The House-Sitter

The House-Sitter

Scruffy loafed on Jane’s chest, exhaling a warm mix of tuna and death far too close to her face. 

“I forgive you,” She whispered before kissing the gray cat on the head. They lay together on Ollie’s childhood bed, cuddled over boring Navy sheets.

Ollie abandoned the poor animal starving and alone. His fur had been matted when she found him hunched and bloodied over Ollie’s corpse. Scruffy had only done what was natural: eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.

Of course, the dumb cat with dopey yellow eyes did not kill Ollie. No one would ever know what did.

When Jane knocked on Ollie’s door a week prior, no one answered. She waited for a few minutes before growing impatient. Dusk had invited mosquitos, moths, and June bugs to swarm the glowing sconce on the patio. The humidity drew beads of sweat trickling down her chest and back, littering her white shirt with gray dots from the inside out. Something sour hung in the air.

Ollie’s family owned significant real estate in town. His parents refurbished an old historic building downtown for him and his brother built by an 1800’s doctor to resemble an English castle. It dwarfed the neighbors’ cramped wooden houses. His parents tentatively planned a future where their boys could live there for college or after they married and had kids. In high school, they’d get to stay by themselves on weekends, have friends over, light bonfires, watch movies.

Jane knocked again. Nothing. 

Annoyed, she waded through unkempt grass to a square window on the east side of the building. Harvest mites bit at her ankles, burrowing into her skin. The window was level with the lawn and looked out from a daylight basement. Jane lifted the short lip on the bottom of the window a centimeter and jiggled the frame until she heard a click. She pulled forward. The glass folded out. The mesh screen came off easily at the corners. 

She didn’t bother to check for suspicious neighbors or strangers walking their dogs as she slipped into the chilly basement, careful to replace the screen and close the window tight behind her. She remembered sneaking late nights wrapped in Ollie’s arms. Whispering secrets. Trying not to wake his brother.

She took a deep breath, expecting to inhale some pleasant reminder of better days. Instead, her memories rotted in an unbearable stench. Sweet garbage juice and rotten eggs. Maggots and mildew. 

Vomit pooled in the bottom of her throat. 

She found Ollie at the top of the stairs in a preppy green polo, sprawled on dark wooden flooring, Scruffy licking what used to be a face. The cat looked up from his meal. His wide eyes seemed grateful for some companionship as he stepped over the body and padded toward Jane. She crouched, and he mewed softly, rubbing his warm body against her legs. She petted him as she stared at the purplish red caverns atop Ollie’s shoulders.

Jane’s heart pounded. She felt dizzy. But, for some reason, she didn’t cry. Ollie had told her he would do this eventually. He probably didn’t expect the cat to get involved.

“I was thinking today during practice,” He texted her the night of their senior track banquet, about a year ago. “I suck at the game of life. I hurt people. I’m pushy. I’ve lost friends. I’m shitty. If I suck so bad, maybe I should just stop playing. Burn it all down.”

She’d spent a couple of hours tirelessly trying to explain why life was worth living. She talked in cliches about how life was a rollercoaster and the lows could be low, but the highs were so high. He countered with the inevitability he’d ruined every high by “being shitty.” She countered that they were young. That they had so much more life to live. They would get married one day–perhaps to each other. They would have kids. Ollie argued he’d probably fuck up any kids he had and stopped responding to her messages.

That night, Jane contemplated if she should call the police or Ollie’s parents about what he’d said, but at the banquet, the sniveling boy on her phone was nowhere to be found. Ollie had replaced him with the charming center of attention, the captain of the team. She watched the underclassmen’s idolization of their senior leadership grow as he danced between repurposed cafeteria tables reminiscing ludicrous stories of seasons past, poking good-natured fun at their coach, never looking Jane in the eye.

Jane cried quietly in her room after the banquet and broke up with Ollie over text. Over the weekend, she kept checking her phone for news of his suicide, but nothing came. Instead, he texted some cutting thing Sunday night she worked hard later to forget.  

Over the following year, high school friendships faded into the excitement of university, dorm life, and moves across the country. The diaspora of undergrad. Ollie had talked big about Ivy League legacies, subject area SAT scores, and scholarships (not that he needed any) that Spring, but when August rolled around, he moved into the castle and attended the state school 30 minutes away. 

Jane earned a sizable scholarship to American University in DC, but still took out sizable loans to afford her dream school.

She found herself talking about Ollie more than she expected. She’d tell stories to new friends about her rich, messy ex who punched holes in the wall, stormed out of parties, insisted their relationship stay a secret, probably didn’t get into his big fancy schools, and forced her into an amateur therapist role. She spoke excitedly in hyperbolic tall tales, feeling cruel and vindicated. Then, she’d text friends who’d stayed in their hometown begging for some juicy morsel of gossip, praying for a new story about Ollie’s antics. And, of course, curiosity occasionally dragged her drunk 2 AM self through the trenches of social media.

The summer after their first year of undergrad, Ollie texted her. He wanted her to meet him at the castle in a couple of days. 

And there she was, staring at his dead body. 

The police were quick to arrive, along with firefighters and, for some reason, an ambulance. They would not immediately confirm Ollie’s cause of death, but the empty prescription bottle by his side and suicide note shoved in the right pocket of his khakis told a pretty convincing story. 

Jane didn’t quite understand why he’d asked her to come two days after the apparent suicide. Did he want her to find him rotten, torn, and bloodied? 

People have so many questions for the dead. Maybe more than they have for the living.

Acquaintances and close family littered the pews of the church at the funeral a few days later. Jane noticed quickly the absence of best friends, girlfriends, and prior roommates. 

Jane sought out Maggie, Ollie’s mother, at the reception. She had something she needed to ask.

When she approached her and her mop of frizzy gray hair, the woman attempted a smile, probably expecting courteous condolences and commiseration. To Maggie, Jane was just a school friend, another distant acquaintance in the crowd of familially-obligated attendees and surface-level strangers. She’d never known her son had dated anyone despite the handful of exes who hadn’t been on speaking terms with him (and, Jane realized, never would be again).

“Jane,” she said. “I–um. How’re you holding up? I can’t imagine it was easy…what you saw…”

“How’s the cat doing?” Jane asked, straight to the point.

“Oh fine, fine. Don’t worry about him. I’ll have to find someone to look after him and the house for a while.”

“You don’t have any family in town?” Jane asked, knowing full-well she didn’t. Ollie’s brother was studying abroad, and his parents had some longstanding conflict with the rest of his extended family. She watched a flicker of hurt cross Maggie’s face as the woman adjusted her lacey black shawl.

“We’ll find someone.”

“I could watch him,” she said. “And the house. I can do it.”

“Um,” Maggie stammered. “Would you be okay with that?”

Jane moved into the house that night. She laid in Ollie’s bed with Scruffy. She kissed his sweet head and forgave him for eating Ollie’s face. She slept under the watchful eye of the hole in the wall by the foot of Ollie’s bed. A couple of years ago, Ollie told her he’d accidentally kicked the hole in while sleeping. In her stories at university, at least, this was a lie.

Jane woke at an unknown hour to what she assumed was the sound of Scruffy skittering in the hallway. The dim glow from streetlights outside bled through the curtains, coating the black in slightly-more-discernable shades of gray. She’d been dreaming of something terrible that she could no longer remember.

Jane stared at a dull silhouette in the corner until it took the shape of a tall, looming man. Of Ollie. She was scared for a moment, but ghosts aren’t real. 

Suddenly, she couldn’t stand to be here and hated that she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She had to atone. Atone for what? Ollie put this on her. He made her find his body. He kept her a secret from his family. He hurt her. Maybe he was shitty. So why then did the black hole of guilt punch a hole in her chest?

She thought, laying in the dark, that she should take her own life. Join Ollie in Hell. But then again, no, she couldn’t. She’d always been terrified of death and the nothingness that awaits. Too chicken. 

She couldn’t decide if Ollie was brave or chicken. Is killing yourself cowardly? Ollie once said it was, despite later actions. Maybe it is brave to look death in the eye like that and down a bottle of pills in a drunken stupor. Well, who knows, he could’ve been sober. Is that better or worse?

What Jane did know is that he left too many questions that would never have answers. Questions that were killing her. Pits of guilt that were eating her alive.

Maybe that’s why she spun the dials on the gas stove until the castle smelled of sulfur. Of rotten eggs. Of maggots and mildew.

Maybe that’s why she grabbed Scruffy and dropped a match on the cotton rug in the entryway on her way out.

Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed.

Burn it all down.