Five years ago I moved into this apartment, in the midst of a humid and suffocating summer. It was my first time living alone.
It took a long while to make a home out of the tiny studio where my bedroom, living room and kitchen merged into a single space. Everything remained packed in boxes for months, and I wasn’t able to muster the energy to cook, even though I regularly bought groceries.
I suppose I merely thought of the apartment as a place to withdraw myself from the world. At night I’d lay in my sheetless bed, trying to ignore the muggy humidity of the city, staring at the tall and barren white walls in the dim light that enters through my curtainless window. Every so often I’d slap away a fruit fly from the bananas I’d forgotten to eat, and eventually I would finally fall into sleep.
My kitchen is separated by a wall and a door frame, so it’s darker than the rest of the room. About a week after I moved in, I dreamt that I woke up.
It was the middle of the night in the dream. I couldn’t move, yet my eyes opened up looking straight into the dark kitchen, all the way across the apartment.
And in it there was someone, staring back at me from the shadows.
The presence hid behind the door frame, but I could see it was light skinned, with short brown hair.
“No no, don’t get up. Stay in bed,” it whispered as I tried to rise. For some reason, I complied.
The person proceeded to ask casual questions, What was my name? What did I do for a living? Did I enjoy living alone? When I eventually woke up outside of the dream, I was lying down in the same position, still looking into the kitchen.
Two weeks passed before I had the same vision in my sleep. I’d look into the kitchen, the intruder would be staring at me from behind the door frame and begin to ask about mundane matters, those that you chat about with an acquaintance you stumble upon in the street. I had it again a week later, then again a few days after that. Finally I dreamed about it three or four times a week, always with the kitchen being the first thing I’d see when I opened my eyes.
It was then that its questions took on a different tone.
“Do you want to see me?” it asked.
For the first time, I was afraid. Something in that proposition alarmed me, as if I knew it would be harmful. I firmly, yet nervously, said no.
“Are you sure? Why not? Aren’t you curious to see how I look?”
I implored it to stay hidden, and it stopped insisting. After that, it always asked me the same question, and kept getting more and more persistent. On one occasion it began lowering its peeking head, getting closer to the ground.
“I’ll crawl to your bed, so you can take a peek”
I sat up and told it to stop. The presence raised its head, as if standing back up, never ceasing to look at me.
I woke up sitting in bed. Once again looking into the kitchen.
After some time the nightmares began impacting my life. I was constantly exhausted, falling asleep in anguish while hoping to not be visited again. One afternoon I had the idea of trying to negotiate with the presence.
On the next visit, when it requested to show itself, I said it could only reveal its face, as long as it remained in the kitchen and didn’t come any closer. I wondered that perhaps this thing was a part of me, attempting to communicate something buried deep in my subconscious.
It remained in silence for what felt like endless minutes, staring at me…
Slowly, it stuck its head out of the door frame, its eyes reflecting a grin similar to a smile.
I can’t recall exactly what I saw, only how I felt. This thing looked like a person, but something about it wasn’t quite human. That subtle difference disturbed me, as if its features were slightly altered, misplaced or dislocated. It was the semblance of something that hadn’t quite perfected how to imitate a real face.
Had I seen it on the street I would have felt sorry for it. But in my dark apartment, with its eyes placed on me like a church’s saint, I felt scared. So I looked at the face for a long time, until I finally woke up.
The following evenings, I kept worrying about having another visit from the presence, and hoped that it wouldn’t feel emboldened to show even more of itself. But nonetheless, I chose to fall asleep staring into the kitchen. I wasn’t willing to concede a nightmare that much power over me.
I waited for days, weeks, months, but the dream never returned. The reveal was the last glimpse my eyes got of the intruder.
But I had one last visit ahead of me.
After about a year, I decided to hang a pair of black curtains. It had been months since I allowed myself to fall asleep with my back to the kitchen, and I had not worried about the recurrent nightmares for a while now. Having my apartment in total darkness was no longer a possible source of concern.
On one of the first nights of this experiment, I woke up in absolute blackness. I wouldn’t have noticed if someone had been right in my face.
And then I heard a voice, a whisper only a few inches away from the back of my head, but lacking the warmth of any breath in such proximity to my skin.
“It’s me. I’ll always be with you now,” a familiar voice said.
I tried to strike it, but my fist flew through the air. Remembering the presence, I tried to wake up. Surely, I thought, this is only another one of those awful dreams.
But no matter how intently I tried, I just remained in the darkness and silence. I waited and waited, until the first morning light leaked from between the curtains, and I knew then that I had been awake the entire time.
I was never visited again.
