The cereal wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Or rather, it wasn’t, but also was.
Rumiko was certain she’d only purchased one bag of granola, taken down now to about one-third full. So why was there another one beside it?
It was funny, how time had seemed to slip away after being let go from her last job. She’d liked this one, but one email became a mountain.
Was it Saturday? Or Thursday?
Her small apartment, now filling with garbage bags in the corners, would require some attention soon.
Two toothbrushes? Now this was no tiny thing. Granted, the first was in its cup at the sink, as expected, and the second was discarded in a corner by her sliding doors. Okay, no matter. Perhaps she’d left a second one after a trip, or had she gotten it to dust her figures, accumulating so much space around her TV stand? Only, the color matched. That was fine, she liked blue. But were the bristles not also bent into their arching V-shape, splaying up from the base in exactly the same way—bands of color in their plastic fibers faded to the same degree, like two pools drained to identical surface levels?
No, better not to check. She tucked it into one of the trash bags set to go out.
Had she always had two of that figure? She was peeking at it from inside her futon that night. It stared down at her with flat saucer eyes. A second copy was behind it. Certainly, there had been gifts. There had been. But then, did it feel right to think this, the same night as she’d found two spoons in the sink where she was certain one had been?
This was the worst yet. She was staring at the figure again. A blonde woman with waxy sculpted hair stared back. It was the wrong one. A scrape, a small paint fleck, small enough to be undetectable, but visible enough to bother, had been present under the left eye, like a nick on the cheek. Or had it? Today it was absent. Was she remembering a different figure? Where had the second copy gone?
Come to think of it, had the second spoon been less dirty, less dinged? A water stain spiderwebbing from its basin seemed to have receded. Was the color of the second toothbrush richer?
She had only eaten one Chogeki Chokara cup ramen, so why was there a second placed in the corner of the room, lid peeled back to the same angle, looking slightly more full?
The worst part was the knowing. She curled tightly within her futon, pressed
against the bumps and undulations of the tatami floor. That if she focused she might almost feel a weight beside her. A cool hand on her back. Seeing through a second set of eyes. Would it look upon the apartment with the same love she did? She pressed her lids shut and hoped. Any day now it would happen. She wondered, eyes closed firmly, what would happen to her when it did.
against the bumps and undulations of her tatami floor. That if she focused she might almost feel a breath beside her. A cool hand on her back. Seeing through a second set of eyes. Would it look upon the apartment with the same love she did? She pressed her lids shut and hoped. Any day now it would happen. She wondered, eyes closed firmly, what would happen to her when it Ruuumiiiko.
Ian Sacks is a writer and translator living in Tokyo, Japan. His short horror fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Trembling With Fear, The Dread Literary Review, and After Midnight. Non-horror fiction has been published at Pithead Chapel and Jersey Devil Press. His manga translations include work for Seven Seas and J-Novel Club. He received his MFA in fiction from Oregon State University. You can find him at https://iansacksworks.com/.
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