Page 8 of Below the Shadow of the City
CHAPTER 8
WEDNESDAY, LATE SEPTEMBER
I anxiously pace the apartment late into the evening, much to the chagrin of the neighbors who live below. I have a plan, or a concept of a plan, at least. If I can sneak into the laundry room when I know he’s in there I can finally catch a glimpse of him. At this point it’s unfair that we’ve been talking with such consistency and his identity is still a complete mystery to me.
The physical attraction side of things is one small piece of that puzzle, I think it would take quite a bit for me not to be attracted to him. Save for him being a very old man or a literal demon, there would be little keeping me from fully falling. It’s not something I can admit, not to him or to anyone else. It’s stupid, honestly, falling for a voice alone. Maybe limerence is the word best suited for my present predicament, and maybe I’m descending into madness at this anonymous digital crush. He hasn’t given me any indication that he wants to meet me anywhere nearly as bad as I want to meet him.
He has a routine, I’ve learned. I haven’t taken much advantage of it, and maybe he doesn’t realize he’s revealed this pattern to me. He’s dropped mentions of what he’s up to in our near constant communication. He works, but remotely, which means there’s no commute I can find him on. He reads, he goes for runs, he cooks, and he brews coffee. In the midst of all that, he’ll mention his annoyance with one of the broken laundry machines, or complain that he’s dropped a quarter on the way to the laundry room. It’s the one part in his small universe I know the true location of, it’s a window into his existence.
If I could trap him there, I think. Then immediately shake it off. I’ve gone too far in this pursuit. It’s casual texting and phone sex, there’s no meaning behind it. I’ve done casual before, a younger version of myself picked up and dropped partners like a carousel. I feel like a stalker for tracking his movements. If he actually wanted to see me he would have made the move.
But the toe curling madness that his timbre brought upon my body was hardly enough to satiate me. I need more, selfishly. I also want to know him as a whole person, like the silly little things that make him happy or the songs that remind him of his younger self. I want to share meals with him and hear his laugh in person. This lust can only be satiated over the phone, and I’ll have to get over that fact.
Despite this, I still selfishly need confirmation that he’s a real, tangible person.
He tends to do laundry on Wednesday nights, which makes sense, that’s how we initially met. After more deliberating and anxious pacing, I toss on a sweatshirt and creep down into the basement again. My hands are shoved in my pockets as I traverse the corridors to get to the laundry room. The singular bulb still flickers. Everything is the same as it was that first night. The conditions for us to meet have been perfectly recreated by the universe.
I press my hand against the door. The hollow steel is the final thing separating me from something that will either break my heart or change me for the better. I fling it open and see clothes tumbling in the dryer. He’s down here, or at least he was.
“Adam?” I tentatively ask, my voice wavers more than I thought it would. I’ve talked to him daily but suddenly I’m overcome with anxiety about the prospect of actually meeting. The response is complete silence aside from the periodic thudding of the dryer. The door on the other side is open, barely unlatched, like someone ran off too quickly and didn’t let it shut fully.
My fingers fumble for my pepper spray, I came down here without any plan. I don’t even know what he looks like. I could run into another random person and have a far different outcome than I did the night “Adam” and I met. I was unusually lucky when I’d met him that first evening. It would be foolish to assume I get lucky twice.
I press the door slightly and it swings open into a dark hallway. There’s a figure lurking five yards or so from the doorway. There’s something oddly familiar about it, like I’ve seen it before.
Maybe, whatever has transpired with “Adam” has manifested into a hallucination of the alley monster. Maybe I’ve just been crazy since January for varying reasons. The silhouette moves. Its size alone is enough to render me completely paralyzed with fear, it looks so much larger in the hallway than it did in the alleyway.
“You shouldn’t be here,” it says. It speaks. This was new. This may be proof that the monster wasn’t a hallucination, but it makes me even more terrified. My knees quake and I brace myself on the doorframe to steady myself.
“Y-you’re the…thing from the alley,” I stutter. “What the fuck are you? Why are you here?” I’m asking questions like the main character in a fantasy or sci-fi movie, but that’s exactly what it feels like. I’m living through an impossibility.
“Sigrid—” it booms at me. It turns its head and I notice the outline of horns extending from its head. Whatever it is could kill me before I could even scream.
“How do you know my name?” My fingers tremble as I move them to the trigger of the pepper spray.
It steps closer. Its arms are out as though it's attempting to show it means no harm. I can’t make the assumption that it's harmless. Not when it might have followed me in the shadows for months. Not when it towers over me and weighs over twice as much as I do.
“What do you want from me?” I plead, I look down to measure the distance between us. We’re fifteen feet apart or so. If it wanted to it could run at me before I so much as blinked.
“Sigrid, you really shouldn’t have tried to find me,” it steps closer again. The voice is familiar, but the form is foreign. I act on impulse and do what I can to stop it from getting closer. I shut my eyes and slam my finger on the trigger, waiting for it to let out a growl or yell from the sting of the pepper spray.
Instead, the spray sputters and spits. Proving itself to be completely ineffective at stopping this creature. The monster pauses and looks at the useless canister, its stance softens. Maybe I should have grabbed a kitchen knife.
“I didn’t want us to meet,” there’s sadness in its tone.
“It can’t be,” I exhale and release the tension I’d been holding in my chest. In no reality is the guy I’ve been talking to for weeks the same as this creature. The two can’t exist in the same universe, the alley monster shouldn’t even exist to begin with.
I’m a victim of my own cognitive dissonance. I have fully stepped from reality into some sort of dystopian fantasy. There are things in this room that are still real. I count them to ground myself. I tap my feet on the linoleum floor and feel the soles of my feet hit the tiles. I listen to the sound of the dryer, still tumbling on like nothing has changed. I count my fingers on each hand by tapping each fingertip against my thumb. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Each inhale goes steadily through my nose and shudders out my mouth.
No overpriced Upper West Side psychologist or self-proclaimed mental health influencer has adequate coping mechanisms for this sort of scenario.
“What the fuck,” I mutter the only words that come to mind.
“Sigrid, please,” now that the panic has worn off it clearly is “Adam’s” voice, but it’s coming from this thing . “If you shut the door and leave you’ll be better off.” If I shut the door and leave I’ll spend my entire life wondering exactly what happened down here tonight. I weigh my risks, I could get true answers, despite how horrifying they could be, or I could live forever with the mystery.
“Step out into the light,” I say like a petulant teenager and cross my arms over my chest to stop my hands from shaking.
“Seriously, I don’t think this is a good idea,” his voice is as nervous as mine.
“Can you please show yourself?” My heart is pounding, and the waiting is becoming unbearable.
“Sigrid—”
“Just come out,” I tighten my fingers around my arms to hold myself steady.
“Do you really want me to?” He’s incredibly unsure, and truthfully, so am I. I’ve painted this facade of faux confidence because if I let my emotions overtake me at this moment I would be out of the laundry room and halfway up the stairs screaming.
“Jesus Christ, yes. Rip the damn bandaid off!” I step back from the doorframe and he steps into the laundry room. And I have confirmation of my greatest fears.
He is, for lack of a better term, a monster. Visually, he is the exact thing kids conjure up when they imagine something living under their bed or in their closet .
Massive would be an understatement to describe his size. He’s tall, seven foot something, and covered in dark brown fur and rippling muscles. A tail swishes gently back and forth on the floor. His face has something that looks like a mix of a muzzle and a snout with protruding white fangs, and two dark horns curl from his skull. He has a heavy brow furrowing atop two otherworldly blue eyes. They soften when they meet mine.
My first thought is complete horror, sheer disbelief at what’s standing before me. My second is something even more terrifying, shit, he’s kind of hot . I’m getting tossed around in waves of emotion, everything ranging from fear, relief, lust, and so many other things my brain can’t wrap itself around.
I’m silent for far too long, he’s standing sheepishly in the doorway, ducking his head and leaning one arm against the frame.
“I knew this was a horrible idea,” he says quietly. I’m not scared anymore, not of him, I need to process it all. I need to know if he knew it was me in the alleyway, and if he’s been stalking me. Did he know we’d meet that first night down here? Did I reveal too much of myself to him? And despite all of this, I need to know, does he feel the same way about me that I’ve felt for these last few weeks?
“No—no it’s not. I just…sorry. How? Uh, where did you…god, I don’t know, I’m sorry. I can’t think straight.” I am vomiting out nonsense words as the air in the room is suddenly stifling, “I have to go.”