breaker-downer

The house Callio overpays for is a jagged bundle of sticks and plaster, allegedly un-haunted, with empty space for friends and family and excess joy. The guest list cycles for a while, until the world outside changes and forces everyone to horde happiness in their own homes. Gray times swallow the earth and she does her best to prevent fog from crossing her front door.

“We’ll visit in the new year,” a friend promises over the phone. “Enjoy your place. Maybe redecorate or something to make it feel like new again.”

Callio takes their advice too far and manages a crooked paint job, spreading her enthusiasm across the walls. She doesn’t bother putting the furniture back in order and shuts the blinds to indicate that no one’s home. Someone knocks, anyway.

“Got an extra room?” the stranger asks, fog pulling from their clothes and slipping inside. “Or want a little company?”

She does, she agrees, lets them in, and shows them around.

“Why so many empty rooms?” they peer around corners.

“Used to fill the place with laughter,” Callio answers numbly, “but levity’s always on its way out.”

“I’d be happy to stick around for a while,” they offer.

The two shake on a loosely-defined verbal contract. The stranger fetches a suitcase from their car parked somewhere in the distance, abandoned in the fog. They survey the rooms, again, and choose the one where Callio’s niece and nephew used to stay.

“Perfect,” they examine the stripped bed and empty walls. “Thank you.”

Callio leaves the visitor to unpack and doesn’t see them for several days. They slam doors and hit walls but she can’t be bothered to confront them. Instead, their presence sits like a stone in her throat until she stops feeling it and forgets they’re there. They don’t provide joy or company, at all. She’s asleep on the couch when they reemerge, suitcase in hand, and tap her on the shoulder.

“Mind if I switch rooms?”

She shrugs, points down the hall, and they shuffle away. Again, they bang the walls, harder than before. This request repeats a few days later. Vague claustrophobia crowds in but Callio pretends it isn’t there and sinks further into the couch. The world outside grows so gray that the only way to avoid it is by boarding up the windows. She seals herself inside with the stranger and spends most of her time unconscious. There’s still dancing, in her dreams. The banging dresses up as drumbeats made for that dancing.

“Can I stay in your room?” the lodger shoves Callio awake. “Since you don’t seem to be using it.” They smell like sawdust and paint and she notices splinters in their palms.

“Sure.” Callio rolls over and away from them. Wish granted, they leave her alone. The knocking resumes as soon as the bedroom is shut.

Someone, at some point, gently taps on the front door.  Callio begrudgingly rises, opens it, and finds her sister waving and offering a hug.

“Thought I’d come and visit! Got a spare room?”

Callio peers past her, trying to spy sister’s car in the fog, and accepts the hug. She lets her inside and sister nervously eyes the boarded-up windows and hardened paintbrushes and dusty trinkets.

“You been renovating?” she asks. Callio doesn’t answer.

“I’ll go unpack,” sister decides and slinks down the hall. She stops short and knocks on the walls.

“There are no doors,” she calls. “What did you do with the doors?”

Callio hears the stranger’s footsteps exit her bedroom and draw closer. Sister arrives in the front room at the same time as the visitor, and the two stare each other down.

“Who are you?” she shouts. The stranger steps back. “Get out of here! Get your stuff and leave. Get out!” Sister’s words tear through the visitor’s chest and kill whatever charm they had. They run off, into the gray of the world, leaving the door open and their suitcase behind. Later, when Callio and sister examine it, they find nothing inside.

“How long were they here?” sister barks, “and where did your house go?”

Callio sits up, stares out into the fog, and listens for the stranger’s car to start and depart in the distance. The engine sound never comes.

“More space here than I needed.” Callio examines the missing bedrooms and staircases and closets. “This whole place was just thrown together, anyway. Seems like an improvement to me.” The two walk the perimeter of the mostly-vanished house and sister calls an exterminator to seal up any additional entryways.

“The issue isn’t holes in the ceiling, though,” Callio mumbles once sister’s hung up the phone. “This place was empty. Something was bound to get in and make itself at home.”

Sister offers another hug and books herself a bed at a nearby inn. Callio sleeps alone in her gray, cold room and tries to ignore the constant knocking at the door. It bangs and bangs until a cheap pipe bursts in the basement and the house is filled up completely.