Little Molting Figure

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 bed I feel like an overfamiliar acquaintance, imposing on the springs and foam.

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’d hoped to catch the wrongness on tape and finally be done with it all. In total there were nine days of footage. More than I expected, given my storage, but still short of the 14 I was gone. I scrubbed through the footage, looking for a figure, a shadow, my door opening, anything. The sun swept across my room, and the screen flickered as hours passed in seconds.

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 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 head around and focused on the corner of my room. It was still there, though, in a slightly different position. 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, and just below the buckle, the strap was webbed with thin white cracks. Would you still want it? Knowing what it looks like now.

I sat and watched it for 3 hours and took note of a line in the dusty floor by its tail. I imagined myself captured by the webcam, a brief blip next to the 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 some kitchen trash. Back in my room, a draft came through my door and I went to shut it. It stuck, again. I felt sick. The wooden knot pressed out against its painted surface, like a finger against taut fabric. I thought of the trash bag and its fate, its outline shifting as the belt rippled and contorted itself. Somewhere, in a landfill, or a sorting plant, undulating in the dark. I 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! I’ll make a new post when the final draft is finished. I wanted to post something since it’s been a while.