What is a home anyway? Is it just four walls and a lock? Is it a crippling financial obligation under the promise that one will stay still? Is it the place where you can hang up your hat and feel loved? Could it be a terrible amalgamation of al ofl the above?
Home is where I feel safe, reads the ever-changing definition projected onto the wall of the gallery. Home is where I feel loved.
Home is decidedly not where I feel safe. There is no love in my home.
Only lust.
The name of the exhibition is Prague of Tomorrow — Houses and Apartments. Images of what was, what is and what could come flash across the walls. Above me, in a language I cannot comprehend, a dozen voices discuss the housing crisis. Had I known the topic of the installation I would have stayed out on the street. As convincing as the graphs projected onto the walls are, the concept of a looming housing crisis seems impossible to grasp.
There’s a more intimate crisis that my mind is occupied by — The crisis of my marriage.
One of the exhibition employees comes to ask me if I have any questions. He speaks to me in English without asking me where I’m from. He’s friendly enough, but when I tell him that I recently bought property in Prague his eyes narrow. He asks me if it’s an investment apartment or if I plan to live on the property. When I tell him me and my wife live in the apartment he smiles and nods and walks off to question other guests.
I don’t mention the third occupant of our home. The mere thought of the third member of our relationship drives me to the brink of madness.
The wall clears again. Pictures of homely apartments are replaced by smashed up beer bottles and drunk tourists and genitals keyed into ancient stone. A young couple stands next to me, quietly chatting in Czech. As the images of destruction on the wall turn more and more dire the couple goes quiet.
‘Fuck Airbnb,’ the woman finally mumbles when a map of apartments where the locals can’t live glows red on the wall.
The man notices me watching them. He says something to me in Czech. When I tell him I don’t speak the language he says something else to me in Czech, something considerably less friendly. Just as I fear a physical confrontation my phone rings. I excuse myself and scurry out of the exhibition space.
I have seventeen missed calls from my wife since I fled our home this morning. I stare at my phone until the total turns to eighteen. After three years of marriage, I know that talking to her is a bad idea. I know she would calm me down and make me think that my fear of the apartment is just a gross overreaction. I know she could make me forget and relax and ignore the lunacy that exists beyond our front door.
The lingering taste of plaster on my tongue reminds me that my fear is no simple hysteria. The taste of plaster reminds me that I am in danger.
‘Jim?’ a familiar voice calls from the gallery’s workspace, ‘What are you doing here?’
Jana stands behind me, laptop bag across her shoulder, smiling. I try to speak, but my words turn to babbles. All I manage to get out of me is my wife’s name. Jana’s shoulders slump and her smile fades. She asks me if I want a drink.
There’s some obscure saint on my cider bottle but he doesn’t last long. As I tell Jana of the previous night my fingers work independently of my mind and strip the bottle bare. When we first sit down in the garden area outside of the gallery, I promise myself that I’ll keep my composure but after only a handful of sentences my eyes fill with tears.
I tell Jana everything. I tell her I think my wife is being unfaithful with a ghost that has possessed our home.
Had Jana laughed, had Jana showed the slightest bit of skepticism about my theories — my mind would calm. Yet she doesn’t, as I talk about the horrors of my homelife she simply nods in understanding. When I finish my story, she offers me tissues and a cigarette and then Jana asks me the question that has been haunting me ever since I fled our home this morning.
‘What are you going to do?’
I suck on the rest of my bottle like a thirsty infant, hoping that the cider will blossom answers in my head. It doesn’t. Instead, another question manifests itself. A thought just as vile as the visions of the tenderness my wife has shared with the apartment walls. A thought so dark and discomforting that merely giving it life with my lips makes my hands shake.
‘I think she wants to get rid of me,’ I say.
‘Like, get divorced?’ Jana asks.
I shake my head.
Her immediate response, again, doesn’t calm me. At the assertion that my wife might be planning to make me disappear Jana furrows her brow and thinks hard. It is only after a couple drags of her cigarette that she shakes her head.
‘I don’t think she would do that,’ Jana finally says. ‘I couldn’t imagine her killing a person. Animals, yes. They killed animals in the sacrifice circles all the time. People, no. That would be too much, even for her… Even for Bořivoj.’
Jana saying his name sends a shiver down my spine. Her half-hearted presumption that neither my wife, nor her dead lover, would be capable of murdering me doesn’t make the situation any better.
My phone rings. I stare at the screen.
‘You should talk to her about it,’ Jana says. ‘In person,’ she adds, when my phone screen goes dark.
‘What if she’ll try to kill me?’ I ask.
‘I don’t think she will,’ she replies, without much conviction. ‘I’m sure you two can talk it out and come to some sort of an arrangement. What else is there to do?’
‘I could find some sort of ghost hunter.’
‘We don’t do that here.’
For a split second I consider checking Google, but I’m too ashamed to do it in front of Jana. Instead, I ask for a cigarette. The crisis of my marriage drains away any chance of small-talk.
As I sit on the subway on my way back home, I can’t help but to feel that the dark tunnels of wire and metal are closing in on me. Barreling through the underground in a metal tube filled with strangers, I feel like I’m on the edge of a mental breakdown. The tightness in my chest reaches even greater heights when I get past the doors of the apartment complex and enter the elevator.
Scarcely clothed and with her skin wet with sweat, she greets me at the door. My wife doesn’t mention my disappearance, or the twenty missed calls on my phone, or any of the maddening things that happened the night prior. She simply kisses my cheek, grabs my hand and leads me to the bedroom under promises of pleasure. The lights of our bedroom are off and the blinds are pulled.
The room is dark, yet even in that darkness I can see the dirty walls shifting.
When I first protest, she acts like she can’t hear me. When I tell her I am certain that the apartment is being haunted by her dead lover and that she has been unfaithful to me with his ghost, she laughs. It’s not until I flick on the lights in the bedroom that my wife’s tone changes.
The walls are covered in splotches of wetness that constrict and expand to the rhythm of foreign sluggish lungs. When I point at the madness surrounding us and demand answers, all the humor drains from her face. She demands I either let go of my bizarre paranoia and get into bed or that I spend the night theorizing on the couch. Then, without either of us touching the light switch, the room goes dark.
Hearing her be displeased with me hurts on a level I cannot articulate. I briefly make an attempt to evacuate all theories of infidelity or danger out of my skull. It is futile. No amount of mental gymnastics can make me blind to what is obvious. Our bedroom smells of fresh sex and I share no responsibility. With molten lead dripping down my throat, I retreat to the couch.
There’s still a little bit of whiskey left in the bottle and in the incense holder that has been demoted to an ashtray sits a half-smoked cigarette. The alcohol and nicotine numb my mind somewhat yet all my progress towards sanity is undone by a forceful slam of the bedroom door.
I did not hear my wife get out of bed. There is no draft that would move the doors so violently. I have no doubts about who shut me off from my partner. I clutch my drink and fill my lungs, knowing that I am not welcome in my own bed. The pit of despair I am sinking into is bottomless, yet in the calm stillness of the night a gentle sound rips me from my paralysis.
I hear her moan. She sounds like she’s in pain.
I hear my wife moan from the bedroom and long dormant parts of my brain light up in feverish primordial instincts to defend. I leap from the couch and dash towards the door, but I do not get far. Just a couple steps from the couch I crash to the floor, ruining the coffee table we received as a wedding gift from my brother.
I try to get up, but I cannot.
From the wall, throbbing with the same measured pace like the wet blemishes of our bedroom, extends a horrid tentacle of soft cement. After my fall, for a mere moment, my wife’s moans go silent. I call out to her, I beg her to help me, to be witness to the horrors which the apartment has unleashed on me.
She does not respond. Instead, she starts to moan once more.
I try to rip myself free of the eldritch appendage which holds me to the ground. At first the task seems possible; the strands of the incomprehensible tentacle are slick and give away to my fingers. Yet just as I am about to free myself of the maddening embrace, the tentacle hardens into stone.
I scream as I feel the bones in my wrist start to give out. My wife too, screams in the bedroom. Yet as the shock of sudden agony clears from my mind, I realize her screams are not ones of pain.
I hear her moan his name. I hear her moan the name which my tongue cannot pronounce.
When I stop resisting the tentacle, it grows soft once more. It grows gentle. The horrid strand of living cement is still my captor, yet it touches me with the tenderness of a lover. It rubs my wrist in delicate circles as I weep to the sounds of pleasure echoing through my apartment.
When the deed is done, gently, I am pulled back onto the couch. In sheer terror I keep my eyes shut. Soft hands brush through my hair, as if I was a bedridden child in desperate need of sleep. I do not resist them. I am incapable of opposing the forces which have stolen the reigns of my life.
When I wake, I wake in pain. My body is more sore than the night before, the horrid artificial taste of plaster is on my tongue once more, the hangover I developed is amplified. When I wake, I wake in pain, but I wake to her smile.
She brings me coffee and breakfast to the couch and apologizes for acting so strangely over the past couple of weeks. She provides no explanation and the tenacity of her apology is leagues away from her sins, but I accept it. I accept her apology because there’s something in her voice, something in those beautiful piercing eyes and heavenly smile that I cannot resist.
Warm morning light fills the room and for a moment it feels like things are as they were back home. My wife does not comment on the broken coffee table or the black bruise on my wrist, she simply talks about how happy the two of us will be in Prague. Deep inside I know that there is a cancer growing within our relationship that is terminal. I know that we are well past the point of no return, but I cannot bring myself to put an end to the tranquil moment.
Instead of asking my wife about the ghost which haunts our apartment, I get up to make myself a second cup of coffee. From the kitchen, I ask her if she wants another cup as well.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she saunters over to the kitchen and plants a kiss on my lips. She holds me tight and shows me more affection than she has since we reached Prague. Only then, in our tight embrace, does she tell me that she would like a second cup of coffee, but that she would rather abstain.
Only then, does she tell me that she is pregnant.