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Today's the day I meet my new flatmate.
I watch the bacteria float amongst itself through the eyepiece, my right hand adjusting the magnification of the microscope when needed. Clostridium botulinum is a rare bacterium found on food. When ingested, it's toxins cause paralysis. Botulism. While I could just look up a report, I'd rather make my own observations. I've found the observations of others tend to be quite... lacking, to say the least.
I change the magnification to 40x.
I hear the rattle of the key and the click of the lock as my landlady introduces the stranger to my apartment. I glance up, watch as the man limps into the living room, his eyes mapping out it's interior in both a quick and strategic manner. I look him up and down, take in everything from his stiff posture to his suspiciously normal stance.
For a man with a limp, his weight distribution is awfully even.
I return my attention to the bacteria. No point in staring, I don't want to scare him off.
“Oh, this is nice. This is very nice. Fully furnished too.” He says, impressed.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes, barely. Of course it's 'fully furnished', I'm hardly going to sleep on the wooden floors for God's sake.
I change the magnification back to 10x.
“...get rid of it all. Come on, let me show you the bedrooms.” My landlady replies, the majority of which I must've tuned out.
Why she bothers with all the pleasantries is beyond me, anyone with an iota of a brain cell can tell that the stranger has already made his decision. Late thirties, a psychosomatic limp, ex-military. This is probably the best deal he'll come across.
All I can hope is that he's not the social type.
--
He's not, thank God.
A month passes by, the steady babble of the television set only ever interrupted by his therapy sessions. Sometimes he actually watches it. Sometimes he stares at his sad excuse of a blog. Sometimes he looks for work, medical work, so I can only assume he's also a doctor.
Fascinating, that. A soldier and a doctor. A killer and a healer. A man with a psychosomatic pain in his leg, but a bullet wound in his shoulder. He is fascinating, but he's also infuriatingly stubborn.
He simply won't admit that his limp is psychosomatic.
I've had to take to leaving random objects in his path in order to trip him out of it. Literally. But beyond a few angry stomps and stumbles, it's not working. At this rate I'm going to have to hide the bloody thing behind the refrigerator.
The pain isn't real, even his therapist tells him it's psychosomatic – surely even an imbecile would listen at this point. It's infuriating.
The lock rattles, clicks and the front door opens to reveal my flatmate in all of his stubborn glory. Dull jumper, dull groceries and infuriatingly dull limp. I watch him as he hobbles into the kitchen, places the groceries on the counter and locks his gaze on the open laptop sitting beside me.
His laptop. Obviously.
He looks up at the ceiling and groans; “Lord have mercy, would you stop messing with my god-damned stuff.”
I roll my eyes, ignore him as he smacks the laptop shut and moves it over to where he's putting away the groceries. Whatever. It's not my fault his passwords are painfully easy to crack.
I fiddle with the dial on my microscope while he puts away the shopping, not really paying it much mind. I watch him try to manoeuvre himself back and forth with that pointless little cane.
On a whim, I kick it out from under him.
He shouts, stumbles, steadies himself and tries to reach for it. I kick it again, this time hard enough that it slides past the threshold and comes to a stop halfway down the hall. My flatmate grits his teeth, clearly irritated.
I smirk. Good.
“What is it with you and my bloody cane?” He growls, limps across the room with difficulty, “This is childish. You realise how childish this is, right?”
I don't care.
My flatmate takes a moment to collect himself, steel himself, before forcing himself to begin the world's most pathetic trek to retrieve the cane. I sigh, heavily, and follow.
He bends to pick up the cane and, I can't help it, I kick it out of his reach again. It skids down the rest of the hall, and comes to a halt outside my bedroom door. I expect him to growl, hiss at me, grumble, shout blasphemies from here to back to his chair in the living room. I'd even expect him to hit me, unlikely as it sounds.
Instead, he simply... stops. Looks at the cane, then looks up at the door as if he didn't expect to find it there. Looks at the doorknob with the most peculiar expression on his face, as if it could lead to his salvation and damnation at the same time.
I frown, glance between my flatmate and the door in the hopes of, I don't know, seeing what he sees. But all I see is a badly painted, old wooden door.
Odd.
I return to the kitchen as he goes to retrieve his cane. Perhaps the door reminded him of something that happened in the army. Who knows?
–
I change the magnification of my microscope to 40x.
A cacophony of laughs approach the flat as the front door rattles, clicks and opens. A distinctly female voice continues to giggle as my flatmate rattles off what seems like another badly worded joke. Whatever it was, she finds it hilarious.
Their intoxication, made obvious by the slurs in their voices and the stumble in their steps, causes them to bump into the couch as she attempts to sit down. The television set is turned on, some mindless game show appears on-screen, and my flatmate enters the kitchen with the promise of pouring them more wine.
I frown. He never told me he was bringing anyone back to the flat.
With two over-filled glasses of wine in hand, my flatmate stumbles back into the living room and gives one to the female. He sits next to her, throws his arm around her shoulders and begins to blather on about this and that.
Irritated, I turn off the microscope and go to see what all the fuss is about.
She's petite, blonde, a nurse at the local hospital according to her uniform – nothing special. I push a random book off the desk just as she goes to take a sip of her drink. She startles, and pours the wine down her shirt.
Oops.
“Bloody hell.” My flatmate curses, eyes darting around the room in the hopes of finding some kind of towel, or napkin.
“Christ Almighty, that scared me!” She laughs, places the near empty glass on the coffee table and stands up, “Is there a bathroom here I can use?”
“Huh-? Oh, yeah, down the hall to your left.”
“Thanks, I'll just be a moment.” She replies, a twinkle in her eye as she saunters her way down the hall and into my bathroom. I grimace and follow.
The sooner she's gone, the better.
It's a small bathroom, a toilet to the left, an old tub to it's right and a small medicine cabinet above the sink. I watch as she takes a towel from the shelf and slips off her shirt in the hopes of scrubbing the stain free under the tap. Her eyes dart left and right, cautious but afraid, as she turns on the water and gets to work.
I glance at her neckline in the reflection and resist the urge to roll my eyes. A religious cross. Of course.
She turns off the tap and wrings out her shirt. Once, twice. I flip off the light switch. She freezes. I flip it back on, and meet her eyes with mine in the mirror. I raise an eyebrow.
Needless to say the screech, and the slamming of the front door were unnecessary. The woman looked like she had seen a ghost. I glance at my reflection, shrug and turn off the light.
It's not my fault people are distressingly easy to sneak up on these days.
–
“Alright, I know you can hear me you prick. Stop scaring off my bloody dates.” My flatmate shouts from the living room, clearly on a war path since I 'accidentally' spooked that brunette last night. Or was she ginger? I don't remember.
Or care.
I adjust the dial on my eyepiece, to get a closer look at the bacteria as they wriggle about on the slide. Clostridium botulinum, rare but deadly. I'm not entirely sure why I'm looking at it, to be honest.
I stop, sit back, frown. I'm actually not sure why I'm looking at it. Why am I looking at it?
“I've put up with you messing with my things, your childish, might I add, vendetta with my cane and your tenancy to trash the place when you're bored, but I draw the line at messing with my dates.” Oh god, he's still talking.
I roll my eyes, change the magnification back to 40x and go back to watching the bacteria.
What was I thinking about again? I can't remember. Oh well.
“Keep this up and I swear to god, I will go into your room.” He shouts.
I stop what I'm doing, give him the most incredulous look I can muster. My room? What kind of a threat is that? It's just a room for God's sake. Why would I care if he went into my room? What?
I shake my head, return my attention to the microscope and tune out the rest of his rant. He's worse than my landlady.
–
Today marks six months since I met my flatmate.
It also marks three days and eight hours since I came to the realisation that something isn't quite right around here, and the fact that it's taken me this long to figure it out is downright embarrassing.
It's not my flatmate who's in the wrong. With the exception of his biweekly, sometimes weekly, insipid dates, I couldn't have asked for a better person to live with. No, it's not him at all.
It's me.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but I get the feeling that I've done all of this before. The microscope, the flatmate, the bacteria. I'm missing something.
The front door unlocks, swings open to reveal my flatmate holding a mound of groceries.
I look back at my microscope, frown. I'll focus on it later.
–
My flatmate's been abnormally obsessed with my bedroom door as of late. Standing outside of it, resting his hand on the doorknob, pacing in front of it. It's as if he desperately wants to look inside it, or let something out, but is stopping himself.
I watch him from my spot at the kitchen table, fiddling with the dial of my microscope. He's standing in front of my door again, hand resting on the doorknob. I frown.
What is he waiting for?
Eventually he turns away, and limps back into the living room to watch something meaningless on the television. My eyes stay rooted on the door.
What's so special about my bedroom door?
–
“You've been quiet lately. At this rate everything will start gathering dust.” My flatmate jokes from his chair, eyes on the television, “You know, because you're not knocking everything over all the time.”
I roll my eyes, change the magnification on my microscope. I'm not even watching the bacteria any more, there's no point.
“I never said thanks, you know, for helping me with the leg. If you could call tripping me over with my own bloody laptop helping. But yeah. Thanks.” He continues.
I frown. What's brought this on?
“The landlady says you were quite the handful before I moved in. Always doing experiments, being a bloody nuisance until God-knows-o'clock in the morning. Makes me wonder what you do in your free time now.” He snorts, “When you're not knocking stuff off shelves like a bloody cat, that is.”
Right.
I return my attention to the bacteria, tune him out. Chances are he was finally dumped by that ginger he brought over last week. Or was that the raven...? Either way, he'll get over it. He always does.
--
“Well. Now's as good a time as any.”
I startle. What?
I watch as my flatmate stands, his leg blissfully limp free as he makes his way through the kitchen, and down the hall to my bedroom door. Again. I sigh, stand and follow. Perhaps this time he'll actually open it.
As per usual, he comes to a standstill in front of it, hand ghosting over the doorknob as if he's waiting for permission. I roll my eyes, shake my head. Really, I couldn't care less if he opened the door. It's just my bedroom. Nothing special.
My flatmate takes a deep breath, and steels himself.
“Sorry mate.” He says, and opens the door.
–
Today's the day I meet my new flatmate.
He's short, brunet, and has the gaze of a madman. I know the instant that I lay eyes on him that this man is a wolf in sheep's clothing, just as he knows that I am the same.
Together, we play a dangerous game. A game of cat and cat, for neither of us is a mouse. My flatmate gives me puzzles, and I give him answers. My flatmate gives me murders, and I give him incarcerations. My flatmate gives me a reason to live, and I return the favour.
One year after I met my flatmate, he gives me the ultimate puzzle. A good meal, then a pair of shoes and twelve to seventy-two hours.
I take a sample from the shoes, put it on a slide and look at in under my microscope. The boy who owned the shoes had eczema, and I believe the puzzle to be what had murdered him. I change the magnification to 40x, perform a search on the bacteria and at eight hours I solve the puzzle.
Clostridium botulinum. Botulism.
But my flatmate says I have only solved half the puzzle.
It isn't until thirty-six hours have passed that I realise what the missing piece is, and by that point it is too late. So I return to my room, close the bedroom door and lay on my bed. For the first time in a year, I find myself wishing I had found a better flatmate.
I don't remember when I fall asleep, but when I wake up I'm sitting at the kitchen table next to my microscope, and a slide containing clostridium botulinum. I get the feeling I need a new flatmate.
I'm sure my landlady will put up an advertisement.