HOUSE

A lit window at night spills light out beyond, and all that light makes it very easy to forget that darkness too spills in. Not a deliberate darkness, no overly dramatic caricature of shadow painted against the floor or roiling cloud of blackness curling in like mist, but an intrusion of awareness, a watching from beyond.

Looking out, you cannot clearly see it either, for the light makes a mirror out of glass when you're on the inside looking out. You see only yourself, distorted and pallid and murky, as through water. It's often easy to believe you're alone, that there's no invisible face pressing close, peering in, the vague stirring in your reflection's eyes.

If it had hands, there'd be prints against the glass. If it breathed, it'd leave a stain of fog. But it does not breathe and it has no use for hands. It simply watches, pressing close, invading and drinking in your presence, learning you, grinning coldly at the simple naivete of your perceived privacy, laughing you to scorn as it seeps in, little by little toward the beckoning light. The glass grows cold, feels so slick it's almost wet with the watchers drooling anticipation. To see out, to look for it, you must stand very close and look through your own shadow, into its eyes. And sooner or later it inevitably will slip past the threshold and creep a fragment of itself into even the most mundane of households.

So you put up blinds and shutters, but that is futility in itself. The slivers peeking out are still slivers peeking in, and that is all it takes. It can be very patient, pressed up against the glass beyond. It creaks along the floorboards. It groans like the sound of a settling house. It's easy--very easy, even--to convince oneself there's nothing out there, but to do so is a grave misstep, because glass has been known to crack...

Which is essentially why I don't terribly like social media websites. Too many opportunities for folks to come peeking in, unseen, and impossible to really keep them out. The irony of course, is that this is all written in a blog, which is more or less like a Ouija board, firing out a beckon call to those who dwell beyond.

It's also why I don't like glass doors on a house. It's one thing for a window, a window is for looking, but a door is made for entering, and certain things should not be let in.

All of which would seem like fairly silly verbal meanderings, as I live in an apartment characterized most eloquently by the word "shabby" or perhaps a somewhat nasal sigh. The front door is shared with the other units, and the door to my apartment is a slab of brown-painted metal. I certainly needn't worry about the light permeability of my doors. 

But not for long! I've bought a house.

It is a good house. I quite like it. If it were a pancake, I would likely eat it. If it were a person, I would shake its hand quite warmly. And most likely not eat it, unless I were terrifically hungry and had no better options. I have no desire to follow in the footsteps of Tom Dudley and earn myself a death sentence for eating the cabin boy just a couple days before being rescued, but I suppose the humor in such a sentence is better than starvation.

So. No longer to dwell in the apartment in hell, no longer to linger and lay under the spell of misery, drug use and domestic ire that neighbors display (and on occasion, gunfire). The pounding on ceiling, on walls, and on floor shall certain continue! But I'll hear them no more. I'll have room to raise a child or pet, and curl up comfy behind walls, yard, and debt.

Don't get me wrong, I love the apartment. It's pretty grand. It's cheery and bright and it's home. But between the mice I've had to beat to death, the roaches I've had to beat to death, the neighbors who occasionally beat each other to near-death, the lustily amorous adventures of the neighbors who live above us (they've managed to work sex into a sort of relay race-style scramble of sprinting across the apartment and fornicating at various locations, with a ferocity that I can only call admirable), the carbon monoxide events and the constant haze of mold and pot smoke, I'll be happy to move elsewhere too. I'll finally have an office. A basement. And a reason to worry about glass doors.

Also: if anyone is interested in helping as a beta reader, please feel free to contact me at DanielGJFranklin@gmail.com. Neither of the projects are fully prepped for such a task yet, but i'm hoping to break them into a few segments and ask casual readers for thoughts on a few particular issues before far too long.