Chapter Text
“That’d be it then,” the landlord said at the end of the short apartment tour he’d given her. “I live down the street. Call me if you have any problems.” He added but his tone suggested he’d rather not hear from her.
“Okay, sounds good. I’ll move in a week from now if everything goes well” Phil responded.
“Apartments yours, do whatever you like.”
“Okay, great.” Phil added, trying to appear more confident than she felt. This was her first time renting a place by herself, hell it was even the first time going to a showing by herself. Her mother had coached her on all sorts of things to look out for: mold, broken tiles, creaky floors the whole deal.
Technically, she had also said that Phil shouldn’t sign any papers right away but this place was too perfect to pass up. She simply had to do it. Plus, if she had to live with her current roommates any longer than she already had, she might genuinely go nuts.
The thing was, she’d been looking for a new place for almost six months now. Other than her annoying roommates her current flat was an almost hour-long commute to the BBC radio where she’d just recently managed to get a job and that was simply on feasible. Not for her at least.
But as it turned out, the housing market in London was hell. True, fiery-pits of Satan kinda hell. All the places she looked at were either even smaller than her current shoe-box sized room or so far out of London it wasn’t even worth looking at.
And then she’d seen this listing. A small, but clean and renovated apartment in the heart of London. One-bedroom, nice looking kitchen, no less than twenty minutes from her workplace. It seemed too good to be true. Especially since it was somehow in her budget.
She hadn’t even read the description before writing the owner an email. To her surprise, he’d gotten back to her within the next day and they’d agreed on a date for Phil to see the apartment and sign the lease if she wanted to.
Her mom had been skeptical. Her dad had been skeptical. Hell, even Phil herself had been skeptical but, now, after seeing the apartment in person, she still couldn’t find anything wrong with it. So, she’d signed the lease. Because, why not? It couldn’t be worse than her current living situation even if she eventually found the catch that this apartment must have.
On her way back to her (old!!) place she couldn’t believe her luck. But it had been real, the keys to her new place where right there in her bag.
A week later, she had finally finished moving all the boxes into her new apartment. Her parents hadn’t been thrilled that she had forgone all their advice and signed the lease immediately. But, even they couldn’t find anything wrong with it after she’d shown it to them.
Thankfully, though, they had already left to drive back up north. Phil had offered them to stay of course but secretly she was glad to have the first night to herself.
This was her place after all. Her own place. She still couldn’t quite believe it.
Her first evening in the apartment went over relatively well. Sure, most of her stuff was still in boxes but she all found the important things rather quickly. Aka her sleep-shirts and Buffy DVDs. The built in oven worked and she had managed to only slightly burn her frozen pizza.
She was just about to plug her DVD-Player into the TV when she noticed something. The previous tenants had left small shelf behind that must have been used as a TV-stand before. The electrical outlets for the TV where right next to it.
Now that she was inspecting it further, she noticed that it wasn’t full propped up on the wall. But when she tried to move it, something seemed to be blocking her way.
Curious, she pulled it forwards just to be attacked by a cloud of dust. Great. But once she could properly see again, she noticed a small black box behind the shelf. She pulled it out- was that? It couldn’t be, right? She couldn’t be that lucky.
But no, that was definitely a Switch. And a relatively new one at that. Excited, she plugged the cable attached to it into the electrical outlet and almost screamed when she saw it light up.
She’d asked the landlord about the pervious owners and the stuff they had left behind. He’d gotten strangely stiff and had simply barked at her that everything that was still in the apartment was her to use. It had seemed strange at the time but honestly, she hadn’t cared much. The guy could be as strange as he wanted if he was renting apartments this cheap.
Sadly, the Switch still needed time to charge so she went back to her original plan and plugged the DVD recorder in next to it and put on an episode of Buffy while eating her pizza.
So, all in all, everything was perfect in Phil-world. Well, expect, it was one am and she couldn’t sleep. She’d never slept well in new places but had hoped that at her big age of twenty-five she’d finally have grown out of it. But apparently not.
Phil sighed and was just about to turn her bedside lamp back on and watch some more YouTube videos when she suddenly heard a clicking sound coming from her living room.
She froze mid-motion, her heart pounding in her chest and while the rest of her stood still. After a couple seconds of silence, she sighed again. She’d probably just heard one of the neighbors or maybe a bird outside. Her mom had warned her that the silence would be strange at first. Especially since her old roommates had been so noisy.
Still, she decided not to turn her light back on (and possibly alert any intruders or ghosts of her presence) and instead retreated back under the covers with her phone clutched in her hand. Just as she was typing in her passcode, she suddenly noticed a faint melody playing somewhere in the distance.
Her heart started pounding again. Oh God. She was going to get murdered. The reason why this apartment had been so cheap was the murder rate. Oh God. Oh- Wait? Was that? The Mario Kart soundtrack?
She mentally face-palmed herself. The Switch was probably done charging and had accidentally turned itself on. They did that sometimes. Probably. Suddenly, she felt very stupid. Of course there was a logical reason for the noises. She wasn’t getting murdered.
Annoyed, she swung herself out of bed. It was cold in the apartment. Especially since it was only September. Unwilling to put on anymore clothes for the short trip, she simply walked to the living room in nothing but her underwear and sleep-shirt. This was her apartment after all. She could do whatever she wanted!
Somehow the living room was even colder than her bedroom and by now she was really regretting her decision not to put on another layer of clothes. But just as she had suspected the Switch, now fully charged, had turned itself on and was currently displaying the Mario Kart start-screen.
She quickly pulled the plug and turned it off. Afterwards, she walked back to her bedroom as quickly as possible and jumped back under the covers. Somehow, the nightly-quest seemed to have finally tired her out and before she knew it, she was finally fast asleep.
By the time she made it back home from work the next day she didn’t even have the energy left to take of her shoes before plopping down on the sofa.
It wasn’t that her day had been bad per say. Just exhausting. It all started this morning when she’d gotten up at a reasonable time (eight-thirty) to go to work (at nine). However, despite her shorter commute apparently only planning in ten minutes from getting out of her bed to leaving the house wasn’t ideal.
Especially not since her stupid hair hadn’t wanted to cooperate at all. Instead of her usual perfectly flat and shiny finish, they had stood out in all directions like she’d just touched an electrical outlet.
Which she hadn’t! And God, her fringe, she had probably emptied a whole can of hairspray onto it.
Regardless, after spending some time scrolling through Tumblr on her couch, she decided it was probably time to make dinner. And get changed.
Throwing the pizza in the oven was easy but one look in the mirror told her that her hair didn’t look any better now than it had this morning. She sighed before simply deciding to put it in a ponytail and let her fringe be. She’d fix it tomorrow. Maybe eight-twenty was a more sustainable time to wake up after all.
She was just about to put on an episode of Buffy when she noticed the Switch. Strange, she could have sworn she had not only turned it off but also pulled the plug last night. Well, it had been late. At least it was still charged.
To her surprise, Mario Kart actually wasn’t the only game saved on the Switch. Actually, she was pretty sure whoever this belonged to might have more games than she herself it. Which was certainly an achievement as she considered herself as somewhat of a connoisseur.
It felt a bit wrong to keep this switch. Unlike the furniture, whoever owned this before clearly used it a lot. Maybe she should call the landlord after all and ask if anyone was looking for it.
But, well, a couple rounds of Mario Kart wouldn’t hurt it. While she loaded up the game (and stuffed the last piece of pizza in her mouth) she suddenly noticed how cold the room was. Unwilling to walk over to her room, she simply grabbed the blanket she kept on her couch for such occasions and wrapped it around herself.
Wow. She thought, whoever had owned this Switch previously must have been good. Really good. She was almost scared she’d ruin their ratings. But if they were so good, they could probably fix it again, she reasoned.
Really, they’d probably be so glad to have it back, they wouldn’t even notice.
It took her a few rounds before she got used to the Switch controls (sadly, she hadn’t gotten her own yet as they were far to expensive) but she thought she was really doing rather well. She was just about to take one of the short-cuts when a shell hit her out of nowhere and threw her off the path.
“Asshole.” A voice said next to her. Phil turned around so fast she was surprised her neck didn’t snap. But of course, there was no one there.
“Hello?” She asked into the empty space, but of course nobody answered. But she could swear someone had just spoken. Could it have been one of the neighbors? Someone outside? But the windows were closed. How would she have heard them?
Oh God, was she going insane? Was that why she had gotten the apartment so easily? Because it made people go insane.
Slightly distraught she decided to put the Switch away for now and relocate to her bedroom. Maybe she’d even call PJ, they usually had good explanations for this kind of thing.
This time, Phil actually had managed to fall asleep. Easily so even. So, when she was awoken by loud tapping and the sound of the Mario Kart soundtrack once again, she wasn’t amused. Still, she figured it was probably her fault. Maybe she hadn’t turned the Switch off correctly or something.
Frustrated, she made her way to the living room again and found the switch lying on the floor, showing the Mario Kart start-screen again. Once again, she turned it off (and this time made sure it was unplugged too) before heading back to bed. Maybe that’s why the previous owner had left it, she thought, because it stole your sleep in more ways than just one.
When it happened a third time Phil got properly annoyed. This time she had made sure the switch was turned off, properly put away and unplugged before she got into bed. To avoid being awoken by it again. And yet, here she was, awake at three am because of the damn Mario Kart sound track.
“Oh, fuck this,” she cursed under her breath when her feet hit the cold floor again. She’d throw the damn thing out of the window if that was what it took to get a good night’s sleep here.
She stomped into the living room, grabbed it from the couch and held it up high like she was about to throw it on the floor. She was just about to put it down again (calmly, it was still expensive and had Mario Kart on it thank you very much) when she heard the voice again.
“No, please.” Someone whined behind her. This time there was no way she was mistaken; someone had talked to her.
“Who’s there?” She asked, too scared to turn around. “And why are you in my apartment?” She added, trying to sound confident.
The person behind her sighed. “You won’t believe me unless you turn around.”
“What?” Phil asked, now totally confused.
The girl, she was pretty sure the voice belonged to a girl, sighed again. “Just trust me on this.”
“Trust you?” Phil shrieked, “For all I know, you could be a murder.”
The other girl actually had the audacity to laugh at that, “Hey, you’re the one who’s currently holding my switch hostage and yet, you’re accusing me of wanting to murder you?”
“Your switch?” Without thinking, Phil turned around.
Suddenly, she found herself face to face with a girl. She looked to be about her age, maybe a few years younger. Like Phil she was dressed in nothing but underwear (boxer shorts) and a baggy Muse t-shirt. Her hair was styled into an emo fringe just like Phil’s own usually was, just facing in the opposite direction (and looking much cleaner and hers must be at the moment).
But the craziest thing about her seemed to be that her skin was almost translucent and instead of sitting on the couch she seemed to be sort of be halfway inside it.
Phil couldn’t help it, she screamed. The girl just rolled her eyes.