Flesh and Circuit

The key turned in the lock with a click that sounded like a bone snapping.

I froze with my hand still on the doorknob, my heart hammering against my ribs. The apartment was dark. I'd left the lights on. I always left the lights on. There was a small lamp on the entryway table, a stupid ceramic thing my mother had given me, a fat little rabbit holding a lightbulb in its paws. It was off.

Someone was in my apartment.

My fingers tightened on the keys, the jagged edges biting into my palm. I could call the police. I could back out slowly, pull the door shut, and run down the three flights of stairs to the street where the neon sign of the bodega across the road buzzed like a trapped fly. That's what a smart person would do.

I pushed the door open instead.

The hinges didn't creak. I'd oiled them myself two months ago because the sound made me feel like I was living in a horror movie. Now I wished I hadn't. I stepped inside, my sneakers silent on the hardwood, and the smell hit me. Cigarettes. Not the stale ghost of old smoke, but fresh, sharp, the kind that clings to the back of your throat. And underneath it, something else. Something floral and wrong, like a funeral home.

"Hello?"

My voice came out thin. Pathetic, really. I cleared my throat and tried again, louder. "I'm calling the cops. I have my phone right here."

I didn't. My phone was in my back pocket, but my hands were shaking too hard to pull it out.

A floorboard groaned in the living room. I lived in a one-bedroom on the third floor of a building that had been built in 1923 and hadn't been updated since 1974. The floorboards groaned if you looked at them wrong. But this groan was deliberate. A footstep. Someone shifting their weight.

I should have run.

Instead, I walked toward the sound.

The living room was dark, the only light bleeding in from the streetlamp outside, a sickly orange glow that turned everything the color of old bruises. My couch, a lumpy green thing I'd bought at a thrift store for forty bucks, sat empty. My coffee table was covered in the usual debris: a half-empty mug, a stack of mail I hadn't opened, a paperback with a cracked spine. Nothing looked disturbed. Nothing looked stolen.

But the air was wrong. Thick. Waiting.

"You're early."

The voice came from behind me, from the direction of the kitchen, and I spun so fast I nearly lost my balance. My back hit the wall, and I pressed myself against it, wishing I could dissolve into the plaster.

She was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, leaning against the frame like she owned the place. Tall. Lean. Dressed in black from head to toe, jeans and a fitted sweater that looked like it cost more than my rent. Her hair was short, buzzed close to her skull, and the streetlight caught the angles of her face, sharp cheekbones, a jaw that could cut glass.

She was holding my rabbit lamp.

"I was supposed to be here at nine," she said. "You're home at eight. That's inconvenient."

"Who the hell are you?"

She smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of someone who knew something you didn't, and the knowing had worn grooves into her face, made her look older than she probably was.

"Your roommate."

"I don't have a roommate."

"You do now." She set the rabbit lamp down on the kitchen counter, and the ceramic clinked against the tile. "The lease is in my name too. Has been for three months."

"That's impossible. I signed the lease myself. I would have noticed."

"Would you?" She tilted her head, studying me like I was a bug under glass. "When's the last time you read your mail?"

The question hit me like a slap. The stack of envelopes on my coffee table. The ones I'd been ignoring for weeks, maybe months. Bills, mostly. Junk. I'd assumed.

"I need you to leave," I said. My voice was steadier than I felt. "Right now. Or I'm calling the police."

"Call them." She shrugged, a lazy roll of her shoulders. "They'll take one look at the lease and tell you it's a civil matter. Then they'll leave. And you'll still be here. With me."

I didn't move. I couldn't. My legs had turned to concrete.

She took a step toward me, and then another, and the space between us shrank until I could smell her. Cigarettes and jasmine. That funeral home scent. Up close, I could see the tattoo crawling up the side of her neck, black ink that twisted into something I couldn't quite make out in the dim light.

"My name is Vale," she said. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here because you have something I need."

"I don't have anything."

"You have the key."

She reached out and plucked the keys from my hand. I didn't resist. My fingers had gone numb. She held them up, the little silver key to my apartment glinting in the orange light, and then she closed her fist around them.

"I've been looking for this key for a long time," she said. "You have no idea what it opens."

"It opens my door."

"No." She shook her head, and something flickered in her eyes. Something hungry. "It opens a door, sure. But not this one."

She stepped back, and the distance between us felt like a reprieve. I sucked in a breath, my lungs burning, and I realized I hadn't breathed since she'd touched me.

"You can stay here tonight," she said. "I'm not a monster. But tomorrow, we're going to have a conversation. And you're going to tell me everything you know about the man who gave you this key."

"I don't know any man. I found the key. In a drawer. When I moved in."

"Liar."

The word was soft, almost gentle. She walked past me, toward the front door, and her shoulder brushed mine. The contact sent a jolt through me, electric and wrong, like touching a live wire.

"I'll see you in the morning," she said. "Sleep well."

The door opened. The door closed. And I was alone in the dark, my heart still pounding, my hands still shaking, and the rabbit lamp staring at me from the kitchen counter with its stupid ceramic eyes.

I didn't sleep.

I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, my phone in my hand, my thumb hovering over the emergency call button. But I didn't press it. Because Vale was right about one thing. I was a liar.

I knew exactly who gave me the key.