Settling In

Something is happening to the things in my room. The objects on my desk keep shifting around, and the more I look at them the stranger they appear. My curtains sway in odd ways and when I lay in my bed I feel like a weird acquaintance—imposing on the springs and foam. It feels like no amount of time could make me feel familiar.

At first I thought it was my landlord messing with me. I was ready to tell you all about how he’s snooping and moving my stuff. We’d make fun of his creepy antics, and feign fury, and I’d finally move out. Though in reality, we’d be pleased. At last, I’d have an explanation, and you would have a fun story to tell.

I came home from the holidays and my door was stuck. It wanted me to pull hard, and I watched the paint lift away from the frame where a little wooden knot was now protruding. How did that happen? I wondered.

I left my webcam running on the day of my flight. I had hoped to catch the wrongness on tape and finally be done with it all. The footage was 9 days of nothing. More days than I expected, given my storage, but still short of the 14 I was gone. On tape, my room flickered between light and dark. I scrubbed through hours in seconds looking for a figure, a shadow, my door opening, anything. The sun swept across my room like a strobe light.

I almost missed it.

Your belt was on the floor by the closet, where I tossed it right before I left. And in the sped up footage, over the course of maybe 30 seconds—a whole day—it moved. I watched it again at regular speed and saw nothing. Only with days compressed to minutes, did it become something else. It writhed there, in the corner of my room.

Even in the sped up footage, it moved impossibly slow, struggling against its heavy metal buckle, and coiling once or twice before the footage ran out. I whipped my neck around and focused on the corner of my room. It was still there, though in a slightly different position than the final frame on my screen. It had managed to flip itself over.

I went to it and kneeled. The cheap metal had started to go a sort of grayish brown, mimicking its crumbly Genuine leather body. Just below the buckle, the strap was webbed with thin white cracks. I wonder if you would still want it, knowing what it looks like now.

I sat and watched it for maybe 3 hours and made note of a line in the dusty floor by its tail. I imagined myself captured by the webcam, a brief blip next to this twisting piece of leather. By the time my legs had gone numb, the very tip of its tail had retracted maybe half of a millimeter. Though I couldn’t be sure.

I tried to throw it away. I put it on the curb in a plastic bag, along with my kitchen trash. Back in my room, a draft came through my door and I went to shut it tighter. It stuck again, still snagged on the knot. The friction repulsed me and I imagined the wooden frame pressing out against its painted surface, like a finger pushing against a piece of fabric pulled taught. I thought of the trash bag and its soon to be fate, its outline shifting as the belt rippled and contorted itself. Somewhere, in a landfill or a sorting plant, undulating in the dark. I went and brought it back in.

I watched it for a moment and thought of cutting it up into pieces. I even went so far as to grab my scissors before a new thought paralyzed me. I foresaw the wriggling strips of leather. Tens of them, moving independently, contorting into curls, puckered up like once wet paper, and lying flat across days and weeks.

This story is still not done! But I like it enough to post it as it. I’ll make a new post when the final draft is out. Expect plot and verbiage changes as I feel this thing out.