A Norwegian October

It was supposed to be a head-clearing walk. But as I trudged back towards my apartment—or excuse me, Mr. Bigshot-Megacorp-Lawyer’s apartment, which I was sooo lucky to rent—it already felt pointless. Every time I walked in, I half-expected that if I peeled off the dancing paint on the walls, the whole place would collapse.

Before I slipped into the building, an afroed skeleton passed me. How he had the energy to keep up with my long, melancholic strides, was beyond me. He skipped into the kebab shop next door, completely oblivious to the fact that crossing the road in a black jacket at 5 p.m. in a Norwegian October was basically a suicide mission. Good for him.

I flipped the collar on my own black jacket before I shoved my hands into my pockets, fingering the keys. At least I managed to hit the keyhole on the first try—one small victory. I scuffed my feet along the uneven hallway floor, the walls seemingly swallowing more and more of the black linoleum with each step. The Sunday stoner’s pissing contest filled the halls, their haze escorted me towards the staircase.

And of course, I could hear him—my idiot neighbor.

My walk had been for nothing.

I breathed in the same stuffy, stale air he was tasting with his smacking lips. I wished the concrete beneath my feet would turn to sand and let me sink down into the basement where, every Sunday, I washed my dirty laundry and tall-lucky-me cracked my head on the damn T-joint of a pipe—the open end stuck out, just waiting to catch someone’s skull. It usually dropped me to my knees with a crack so loud I thought I’d split my skull open. I wished it had, but no such luck.

“Sooo,” he crooned, dragging the word out in a low crescendo that tugged at the imaginary crack in my head—my dumbass neighbor, shit-eating grin plastered across his face like a bad joke of a tattoo.

“Sooo,” I repeated in a mocking chirp. But he was either too stupid or too self-absorbed to notice.

“Maybe you know the guy next door, the one who works the kebab shop?” His voice was coated in a fake friendliness, like he was offering me some kind of olive branch to suck on. He fumbled for the guy’s name, and I let him stew in it. Three letters. How hard could it be? Especially when he looks like he eats there every day.

He looked like a fucking trout, standing there, waiting for the stoner haze to feed him the name that was practically written on his fat-wrinkled forehead. Like someone had scribbled it there in Sharpie while he slept through a sleepover prank.

I wanted to Kurt Cobain him. How my fingers wanted to tighten around cold gunmetal.

I mumbled some half-hearted excuse and passed him, heading for the stairs. His cologne hit me like a wall, clogging my nose—I could practically taste it.

I barely made it to the first step before his voice slithered its way back into my ear, clearing away the oh-so-great stoner fog in my mind.

“Yeah, you should join me there next time.”

I thought about the skeleton who had walked into the kebab shop just before I gave up and returned to these weed-stinking halls. The guy was so painfully anorexic, I thought I might puke just to spare him the trouble. His bones practically rattled as he skipped inside, like his limbs weren’t sure they even belonged to him.

I blinked back the image and faced my neighbor again. His grin was still plastered on his face, sharp features standing out in a way that always unsettled me. He had that soft, bloated look of someone who’d eaten too much and moved too little, but his face—his face was something else. High cheekbones, a hard jawline, and a nose almost too sharp for his pudgy body. He had that weird porn-star look, like someone who belonged on a sketchy late-night channel, not standing in the doorway of my crappy apartment block.

“Think I’ll pass,” I said, sharper this time. The words came out like broken glass, but he just kept grinning.

He shrugged, unaffected. Of course. “Suit yourself.”

I barely made it to the first step before his voice snaked back again, like a bad habit I couldn’t shake.

“Next time, though. Kebab’s cheap, and you look like you could use a decent meal.”

The irony hit me like I hoped a car would mow down me and the afro earlier. I thought about telling him to buy the anorexic a kebab instead, maybe even throw in some fries—at least then they could balance each other out. But no. He wouldn’t get it.