The Man

by Kelley Criss

In the corner of the room is the man. He changes rooms but his place in the room never changes. He is always there.

In my kitchen, he sits at the head of the table. Never eating, only staring. In my living room, he sits in the reading chair by the window. Never reading, only watching. In the hall, he stands in the corner. Never passing through, only lurking. The man never speaks, but his eyes always follow.

I don’t remember when he first appeared. If Greg ever saw the man, he never said anything. And now I can’t ask him.

Tonight, when I brush my teeth, I am only free from the man when I lean forward and close my eyes to spit. But as soon as I stand back up, he slips back into the edge of my vision.

In my bedroom there are two of him. He stands with his back to the corner mirror, yet his reflection does the same. He never looks at himself, but both him and his reflection stay locked on me. Two heads of disheveled hair. Two faces, slightly downturned in my direction. Never letting me out of their gaze.

Even when I turn the lights out, the darkness doesn’t hide him. The longer I look at the black mass in the corner of my bedroom, the more I can distinguish. The whites of his cold eyes always come into focus first. Then the furrow of his brow. But the intricate features of his face twist and distort beneath the cover of darkness. I am sure his expression doesn’t change in the light. But in the dark his determined stare morphs quickly into a sinister smile and then back again. It swirls and shifts from anger to silent laughing. It never pauses long enough to be sure if it even really changed at all. Just the dark playing its tricks.

At first, I always jumped when I entered a room that housed the man. But now I have gotten good at ignoring him. I make my way around him, like two strangers passing at the mall.

Since Greg left, I think the man might be drifting closer. The gap between the reading chair and the window looks a bit wider recently. I thought I heard the scraping of the kitchen table on the wood floor, as if it was nudged forward an inch. Space in the hallway felt tighter this morning. But I can’t be sure.

As I sunbathe on my patio, there he is. Standing partially obstructed by my favorite tree, staring out from behind the leaves. But today, instead of both the man’s feet being firmly planted in the grass. The toe of one foot is touching the patio concrete.

Some day I may speak to him. Ask him what he wants. Ask him why he is always looking at me. Ask him why he is inching closer to me. But not today. Today I will sip my sweet tea in the sun and ignore the man.