Ricochet

****

There is always little light in this house. Even after dusk, when the dim bulbs come to life. I don’t like their sickly flickering; sometimes I smash them. It’s much easier to navigate in the dark — I’m guided by sensations, by some inner certainty.

What I mostly see are walls, because that’s what I look at most of the time. People don’t interest me, although it’s impossible not to bump into them in this cluster of filthy little rooms. There are many children here; they’re noisy and foolish. Sometimes I watch them when no adults are nearby. Some children get frightened when they see me, many ignore me, just like their parents do. The fuss of the offspring bores me quickly; I don’t linger near them.

In one of the apartments lives a woman with two sons. She has empty eyes and sagging cheeks. Both of her boys — one pale, the other with yellowish skin — are thin and silent. They rarely play with other children; their observation post is the windowsill, from where they gaze bleakly at the surroundings. It seems they’re not allowed to watch TV. I know so much about them because from time to time I visit them, like today. The younger boy, the yellow one, shyly smiles at me, for which his mother scolds him. She pretends to be angry with the yellow boy, and I know — she doesn’t want to see me. The pale boy takes his brother into the kitchen. The woman opens her mouth, staring at me, but says nothing and stands there for a while, her eyes darting over me, her hands trembling slightly. I leave into the stairwell, accidentally knocking a cup off the edge of the table along the way.

On the top floor lives a lonely man who comes home once every few days. For reasons beyond my control, I want to harm him. It seems to be my only desire. When I meet him in the stairwell, all I can do is bore into him with my gaze. He pays no attention to me and goes into his apartment, where a small object is hidden — something that gives me no peace.

That object was brought by a dark-haired girl and left in a secluded place. She called me at the same time. It was her actions that became the starting point of my existence in this house. Or of my existence at all. And its meaning is that the man from the top floor must stop breathing. At least, that’s what the girl said. I cannot disobey her, just as I cannot cause the man any harm. Because of this, waves of indescribable pain roll over me, from which nothing can save me. Wandering through apartments brings a bit of relief. When I’m near people, the pain subsides slightly. But since I don’t like people, I try to look at the walls.

During another visit to the woman with the fish-like gaze, I catch the whole family at dinner. The yellow boy waves a fork at me; his brother flinches and hisses at him. The mother stares glassily through me and chews in silence. She eats directly from the table, without a plate. The dead light from beneath the dusty lampshade in the kitchen mercilessly reveals the woman’s age, but I don’t feel sorry for her. The dying bulb irritates me; I squeeze it in my hand, and several hot needles dig into the boys’ skin. They jump up screaming and start to cry — it hurts. The mother, squinting from the flash, slowly opens her eyes and heads for the sink to get a broom. Silent, she walks over the shards, slapping her bare feet. The children stare at her in fear, smearing their tears. It’s time for me to go — the man from the top floor slams the stairwell door.

I can’t slip in after him — there are people in gold in his apartment, and while they are there, I cannot enter. Their images stand on his shelf; sometimes he looks at them, waving his hand in front of himself, and for a long time reads some kind of book. It’s as if I see all this through the wall. One person, resembling a portrait on the shelf, constantly accompanies him, and when I try to touch the man, the presence of his companion makes me so weak that the familiar pain intensifies many times over. I can’t find a place for myself and begin to rush about the house, frightening cats.

I don’t keep track of days and can’t tell how long I’ve been here. I need to fulfill the dark-haired girl’s desire, although she is not my mistress — I just know that. A couple of times she came to the house and broke into the man’s apartment, checking whether the object she left was still there. She’s angry that I’m failing, but she has no power to take back the words she spoke then. And I can’t — and don’t want to — help her.

Once again I head to the apartment where the boys with the white-eyed mother live. Lately I’ve been feeling her mental call. Even now she monotonously mutters something to her sons, but in the stream of words she spews I catch a plea addressed to me. Strange. From the hallway I go into the bathroom, from where the sound of running water and a child’s crying can be heard, interrupted by the mother’s hysterical shouts. I stop at the locked door and see the woman sitting in the bathtub with both sons, holding the older, pale one tightly by the shoulders with one hand. At the yellow boy’s neck she holds a kitchen knife. It seems to me that she’s looking straight at me, and when our gazes meet, the woman gasps convulsively and draws the knife across. The pale boy erupts into a scream and tries to break free, but the woman is strong and fast. The knife bites into another throat. Water mixed half-and-half with blood spills over the edge of the bathtub, cramped with the three of them.

Now I understand — she always saw me. And what she’s doing now is for me. But I don’t need this, and I leave the mad mother, who vainly tries to press the small bodies to the bottom of the filled bathtub.

In the top-floor apartment, during cleaning, the man has just found the hidden object — I feel it. At first he examines it silently, then carefully burns it and whispers something for a long time, glancing at the portraits of the people in gold. I feel unbearably ill; I want to scream, but I can’t make a sound, so I smash the light bulbs throughout the entire house. The man jerks, but not so much from my outburst as from the sudden pounding — the dark-haired girl is knocking on his door, having sensed, like me, what he did, and immediately rushed to him. They argue furiously through the door, and I understand that the pain is slowly releasing me.

Slamming the entrance door one last time, the girl strides angrily across the yard. I part with the house easily and follow her — it’s not difficult; there are no companions hostile to me near her. Now I have a new meaning

to my existence.