I Should Come Down Here More Often

By Robin North

If I had known someone was going to break in, I would have swept. Lot of dust bunnies down here.

It used to be called slut’s wool. Slut had a different meaning back then. It meant you kept an untidy house and were lazy. I’m comfortable with both the past and present definitions. I am a slut. Gaze upon my wool.

Normally I love being horizontal, it’s my favourite axis. I take most things lying down, but usually I’m on the bed, not under it. The two-foot difference in elevation feels significant.

I catch a whiff of ammonia. Could be me, could be the cat. He pees in the corners sometimes when he’s angry with me, which is often. He disapproves of my life choices. There’s something else. Rotten fruit, maybe? Sour dish rags? I’ve been wearing this t-shirt for days. Some band I’ve never heard of. I have no idea where it came from.

Under the bed is not a very imaginative hiding place, but there weren’t a lot of options, and the closet seemed even less inspired than under the bed. Also, my mother’s ashes are in there. Top shelf, in a cardboard box labelled “Miscellaneous”.

I think she’d be pleased. Not about the closet, she’d be furious about that, but about my current situation. She always warned me I’d end up like this. Not this exact scenario, but a violent end of some kind. She would often proclaim, with a disturbing amount of zest, that she would find me dead in a ditch someday. Since my mother wore pantyhose and a pair of high heels every day of her life this was said mostly for effect. If anyone was going to find me dead in a ditch it wouldn’t be her.

White sneakers broken down at the heel. That could be anybody. Every guy I’ve ever been with shoved his shoes on without untying the laces first. They also all sucked in bed. There’s probably some sort of correlation there, but I’m not entirely blameless. I fake my orgasms and so they never learn. I could teach them, but there’s just too much work to be done. I’d have to start at the beginning every time, and I’m not Sisyphus. They can roll their own rocks.

Would it help if I could see the rest of him? Probably not. I can never remember their names. Sometimes I even forget what they look like until they show up at the door. They get angry, they think it’s an insult, but it doesn’t have anything to do with them. Maybe that’s the insult.

We all want to believe we matter, but I’m not sure we do. It wouldn’t hurt me to pretend, except I think it would, actually.

He used a key to get in, so at first, I thought it was the landlord. He never knocks on the door. He opens it, shoves his head through, and then knocks on the frame. I can smell him from the bedroom because he’s a chain-smoker. The index and middle fingers of his right hand are stained yellow, like they’ve been embalmed. He smokes smuggled cigarettes, the cheapest you can get, the ones the convenience store owner keeps behind the grate at the bottom of the coke fridge. He gave me a couple packs once, but I can’t stand them, they hurt my throat. He said he thought he might have something that would go down a little smoother. I said, Oh yeah? Like a menthol? And he laughed so hard he almost fell backwards down the stairs. I probably should have reached out, grabbed his arm, but I didn’t want to touch him. I asked him once why he doesn’t knock on the actual door, but he pretended like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I assume he’s hoping to surprise me naked one of these days.

When there was no knock and no corresponding stench, I grabbed the first weapon that came to hand and slipped under the bed. I was quick and efficient, and even though I put my elbow in a dead mouse, I didn’t cry out. There was a streak of bright green from the liver, and I expected a smell but there wasn’t one. It must have been an old kill. Maybe I could practice augury on the entrails. Love life: not good; Future: in doubt.

He stepped over the litterbox in the hallway and avoided the pile of dirty laundry. All my little booby-traps. In the kitchen, he rattled the cutlery, looking for a weapon or a snack. Only butter knives in there, though, so tough luck for him. The only thing I eat in this apartment is toast. Toast, with various spreads. Your jams, your jellies, your salted butter. I’m just as well-armed down here with this dildo. Seven inches long and made of borosilicate glass. The same kind of glass they use in beakers and baking dishes.

I haven’t been trained in hand-to-hand combat but, like every woman I’ve ever known, I’ve been rehearsing most of my life. I’ve never gouged a man’s eyes out with my fingernails or stabbed him in the throat with a car key, but I believe I have the necessary conviction. Like an athlete I lie in bed at night and visualize the kick to the groin that will save my life.

I usually meet men in bars. It’s not the reason I go to bars, but it’s often the result. At first, I ignore them. I sit on my barstool and drink, staring at myself in the mirror behind the bar, but soon a feeling comes over me, and it becomes imperative that they look at me. That they look at me and like what they see. Once this happens, which it invariably does, the victory is funneled into some gaping deficiency in my personality, and any further attention is unnecessary. Of course, they don’t know that, and sleeping with them seems like the easiest way to get rid of them, but sometimes it has the opposite effect, and I’m stuck with them for a while. I’ll come home from work and find them sitting on the steps or pretending to drink a coffee on the bench outside the diner next door.

I let them in, but I never let them stay. I never pour them a drink or offer to take their coats, and I have never given anyone a key. I had a set of spare keys in a drawer somewhere, but I don’t know the last time I saw them. I’ve never been able to keep track of my belongings. Things disappear and reappear in unexpected places. I once found my night guard in the freezer next to a bottle of Absolut.

I lay my ear against the floorboards, and the fan from the diner downstairs vibrates against my cheek. I can hear music. A golden oldie. I can make you mine/Taste your lips of wine/Anytime night or day/Only trouble is/Gee Whiz/I’m dreamin’ my life away.

I’m under the bed, but I’m also in the diner yesterday, eating a plate of eggs, or slow dancing in a school gymnasium in the 50s. I should come down here more often, I’ve discovered time travel. I’ve also just found the silver Sharpie I thought I lost last week.

We should check all the hidden spaces. I wonder what we’d find. Under the floorboards or wedged behind the furnace. The undiscovered country beneath the patio slab. More than felt pens, I bet. They say missing girl like they’re absent, like they’ve vanished into thin air, but everybody’s somewhere. A magic trick is not magic. The dove didn’t disappear. It’s stuffed up the magician’s sleeve with a broken neck.

What does he want? Is he looking for me, or for some forgotten piece of himself? Sometimes men do leave things behind, either in their haste, or as an excuse to return. It all goes in the garbage. When they turn up, I let them look around, then shrug, palms up, beats me. Sometimes after they leave, I want them to come back. I stand at the door and wait. It’s perverse, I know, because the minute they got back, took off their coat and sat down on the peeling leather sofa, I’d just want them gone again.

Whatever it is, I wish he’d get on with it. I’m bored, and thirsty. Nobody talks about that. How there can be these lulls. Great boring swatches of time in the middle of a catastrophe where nothing happens.

I stare at the white sneakers, the frayed cuffs of his jeans. Maybe that’s all that remains. Maybe the rest of him has crumbled away like Ozymandias.

Why doesn’t he look under the bed? This place isn’t very big. Under the bed is the first place I’d look, but he’s just standing there. I’m frustrated by his incompetence. I feel like reaching out and grabbing his ankle. Maybe he’d scream. Scream like a girl. Then I’d beat him to death with the dildo. It’d be his turn to choke on a dick.

I always wanted to be a tough girl. The kind that breaks hearts and gets away with the money. I have twelve dollars in my bank account and can’t afford the minimum payment on my credit card, but I’ve broken hearts. Dented a few anyway, like soup cans. It’s not as much fun as I was led to believe. Nothing lives up to the hype. I’m never wearing a silk kimono, or a black leather skirt. They cry and their noses run, or their eyes are dry and hot and then you better get out of the way. Doors slam, but never like they do in the movies, and then you’re alone with a chapbook of poetry or a mouthful of loose teeth and the knowledge that the persona you picked out for yourself is all wrong, but there’s nothing you can do about it because it’s who you are now.

When I was younger, I used to daydream about everybody I ever knew suddenly dying, leaving me free to be a different little girl. As if my personality only existed in the minds of other people.

I can change, but first the witnesses need to be eliminated.

His heel half lifts. His sneakers are too big for his feet, like a little boy wearing Papa’s shoes. He’s careful to leave the bedroom door slightly ajar, just the way he found it, then he walks down the hall and into the bathroom, which I haven’t cleaned in months. There’s mold in the grout, and the shower tiles are draped with discarded hairs. The writing is on the wall. Mene mene tekel upharsin, motherfucker. He lifts the seat and pees, and I hear the stream hit the bowl. At least his aim is true, that narrows it down. I wonder where the cat is. Not in the bathroom, there would be hissing and yowling. Mr. Noodles is a raging feminist. He hates men. Maybe he’s in the closet. He didn’t know my mother.

My mother was beautiful, mean, and spoke in an English accent when she was drunk. It suited her so well most people believed it, including me. She loved vodka neat, the book of Job, and Lysol Disinfecting Spray. She hated my father, wall-to-wall carpeting, and sweat. Always smelled of powder and lilacs. Even hungover in her room with the blinds drawn, powder and lilacs. I always felt like a swamp monster around her. Pit stains, damp underpants, smelly feet. Her favourite expression was, “You’ve made your bed.” She never finished the sentence. The ending was implied.

He flushes the toilet but doesn’t wash his hands. There isn’t any soap by the sink, but there’s a bar of Ivory in the shower, so he could if he really wanted to. He puts the seat down. I wonder if he’s done this before. Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Back down the hall towards the front door. There’s nowhere left to go. His tread is soft, unhurried, like he’s got all the time in the world. I crawl out from under the bed using my elbows and knees, commando-style, gripping the dildo like a shiv. I need to see him. They say you can feel someone looking at you with evil intent, so I keep my gaze soft and unfocused, like somebody in love.

Jeans and a t-shirt, broad shoulders, narrow hips. A little soft on the sides. Could be anyone. He’s just had a haircut and there’s a tan line, a quarter inch of pale skin at the nape of his neck. He’s very close. Salt tang. Briny, like the ocean, or a pickle. My mouth waters.

I worry that if I can smell him, he can smell me, but he doesn’t turn around. This whole place stinks. He opens the door. His fingers are blunt, the nails wide and flat, and he doesn’t smoke, or rarely. I pull my head back. The door closes and the key turns. He walks down the stairs, his footsteps heavy in those big shoes.

I drag a chair from the kitchen and wedge it under the doorknob. I don’t know if that works, it does in the movies. I guess I should change the locks. Definitely a hassle, and I’d have to tell the landlord. Maybe I’ll just keep the chair here.
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I’m not a good person. All my plants are dead. I’m late on my rent. I don’t use protection. I haven’t scooped Mr. Noodles’ litter in so long he's started to shit in the tub. But am I a bad person? There were six people at my mother’s funeral including the undertaker. I gave the eulogy. I copied it from a Wikipedia article about an heiress from the 30s. The two old ladies sitting in front looked confused. Maybe they actually knew her. After the service I met a man in a bar in a basement. It was dark. I looked into the mirror behind the bar and told him I thought she was going to live forever. He laughed and asked if he could buy me a drink. I said sure, make it a vodka, neat. 

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​Robin North is an emerging writer currently living in Toronto. Her debut short story Night Shift was published in FreeFall Magazine. She was a top three finalist in the CANSCAIP Writing Competition and is currently working on her first novel, Godfather Death. Her first screenplay, dead saints, which she co-directed and produced, appeared at several film festivals and won awards, including Best Drama and Best Lead Cast. Most recently her short story Night Shift was adapted for the screen with funding from The Canadian Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.