put paid to the chance of them coming over to stay again in a hurry. In fact, I’m pretty sure they felt they had probably caught something in my place. Although they wouldn’t openly quarrel with me over it they probably thought I hadn’t disinfected all the surfaces properly or something.
I started to feel a bit down after this, and although I tried to quell them, Sally’s old fears came back to me. I was not the superstitious type but still ….
Was there something about this flat that seemed to repel people, or make things go wrong for them that even if they stayed over once, they wouldn’t come back? Was it something in me? Something subconscious and all. Maybe I just truly wanted to be king of my castle and not really let anyone else in?
I brooded about this for a while and I became kind of distracted at work, although with the mortgage I had more incentive than ever to keep up. At least I was one of the lucky ones that had managed to keep my old job, working remotely and all. So I tried to snap out of it. I confided in another mate, David. He had been abroad when I had got the flat, and then of course further delayed with all the upheaval but now he had finally been able to return and came over as soon as he could to see the new place. And to see me as well, of course. I told him all my fears. As I expected, he took a sensible view of the matter.
‘Don’t fret about it Jordan,’ he told me. ‘‘Partly it’s coincidence, and - well this whole lockdown business has rattled everyone. That’s all you’re feeling. I’ll stay over tonight’, he added benevolently.
If you do, it’ll be your only time, I heard a voice in my head say.
‘What?’ he demanded sharply, turning to me.
Fuck, had I really said that aloud?
‘What?’ I said in my turn, hoping to throw him off.
Well, he did stay that night, and when nothing seemed to happen for weeks after I sighed with relief. The pattern’s been broken, I thought. No more damn coincidences after this, please God.
Then, one day out of the blue, he phoned me.