From "Remember Me, Nothing" chapter thirty-one: "The Landlord's Chambers" - which details Bryan's arrival at a strange house with eccentric, supernatural tenants. Meet Beth, Louis, Susan, and of course, The Landlord, who goes by no other name or title.
Remember Me, Nothing - Absurdity's Faultline:
The Landlord's Chambers
“Drink it!” The shadows hovered about gently. Inside their depths, lay the entire universe. “Pour it into the cup and drink it. It tastes so fucking good.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Delicious. You know it’s delicious, do you remember last time? We danced and laughed. Bones had a marvelous time.” His grin grew wider.
“Bones isn’t here right now. I don’t like drinking without him.” The Landlord grabbed a book off the shelf. “Don’t bother me today.”
“What are you reading for?”
“Go away, Lou. I’m busy.” The man looked into opposing dark eyes. “I don’t have time right now.”
“Why?” Louis whined. “Is it about Diana? Forget about her, let’s drink.”
“Forget it.” The more authoritative figure opened his book’s torn, red beaten rough cover. “And just so you know, my daughter will be visiting in a few days so you need to be on your best behavior.” Glancing up from his pages, he added, “Or I will kick you out of the house.”
“You don’t have the balls, old friend.” Louis then marched off into smoky shadows swallowing worn brown walls to stomp down the stairs as rum swirled around in the bottle he clutched. “Asshole.”
The house itself was a wonderful place. Souls had been transformed here. The walls were old but comforting and the pictures framed about the place portrayed only abstract art. Colors and shapes splashed about calmly. Sometimes a fierceness poked through the paint, but really the mood of any postmodern piece is almost entirely dependent on the viewer. If he or she is scared, or on a power-trip consumed by ego, or so wrapped in despair that there is no more feeling left in the head… well, the meaning of any work of art may change depending on these volatile variables…but anyhow, the three minds would in turn perceive three completely different paintings. The frightened one sees a dragon. The egotistical one views an exaggerated version of themselves, or ignores the picture completely, dismisses it to relish in narcissism. Last, for the mind wrapped neatly in despair, it witnesses only pain. The picture will exemplify the beauty in their suffering…
“I need a place to live. I was sent by Jack.”
The Landlord eyeballed the young man. “I do have an extra room, but…” He grumbled, growing frustrated. “I don’t know about you. Although I admit Jack’s recommendation is difficult to ignore…” The tall pudgy aging man’s thick beard shook when he spoke. “What’s your name again?”
“Bryan.”
When Bryan had walked up to the house several moments earlier, he noticed the windows bore reflections as pristine as mirrors. It was impossible to see within the structure. Standing in the sunlight on black pavement still wet from a recent fit of rain, the man wore ripped shoes, a dirty tank-top, and baggy jeans. While observing the house’s exterior amongst a domesticated neighborhood prairie, nervousness tickled him. Before almost getting lost in a daze, Bryan’s consciousness startled awake when a scruffy, dark scrawny fellow in a black raincoat stomped out of the house and stormed towards him.
“What’s the matter?” Bryan wondered instinctually, standing in the driveway about thirty feet from the front door.
“She’s visiting again,” Louis told the stranger upon an angry approach. “The old man’s daughter is coming back.” A half-empty liquor bottle swung from his unsteady grip.
Taking a moment to pause, Bryan stared off into the blue sky and breathed deep. He couldn’t remember why he thought this house was a safe place to go. Why did he think he had nowhere else to be? How did he even get here? Somewhat mystified by his surroundings, past, and predicament, he proceeded to knock on the thick brown door several times before a woman, maybe in her thirties, answered. Yellow shorts hugged a toned ass while a small plain blue t-shirt decorated her torso. “Hi,” she chirped.
“Hello.” There then was a pause that endured much too long. “I was sent by Jack. I need a place to stay.”
“Hmmm...” Her stare grazed his outfit. “You’ve got some dirty shoes, boy. The Landlord is not going to like that.” The woman’s smile was bright and welcoming. Bryan had not seen a smile so true in so long, one in which happiness could actually be detected from the buried depths of the soul.
“My name is Bryan.”
“I’m Beth,” she said. “Follow me up to the top, please, and you better ditch the shoes. I really don’t need the Landlord babbling about the dirt today. It’s bad enough now that Lou had one of his temper tantrums. Not only is there more dirt, but the big guy’s probably on edge, too.”
Following Beth through the shadowed halls, the bewildered man gazed across paintings scattered along the walls. “That’s funny,” he thought. “They all look like watermelon seeds...”
The kind young lady guided Bryan up some narrow steps with a small landing midway through. Old floorboards beneath their feet creaked. This led to a ridiculously long hallway. The watermelon seeds were framed across the wallpaper on this floor, too, in between each of the many doors. Walking along, Beth tapped one adorned with blue stickers in the shapes of stars dispersed randomly. “This one’s mine.” And then a few more doors down, they reached the foot of another staircase.
“You can’t even see where these end,” Bryan remarked.
“Well, they end,” she declared flatly. “And at the tippy top sits the Landlord’s chambers. I’m going to my room. I’m working on something in there.”
The man’s mouth hung open, his view locked on the stairs that seemed to lead to an infinite abyss. Taking the first step, he said, “Thank you, Beth.”
“Good luck.” That wonderful smile proceeded to walk off above those long, shaved legs.
Strange feelings trickled off his skin as if a warning that this was his last chance to flee. Like after he walked up these steps, he would never be able to leave this place. What had happened to reality? It was as if his own free-will had evaporated. Hiking up the staircase, his face and knee at last slammed into a closed door made of splintered wood.
“Who’s there?!” cried a deep raspy voice from the other side.
“Dear God, it’s just a painting.” Bryan investigated the door, realizing it depicted a staircase which has been painted as to suggest they continued on towards oblivion.
The door swung open, taking the painting with it to be replaced by a towering, bushy man draped in a robe with his chest exposed. “Who’s there?”
“I’m Bryan.”
“I had just started reading one of my favorite books of all time. I haven’t opened its pages in over a decade and I was only seven pages in. The seventh fucking page of the goddamned book and you bang at my door! So, good sir, what is it that you want?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I need a place to stay for a bit.”
Bryan’s brain scavenged memory for any semblance to a coherent past. He could recall little at the moment, other than that a man named Jack had advised living at this spot. “When you get out of here,” Jack had told him, “there is a house I have lined up for you. I don’t usually send people there, but for you I’m making an exception. It is not your typical temple...”
The Landlord’s chambers were filled with overflowing bookcases. Piles of thick hardcover books were also strewn about. Small oil lanterns illuminated the area, which beheld an ancient quality.
“Listen, kid,” said the Landlord. “I’ll do this as a favor to Jack, but I’m warning you that the last clown he sent here didn’t do so well.”
Bryan’s heart stiffened. “So I can stay?”
The older gentleman boisterously laughed. “Susan!”
A trapdoor sprung open from the ceiling, causing Bryan to yelp. Slithering out of the hole, a thick green and brown snake crawled down. As it descended a nearby wall, hands and feet appeared as the serpent smoothly transformed into a very stout old woman squinting up at the two men. Her wrinkly skin was dark and tan, dressed in a dim colored dress detailed with subtle yet strikingly gorgeous patterns. “Yes, sir?”
“Take Bryan to his room, uh… the small one at the end of the hall should be available. I think we’ve been using it as a closet so get some of the crap out of there, of course. And give him a proper tour, please.”
“Yes, sir.” The elderly woman leered weirdly at the newcomer. “Follow me.”
Proceeding down the aged wooden stairs, Bryan could hear the Landlord closing his door at the top, and again took notice of the various shapes and colors of the abstract art hung across the walls. Eventually, the elderly lady and himself made it to the bottom.
“This is the upstairs hallway.”
“Ah,” remarked Bryan. “So how did you turn into a snake?”
“I didn’t,” said Susan. “I turned into a human from a snake.”
“Can you turn into other things?”
“If I keep answering your questions, you will keep asking more, won’t you?” Susan snorted out a shrill chuckle.
The barefoot man continued trudging behind, watching the picture frames hanging off shadowed wood walls. Bryan couldn’t decide if the walls were really old or if their tint came from an unremarkably bold lumber. “What does mahogany look like?” he thought. Pondering the forest conjured an image in the mind that immediately spurred a claustrophobic panic he couldn’t reason with. Quickly, though, his focus drifted toward the surreal fact that the lady he followed had first appeared to him in the form of a serpent and, unlike anything he could ever recall witnessing, took a human form in a matter of seconds.
They went on, passing several shut doors with Susan providing commentary. “This is where Aloysius lives. You’ll barely see him, but when you do... you won’t forget it.” An eerie grin always seemed present across her wrinkled cheeks. She tapped another door, “And this room belongs to Mr. Bones. He’s not our oldest tenant, but he’s been here for a long time.”
All of the doors were the same dark wood, blank except for Beth’s. Bryan’s eyes remained fascinated by the abstract artwork strewn about the place, unable to detect anything but tiny black seeds.
Susan touched the next door, this one on the opposing side of the first few. “Here’s where Louis stays. You may have seen him as he was leaving when you arrived. His blood’s a little hot, and most of the time he’s drunk.” The following door of the endless hallway had those pale blue stars. “Beth’s room. She’s a sweet girl. I believe you two have already met.”
“Yeah, she let me in.”
“I know,” Susan replied, nearing a room by the steps that led downstairs. “Here we have Jonathan. He’s a busy man, does all the legal mumbo jumbo for the Landlord.”
Bryan tilted his neck, gazing down the hall. They arrived at the last four rooms beyond the steps. “This one’s the bathroom, and then here you are,” she declared. “Do you have any stuff?”
“My shoes are downstairs, but...” He took a gulp. “No, ma’am, no stuff.”
“Fair enough.” She touched the door next to his. “This belongs to another tenant, we can meet them soon enough. Same goes for across the hall there.” She pointed at the fourth room. “Let’s go see the rest of the house.” Her slow movement allotted time for Bryan’s head to poke into his new dorm while she made her way to more stairs.
The man noted there was an adequately sized bed and a window and not much else. A tattered cardboard box sat on the mattress, lazily sealed shut. There wasn’t any extra space for even a dresser or a desk.
“It’s a bed.”
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2024
© USA
This was an excerpt from "Remember Me, Nothing" - Chapter 31: The Landlord's Chambers- to be published in 2025!
