Page 10 of Below the Shadow of the City

CHAPTER 10

SATURDAY, LATE SEPTEMBER

I left you something in the basement.

Don’t worry, I won’t be down there.

H e messaged me?

Oh my god. He messaged me. I’d checked my pockets for phantom buzzes thinking he’d texted me more times than I’d care to admit. Margo had noticed, and she’d given me side glances every time I’d fumbled for my phone while we were out at a coffee shop or grabbing lunch. She’d certainly seen my visible disappointment each time I’d looked at my phone to see it devoid of a singular notification.

Now, finally, his fake name has lit up my phone again. I had to look at it a few times to confirm it was actually a true message on my phone and not another hallucination. Two lines of text have already made me break my promise to myself of using the weekend to pretend none of what happened the other night was real. Even now, I couldn’t believe that he was real .

The morning that was supposed to be spent planning recipes and making lists had instead been spent largely in bed, watching episodes of comfort shows. My laptop served as a wonderful companion while I wallowed. I’d stocked the space beside me with every prepackaged snack and candy I could find in my apartment. This nest was warm and safe and my thoughts were kept at bay while I’d been distracting myself. Nothing had made me rise from my bed faster than his message.

I tread down to the basement with my hair unwashed and in the same sweats I slept in last night. If anyone looks monstrous right now, it’s certainly me. Like some creature, I creep through the dark hallway in silence. I anticipate seeing him now, I know what I should expect if he is in fact down here. I need to see him again.

The room is empty when I enter, and completely silent. No laundry running in any of the machines. An envelope sits against the door to the other side with my name written across it in neat, angular handwriting. A few seconds pass as I wait and see if he makes an appearance, and when he doesn’t, I run back up the stairs into the sanctuary of my apartment. Inside sits a USB flash drive, loose without a single thing accompanying it. No note, no context.

Against my better judgment and the careful instructions of every IT person I’ve ever worked with, I plug the flash drive into my laptop. It whirs for a few seconds and pops up with a singular folder, “ For Sigrid .” I hesitantly click on it, and it’s a handful of audio files, each a song neatly organized with the track name and artist, except for the first one. It’s named, “ play me first .” I click again and turn up the volume on my laptop and a familiar voice comes through the speakers.

“Hi Sigrid, I’ve recorded this message a few times but couldn’t think of what to actually say to you. I shouldn’t have kept my identity a secret, but I’m sure now you understand why I did. I’d initially hoped we wouldn’t meet again after that first night because I knew just how impossible it would be not to fall. I didn’t think I’d let myself take things so far with you, and I didn’t think that now it would be so hard to let you go. I don’t have much of a way with words, but I do love a good mixtape. So, maybe, by listening you’ll get an understanding of exactly how I feel. And if I haven’t scared you away completely, I hope you’ll consider meeting me again tomorrow night.”

How does that old saying go, you attract what you fear? Surely this was the most literal interpretation of that. Or was I the one attracted to what I feared?

I lean back and play his message again, shutting my eyes, imagining the voice coming from the face I saw. The voice note goes into the first track, the ethereal synths of “The Downtown Lights” by The Blue Nile begin playing, my eyes flick open and I pause it. I go back to his voice note.

“Hi Sigrid,” I press pause.

Start over. “Hi Sigrid.”

The cursor hovers over the left-facing arrow. One more time.

“Hi Sigrid.”

If the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting different results, then my photo should be included next to its entry in the dictionary.

Every single time I hear those two words a small piece deep within me twists and knots. Each syllable sends a pulse of something strange to my core. I replay it and replay it, hoping that I won’t have this involuntary biological reaction. And every time, it does the same thing.

“Hi Sigrid.”

His voice unraveled me before, of course it would again. I squeeze my eyes shut. I paint a picture based on the few seconds I’d managed to look at him. My eyes had avoided his gaze as much as they could, but it was impossible to not look.

I should be scared of him, right? He had a tail, he had horns! And fangs! And claws! On their own, each of those traits is concerning, together they meld into something horrifying.

And yet.

Both fear and attraction produce a fight or flight response, the two emotions live so closely to one another, of course the wires might get crossed now and again. Objectively, though, he was attractive, right? Aside from the whole being a monstrous creature thing. Maybe it had been a while, maybe I am slowly losing it.

And technically, he didn’t lie when I’d asked him to describe himself. His eyes were blue, hauntingly so. His hair was brown, except it was everywhere. He was tall, massive, in fact. And saying yes to having the beard was more of a cheeky acknowledgment that he had plenty of fuzz covering his face.

“Hi Sigrid.”

This time, I let the rest of the message play all the way through again, then upload the entire playlist onto my phone. This ruminating can’t be done in the confines of my living room, my limbs are growing antsy. I’ve stared at the wall for so long I’m scared something might pull me into the chipping paint and plaster.

I step outside and fresh air encases me, and I take deep gulping breaths like I’ve been underwater. The signs of autumn grow more obvious each day, the sun hangs lower. It casts a golden glow over everything, and the few trees scattered on my street are bright with orange leaves. There are a few people moving about on my quiet side street, and I stand on the front steps of my building for a few seconds. The air is crisp, and I consider turning back inside to grab a jacket to toss on over my sweater.

I have no destination in mind, I’ll wander until it gets too dark or too cold to stay outside. My thumb taps play on the new playlist.

“Hi Sigrid. ”

I jolt at the sound of his voice as it pierces my brain with something hot and metallic. I swear I see gray matter seeping out. The voice note ends and the first song begins, it perfectly soundtracks the setting.

I pick a direction, not necessarily thinking if I’m going north, south, east, or west, and start walking. Briefly, I pretend this is an opening credits sequence or musical montage. And unlike my previous wanderings, I don’t stare at the sidewalk. I look at the buildings and take in the architecture and the glow of lamps from within apartments.

I see the Williamsburg Bridge cut across the sky, its steel pylons and cables tower over buildings. Brownstones melt into luxury new build apartments and back into small multi-family units. Bodegas, high-end gift shops, dispensaries, and pricey glasses stores all pass by until I’ve found myself in a completely different neighborhood. After some undetermined amount of time, I’d already listened through the playlist once and was going through a second time. My stomach grumbles with frustration and I duck into the nearest corner store.

“Sigrid?” A voice pulls me from my haze, I glance up to see Matthias holding a bag of chips and a bottle of mid-tier wine. His blond hair is tousled, and he’s wearing round framed glasses instead of contacts like he normally does.

I pull out an earbud, the weepy Bon Iver song hand selected for me still playing into my left ear. “Matthias, hey!” It feels unnatural to give him the casual greeting after I’d spent the last hour stuck in my own thoughts.

He furrows his brow a bit and his nose scrunches up. “What’s up, you’re, uh, not usually out this way?” I glance at the street outside. I’d managed to walk the two and a half miles all the way to Dumbo in my deliberation.

“It’s a nice day for a walk, and I needed some fresh air,” I tilt my head and cautiously smile at him. My attempt at normalcy seems to further concern him.

“Are things all good with you? ”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” I chuckle to ease the tension.

“Something seems a little, I don’t know, off. No offense.” He means incredibly well, I know that for a fact. Over the years I’ve known him he’s been a shoulder to cry on and an ear that listened. We were servers together in a tourist trap restaurant, we’d been through the metaphorical trenches with one another. When his last boyfriend cheated on him with a coworker I was the one sitting on his living room floor with him making a voodoo doll of his ex, and when Perrie left he was the first one to arrive at my apartment with Phish Food ice cream to watch Legally Blonde.

I nod to the few items he’s carrying. “Check out and we can talk outside.”

“Okay?” He looks confused, but obliges. I stuff my headphones into my tote bag.

I snatch a soda and a candy bar and queue in line behind him. Maybe it’s complete luck or fate that I happened to run into him, and I can quickly satiate my hunger before hightailing it back to Williamsburg. I had no intention of being so curt with him, but he seems unaffected, and now I have the perfect opportunity to discuss the situation at hand with someone.

Once outside, I pull him to a quiet corner, out of earshot from any other people milling about. He looks startled, like I’ve shown him I have a gun tucked in my waistband and I need him to rob a bank with me. I catch a glimpse of myself in the window behind me, my hair’s windswept and frizzy, and my eyes look a little wild. No wonder he’s a little freaked out.

I look back at him and make eye contact, careful not to look too intense. “Can you keep a secret?” I train my voice to be a little softer and lighter, rather than how weirdly conspiratorial I’d sounded in the bodega.

“Sure…” he tensely nods.

This situation requires more than a pint of ice cream and 2000s rom coms. I wish he could wave a wand and calm my mind with something as simple as my comfort movie. It’s so juvenile to be torn up like this, and I felt like a teenager on my sullen headphoned walk. It would be so much easier not to let “Adam” get under my skin, and carry on exactly as I had been.

But, deep down, is that what I actually want? Do I want to succumb to a life in isolation just to protect what’s left of my heart?

“Don’t even think of bringing it up to Declan or Margo,” I glance down and realize I’d been gripping his arm, I release my hold on him and let my arm fall to the side. “I need you to promise me that.”

“Yes, Sigrid,” he quirks a small smile. “Did you kill someone and need me to dump a body in the East River for you?”

“No,” I relax a bit, “I met the mystery man.”

Matthias cocks a brow. “Oh shit, so the Phantom of the Laundry Room is actually real?” Clearly there were side conversations being had as to whether or not I was being scammed by some hacker in Russia or losing my mind entirely. Which, from the fact alone that I walked to an entirely different neighborhood, my mind has been sufficiently lost.

“Okay,” I cross my arms and scowl a bit. “It’s not that shocking that he’s real. But yes, he’s very real, and I met him because I more or less ambushed him in the laundry room a week ago. He…wasn’t what I expected. And I kind of freaked out a bit because of it. I apologized, and he made me a very sweet mixtape. But I’m coming to the realization that I’m very attracted to him, despite feeling like I shouldn’t be, you know?”

My obfuscation of the details definitely made it seem like he’s an old man or married, but I’ll leave things vague for now. Attraction has been a sticky thing regarding “Adam.” My heart flutters when I picture his monstrous form, and it’s a sickly combination of fear, lust, and confusion. He’s not human, and I’ve repeated that fact to myself over and over to suppress any feeling.

“The heart wants what it wants, babe,” Matthias quips with sincerity. What if the heart wants a seven foot tall monster, what then?

I lower my eyes at the comment, the realization of what I want settling in. “Ugh, so cliche, and I don’t know if I actually want this. I don’t know what it even feels like to want someone, especially when logic tells me I shouldn’t want him. But I can’t stop thinking about him. He’s more or less giving me another chance to see him tomorrow night.”

“Do you actually want to pursue something with him or do you just fantasize about the idea of him? Maybe because it’s a little risky and taboo in your eyes?”

That’s the thing, I don’t care about the risk of it. Him being whatever he is seems like such a small challenge to get over. I want him, and none of the inevitable complexities that come with falling for someone. “I feel like I’m risking a lot for something that might fizzle out.”

Declan reaches for my hand, “You can’t keep being afraid things will end the same way they did with Perrie. She was horrible to you towards the end, you were blindsided by the breakup because you refused to see her for what she was.”

“A monster?”

“No, a fucking bitch,” he laughs.

“So you think I should see him?”

“I think you should let your panicked mind take the backseat for a little bit. And, selfishly, I want to eventually meet the guy that has you so wrapped around the axle that you’re hoofing it to Dumbo on a random Saturday afternoon.”