Start At The Beginning

Today is just today. I woke up, left for work, and came home from work. I’m not planning on leaving my apartment again and I didn’t see Bob. Actually, in the last three days, I think I’ve only seen Bob once, and then only on the monitors. He’s been quiet lately.

I’m lying with my torso underneath my coffee table, and my calves and feet resting up on my couch. A few years ago I had back problems and found some relief doing this; now I just do it because I feel like it. My zebra finches sing merrily, and I play games on my phone.

Someone knocks at the door.

I panic and try to get up, but only succeed in banging my head on the coffee table.

“Ashley, are you home? It’s me, Christine.” Her voice comes muffled from the other side of the door.

I make unintelligible growly, complainy noises as I crawl out from under the coffee table and rub my head. Once out from under the table, I sit up and stare at the door. Maybe she didn’t hear me. Maybe she’ll go away.

She knocks again. “Could you open up before Bob comes and eats me, please?”

I scowl at the door. You can’t use Bob to get what you want. That’s worse than black-mail, it’s Bob-mail. But of course she would. I consider ignoring her anyway, after all Bob hasn’t been inclined to show himself lately, but that’s exactly the sort of thing that precedes something really unfortunate, so of course I can’t.

I don’t even have the luxury of talking to her through a gap in the door too small to get through, and then closing the door at the earliest excuse. You just have to let people in the door here, and it’s a lot harder to get them to leave. This is one of the more unexpected consequences of living with Bob, but up until now it hasn’t affected me much. Most people have more common sense than to just go around bothering the neighbors, you see.

So I let her in.

“Thanks.”

She scoots past me and I all but slam the door shut, just in case.

“What’s up?” I say with a tight smile.

Christine takes a deep breath and lets it out quickly. She’s excited. This makes me wary.

My zebra finches are quiet, as if waiting to hear her response. They’re not used to seeing people other than me in this apartment. Actually, I can’t remember the last time another human being came in here. Maybe when I needed to get my sink fixed, a few years ago?

“I want to interview you,” she says.

My brows furrow. “Interview me for what?”

“Well, my blog to start with. Plus I know a guy with a popular-ish YouTube channel, so who knows. And I think I’d like to write a book someday,” she babbles excitedly. “But you never know where it could go if it gets popular. Stranger things have happened. The world must know Bob!”

“No.” The word falls out of my mouth and lands with an awkward plop on the floor.

I’m being blunt. I’m not often blunt, but sometimes I am. After all, if I might get eaten by a giant bird tomorrow, who has time to mince words?

“No?”

“No.” I confirm.

“Why?”

“Because you’re not one of us.” These words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them and then flap around the room shrieking.

I’m not even sure I mean it. Probably something like it. Mostly I think my life isn’t some sideshow, and I don’t want to talk about it with a bunch of random strangers.

“But I live here.”

“No you don’t.”

“Well I can’t live here all the time. I have a kid.”

“I lived here as a kid.”

“So you think I should just bring my four-year-old to live in a building with a giant bird monster?”

“Absolutely not. That would be idiotic.”

“Well then?”

I shrug.

“Please?”

“No.”

“So your parents moved here with you as a kid and didn’t leave when they found out about Bob?”

“No, I…I’m not answering questions.”

Especially not about my parents.

“Okay, then. Well could you give me tips on living with Bob? I will be here sometimes, quite a lot of the time, actually. Overnight, occasionally.”

Overnight occasionally. Lands a mercy, we should give her a medal.

“You don’t want me to get eaten by Bob, do you?” she says.

I know perfectly well this is a way to get more information about Bob, and see what little bits I might spill in the process. But on the other hand, she’s not wrong. If she’s spending time here, there are things she needs to know to stay safe. Or at least be less of a nuisance to the rest of us. And I don’t know what the others might tell her, well-meaning as they are. Still, I should say no. Just on principle.

Except now I’ve hesitated way too long on a question that should have been an immediate “no” and Christine is looking at me funny.

“I guess.”

She smiles. “Great. I’ll bring the Oreos.”

I almost smile.

I sit on a decorative boulder in the landscaping in front of my building. Sitting with my back to the street would be weird, so I don’t, but I make sure to sit so that I can still see the building in my peripheral vision. Bob can’t get out, I know that. But this isn’t a place you turn your back on.

Carly shuffles up the path toward the building and incidentally also me. She wears a long patchwork coat and carries a Japanese-style parasol. “You coming in, honey?”

“Nah, don’t want to,” I say.

“You’ve got to come in sometime. Come on, let’s do it together,” she says.

I shake my head. “Don’t want to.”

She gives a little laugh. “But you have to.”

Do I though? Do I really have to? Every afternoon for the past couple of days I’ve considered just going to a hotel for the night. Maybe today I will.

“I might not. I might go to the Four Seasons, and sit in the hot tub.”

“I see,” says Carly. “And then what?”

“Stay? Maybe we should all do that.”

“We should all go to the Four Seasons and sit in the hot tub.”

There’s a big evergreen shrub growing near the sidewalk. I’ve noticed if you’re coming up the street, the shrub hides the rock I’m sitting on from view. It stands to reason, then, that for anyone coming up the street, it will look like Carly is talking to a shrub. Despite my pensive mood, I can’t help but smile a little at that.

“Yes we should,” I say. “Why don’t we? I mean people always ask that and I usually just think it’s a dumb question because reasons, but really. Why?”

“Well, I suppose by now everyone who is going to leave already has,” says Carly.

“But can you remember anyone leaving? You’ve lived here longer than me,” I say.

“Not much longer. I think I’d only lived here two years before you were born.”

“Sure, but I don’t remember much of the first several years,” I say. “Do you remember?”

It occurs to me that, sitting on the rock, I might be tall enough to be seen over the evergreen bush. So it might look like Carly is talking to a bush with a head, or someone standing in the bush.

“Well sure, there have been some,” says Carly. “Did that investigator lady put you up to this? Is that what all the questions are about? She’s not going to live here, apparently, she’s got a little son. So at least you won’t have to worry about that.”

“No, she certainly did not,” I say. “But in a way, it is because of her. This is weird, isn’t it? That we all still stay here?”

“Everyone’s got their problems. And it really isn’t so bad. No one’s actually been attacked by Bob in a long while,” says Carly. “Plus, have you noticed? We never get rats. Or mice. Not a one.”

“I suppose…”

“And most people have to pretend their lives are interesting by going to the movies or those escape room whats-it-thingees. We face death on a daily basis.” Carly twirled her parasol. “And we do it with style. Bob is not a monster, he’s a way of life.”

The more rational side of me stands to the side with its arms crossed, and opines that this is dumb and that Carly has clearly eaten too many raisin bran muffins. But while I don’t think Carly’s opinion is correct, it does appeal to me, and in that sense I agree. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I do.

“Yeah,” I say.

I slide off the rock, and take Carly’s proffered arm. We stride up to the building where Bob awaits, somewhere.

Carly brandishes her parasol. “Onwards.”

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six

Today is a Good Day. It’s a Saturday, and I have no intention of leaving my apartment. On days like these I like to curl up on my sofa with a cup of tea and a good book, and pretend that the whole world outside my apartment has ceased to exist, never existed at all, in fact. Not only does my apartment building* not exist, but the world beyond it as well. No reason to ever leave my apartment and nowhere go even if there was. My apartment floats in a void, or is embedded in solid rock, or is lodged in a crevasse at the bottom of a sterile, bottomless sea.

Those images in the windows and noises from beyond my living space? Hallucinations, all of them, my mind trying to make sense of nothing.

Some noises, though, you just can’t ignore.

A woman’s scream; a loud, raucous squawk; a wet crunch; pounding feet getting louder, someone running towards my apartment.

I just react, too terrified to think about anything other than how much I want this to not be happening. I rip my door open as the footsteps get close, and grab hold of a green sweater. The sweater-wearer yelps as I pull her into my apartment, and then I slam my door shut. I lock it, instinctively, though Bob doesn’t know how to use doorknobs, except as something shiny to peck at.

Me and Bob’s would-be lunch stare at each other, panting and shaking. I don’t recognize her. She must be the new tenant. She’s my age, with shoulder-length brown hair. The rips in her jeans appear to be a fashion statement rather than a Bob casualty, but there is a smear of blood on the sleeve of her sweater.

“Are you okay?” I say.

“That thing ate–” she doubles over, trying to catch her breath.

“What?”

She stands up again. “My chicken. I threw the chicken at it, and now it’s gone.”

“Your chicken?”

“I was going to make a roast chicken. You know, as a special house-warming thing. I don’t know what to do now.”

“You could get another one.”

“In this economy?”

“Meatloaf? With fancy ketchup.”

“Fancy ketchup?”

“If it was homemade, maybe with heirloom tomatoes or something.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I could do that.”

The new tenant and I stop nervously blathering and stare at each other for a bit longer.

“I’m Ashley,” I say.

“Christine,” she says.

“You want some Near-Death Experience Oreos?”

A short laugh escapes her mouth. “Is that a new flavor?”

I’m about to say they taste like adrenaline and soiled underwear, but I clamp my mouth shut just in time and giggle instead.

The hollow clacking of Bob’s beak sounds outside my apartment, followed by a weird low rumble.

“It can’t get in, can it?” says Christine.

“Nah,” I say. “If he could, we’d all be dead already.”

“You’ve lived here a while, haven’t you?” she says.

My smile is a little tight as I beckon her down my hallway. “Come on, the Oreos are over here.”

She glances back at my door, and then follows me.

“You keep them in your closet?” she says as I emerge with the well-over-half-eaten box.

“Don’t ask,” I say.

We munch on the Oreos, and get crumbs all over my bed, but I don’t mind. It’s nice not being treated like a weirdo by an outsider for once. I’m sure she’ll start looking for another apartment as soon as we can safely get her to her current one, but I’ll enjoy this while it lasts.

“I guess you got a lot more than you bargained for,” I say.

“I’ll say…although, kind of not. But yes.”

“What?”

“I’ve been looking for a place like this for ages. I mean, not to live in, but to study, kind of. I’m what you might call a paranormal investigator.”

I pop the last bite of my Oreo into my mouth and chew it slowly, trying to come up with something appropriate to say. Bob isn’t a zoo animal or a tourist attraction. He’s the nightmare that’s plagued my whole life. What does this lady think she’s doing?

*Obviously, Bob does not exist either. In fact, the entire concept of Bob does not exist, so I don’t even know what I’m talking about.