Skittering

I knew when I was arrested that things would be different, but I never thought that my family would cut me off entirely. Maybe it was unfair of me to expect anyone to drive all the way out to the prison to visit me, but when I first got here, I guess I was still in denial about everything. Every morning I’d wake up, and it’d take me a minute to remember where I was. And every day for the first six months, I was convinced that I would have a visitor.

Even before everything went down, I guess there was a distance forming between us. It made sense. My younger brother, Layne, was starting college two states away, my sister, Patti, had just been married and had a kid on the way, and my folks had just retired. And there I was, stuck in post-grad limbo, working at a car rental place in Dallas. I hadn’t necessarily had much going on in college, but after graduating, it really was just a never-ending cycle of going to work, going home, hitting the pillow, and immediately waking up to do it over again. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had nowhere to go and no one to go there with.

It was also the first time I really felt like I could use a roommate. Not that my place could support one. I lived in unit 2F, which was a studio apartment on the second floor of a tiny building on the east end of town. The place was probably forty years old, and I’d swear it had never been touched up once, but with no money, no one to split rent with, and no real prospects, it was the best I could do. And you’d think that living on your own would be nice. That you’d have a lot of peace and quiet. But apartment 2F was directly above my landlord’s unit, and that man probably caused more fuss than anyone else in that building.

He was a middle-aged guy named Frank Aguilar, and for someone who postured himself as a real hard ass, he never struck me as knowing what he was doing. From the one time I was in his apartment to get my key, I’m surprised that he didn’t burn to death and take all his tenants with him. His AC unit had all kinds of frayed wires poking out of it and had no filter, there was a massive pile of paint cans (some of which were open) in the corner, and I remember one of the burners on his stove being on with nothing on it. Not to mention the roaches. In the few minutes I was there, I probably saw half a dozen of them, and they were like nothing I’d ever seen. Big and black and so sluggish you’d swear one had eaten the other. The place was a perfect crematorium for rats, and the rest of the building wasn’t much better.

Frank had a wife named Beatrice that he owned the building with. I only saw her twice, with the first time being the visit to pick up my key. She looked exhausted, and I couldn’t blame her. It’s hard for me to picture Frank as being an attentive husband. I’d head out of my apartment every day for work, and he’d be sitting on his front stoop, grumbling something or other to himself. One day, two cops were talking to him at his door, and in the year I lived in that apartment, I don’t recall them showing up for anyone else. I’d get home at night, and he’d stare at me as I went upstairs, sometimes muttering at me that I wasn’t allowed to smoke in the apartment and that if I did it again, I was out on my ass.

On their own, I probably could have put up with the smoking comments. I didn’t smoke, and I told him as much each time, but I figured maybe it was just an old building, and he was smelling something residual in the walls. My unit was mustier than Hell, and the one time I was out of town for a week, that smell came over me like a virus when I got back. But Frank also had a “no pets” policy, and just the slightest noise in an apartment would make him suspect you of having one. It was easy for that to happen; the longer I lived there, the more sounds I’d hear at night, like something was rooting around.

God help you if Frank actually found a pet. My first month there, the woman next door to me took in a stray kitten. Somehow, Frank caught wind of it, and I can’t say for sure what happened, but I remember hearing a lot of yelling from him next door. And later that day, he had his window open, and a disgusting smell wafted out. My neighbor moved out not long after.

Somehow, Frank got it in his head that I had a pet in my apartment. And rather than calmly come to me to ask about it, he decided to pound on my door in the middle of the night. I told him over and over that I didn’t have a pet. I don’t know how I could have even kept one; the floors were hard wood and were so cheap and splintery that I constantly had to wear shoes. But he insisted on coming in, or he’d change the lock. So with my hands tied, I let him search the place up and down. And even when he didn’t find a thing, he didn’t seem satisfied. But he left, muttering something under his breath, and like an idiot, I assumed that was the end of it.

This routine repeated five more times. And every time, Frank would show up angrier and angrier. And every time, the same thing: at around 2 AM, he’d insist that he’d heard skittering and thumping and that he knew I had an animal in my apartment, I’d say that I’d heard it, too, and suggest that maybe there were rats in the walls, he’d threaten to evict me, and I’d let him look around. And then he’d leave, having found nothing, even more pissed off than before. At a certain point, I probably should have just moved, but I couldn’t afford to, and this place was close to my work. So I gritted my teeth and dealt with it.

That June, there was a massive heatwave all over the state. No wind and not a drop of rain for months. Place was a dust bowl. Thinking about it now, I don’t think I can remember the last time I felt a raindrop. Naturally, my air conditioner shit itself, and Frank was dragging his feet to do anything about it. He couldn’t even keep his own apartment in order; why should I expect any different? The paint on the walls was badly peeling, and the place stunk more and more by the day.

The noise also steadily got worse. At first, I had only heard some skittering and maybe an occasional bump, and it would stop after a little while. But within a couple weeks, it got so loud and so consistent that I started wondering what the rats were eating to make them so big. Between that, the heat, and the ever-worsening reek of concealed, baking rat waste, I had an increasingly hard time falling asleep, feeling like at any second, the walls would give and I’d be drowned in a swarm of vermin I’d never escape from. That never happened, but I did start to see more and more of the fat, black roaches I’d seen in Frank’s apartment. At least a couple times, I woke up and had to stifle a yelp as several of them dragged themselves across my bedsheets.

And then, one night, over all the slamming and scratching in the floor, I heard the unmistakable sound of Frank banging on the door. Unlike every time before, I was wide awake and got to the door before he could knock again. I opened it and was assaulted with the same sour, sweaty stench which always accompanied Frank; to look at him, you’d think he hadn’t showered or changed his clothes in a month. What few strands of unwashed hair he still had seemed like they were held to his head only with sweat.

“Myers,” he growled, “How many times have I told you: ‘no pets?’”

I sighed. “We’ve been through this, Frank. I don’t have any pets.”

“My ass, you’ve got no pets. I’m takin’ a look around.”

“How many times are we gonna go through this, Frank?”

He raised his eyebrows. “’Scuse me?”

I hesitated for a second, then took a breath. “I said: ‘how many times are we gonna go through this?’ You’ve been in here five times already, and you’ve never found anything. What is it you think you’re going to find this time?”

“I’m going to find whatever’s been stinkin’ to Hell up here.”

“Well,” I concluded, starting to shut the door, “Then maybe you should see about getting rid of all the fucking rats. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got work in the morning.”

Before I could shut it all the way, he shoved his way in, sending me back a couple steps, and slammed it behind him. “Don’t you bullshit me, Myers,” he snarled. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a hammer. “Ain’t no damn rats. You’ve got a dog or some shit up here. I hear it pawing around at night. Now you just set down there, get ready to pack your shit.”

Before I could even process what he’d said or think of how to respond, a muffled, labored groan sounded from somewhere around us. We looked at each other for a few seconds, unsure what to say, before the sound came again, this time accompanied by more skittering. It was longer, and the only way I can think to describe it is if someone with no vocal cords tried to scream. And this time, there was no mistaking that it came from the floor.

Without a word, Frank looked at me, then back at the floor, then back at me. He kept his eyes on me as he crouched down and started prying at the edges of some of the boards with the butt of the hammer. Dust filled the air, and the apartment’s already-acrid scent became unbreathable. But still, Frank pulled and pried away, each board cracking hard and sending debris onto his face.

Finally, he stopped long enough for the dust to settle. The hole in the floor was large enough to step into, and to my utter amazement, the first thing I saw wasn’t an ocean of rats. Instead, the floor was filled with an impossibly thick mass of cobwebs. You’d swear that webs had replaced any insulation that had been in there. But in the middle of it all, just barely visible, was the top half of a body, its lower half concealed by the rest of the floor. Its dark eye sockets just barely showed under its long clumps of unkempt hair, which was stained like a piece of old fruit. Most of a set of blackening teeth protruded from the mass that might have once been gums, and its hands lay limp on its chest. It had a dark blue dress on which was badly stained with puss and rot.

The room was so silent you could hear the skittering of tiny black legs against the dress. Then Frank turned back to me, his knuckles white around the hammer. I thought for sure that it was going to wind up in my brain, but instead, he shook his head, dropped the hammer to the floor and left my apartment, not closing the door behind him. Not sure what he intended to do, I grabbed the hammer. I stood by the door, not daring to look back at the body and unsure what to do next until blue and red lights engulfed the building.

I’d quickly find out that the body belonged to Beatrice Aguilar, and it took no effort on either Frank or the cops’ part to finger me for her placement in the floor. The trial lasted a few seconds, and the public attorney I was given had about as much life in him as Beatrice. Just add the six head wounds they told me I gave her, and he’d be a dead ringer.

I’m going to get a lethal injection in six years. I’ve already appealed it once with no luck, and I’ve more or less accepted that this place is the last thing I’m going to see. There’s a small, naïve part of me that’s still holding out hope that my folks or one of my siblings might visit me, but the realist in me doubts it.

I almost never have a good idea of what time it is, but I know it’s night right now. Lights out was probably a few hours ago. Outside my cell’s tiny window, rain that I’ll never feel is coming down. Most of the time, I’m able to keep the boiling dread in my stomach to a low rumble. But tonight, I’m shaking all over. Not so much because I know the end is coming, though that is part of it. It’s because every few minutes, under the rumbling of the storm against the walls, I swear I can hear something flitting across the floor.