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When I first moved into my apartment five years ago, it appeared to not only be the bargain, but also the opportunity of a lifetime. I was freshly finished college, graduating with honours in my discipline and passion: engineering, and although I feared little the search for employment, with potential employers scouting for my talent all over, the prospect of finding a place to live in the market at the time was not a pleasant one. 

I had been living with my mother all my life until then, and while there was no resentment between us, we did share the unspoken opinion that with the amount of space allotted to us – and my ‘temperament’ taking up most of it, as she put it – it would be preferable if, at the first available opportunity, I were to move out. As such, even before I had successfully landed a position with Emplecix, the company I would work with for those five years, I was already beginning to look for apartments—any apartments—which I could potentially move into once a source of finance was secured. And it was miraculous that I had only been looking for a single day, when amidst the plethora of mediocre, single-room, no-square-footage flats, reminiscent more of crude prison cells than apartments, a couple popped up out of the blue, which appeared to supercede all those that surrounded them in almost every single way. 

My initial impression on seeing the ads online was shocked, and soon after incredulous, but nonetheless intrigued; I reckoned that, if a scam, my situation was still somewhat dire, and it was only reasonable to at least entertain the possibility of miracles, even if my realistic expectations would follow closely behind, resuming their place without any trouble at the first sign of this miracle being only a mirage.

Through the website where I first found the advertised apartments I managed to contact the agent responsible for it. Through a bit of my own research, I discovered that the building the flats belonged to was a part of a government housing program responsible for a wide range of recent constructions, aimed at those in disadvantaged financial circumstances to allow them an opportunity for accessible and affordable housing. I had heard of the program before, but never given it much thought, considering it irrelevant to myself. Now the time arrived that it was of utmost relevance, and I was happy for the first time to see that the prudence of others has come to aid me in my time of need.

I arranged a meeting with the agent to take a look at the apartment one Friday. The first point of contention in the apartment’s disfavour was its location: the building was placed in a remote, almost desolate plot of land, distantly removed from the main city of Jarmouth and accessible only by vehicle. A meagre student, I did not have a car available to me to make it easily there – convincing myself that I would collect towards one once I started working – so I scoured the nearby roads for any possible bus stops I could use to make it to the apartment that Friday. Although not perfect, there did happen to be a bus stop only a kilometre away from the main building, and I wrote down the bus route that would take me to it from the house I shared with my mother, including the times that it operated under. 

I found that the buses came quite regularly, and once that Friday came, I got dressed to leave, with almost one foot out the door already, when my mother called to me, asking where I was going. In my complete focus on investigating the living quarters myself, I had forgotten to mention my search to her, and I briefly informed her of the apartment I had found, including its financial attainability. I remember clearly the expression of initial surprise, and then jubilee, as her lips curved into a grin of pure joy – perhaps excessively. Her expression made me stagger awkwardly before leaving, which caused her to hurry me: ‘Well go on then! You don’t want to miss the meeting, do you?’

The ride took about three hours overall, and immediately upon stepping off the bus onto the side of the road running through a thick forest, I made a mental note to myself that, should I indeed choose to move into that apartment, I would need to be careful to pick a place of work that was much closer for the daily commute. I walked the rest of the way to the point on the map I had marked as corresponding to the address, following the road all the way until I could see the tops of rectangular buildings poking out from above the peaks of the trees. The closer I came, the better picture I had of the ten-storey blocks, about six lined up one next to the other, dull, flat and grey from all sides, with windows speckling a grid onto each monotonous surface. 

When I came up right next to the buildings, I found the road split off from the linear path I had taken from the bus stop, running parallel to the row of apartment blocks. It ended with a large open car park, the multitude of cars it housed enclosed by a five-metre-high fence, and secured by a camera-operated automatic gate at the entrance. I carefully read the exact apartment I had written down, checking which building it related to. After a couple moments of hesitation, I concluded that it must be building six – the one farthest from the main road and right next to the car park. As I approached it, I kept a sharp eye out for the agent I was supposed to be meeting. Only a couple steps away from block six, I spotted him waiting patiently at the entrance, and walked up to him to introduce myself.

The agent, subverting my expectations, was not an elderly, plump Levi with a moustache resting atop his lip and a worn-out sweater strapped around his body, but rather a young, amicable man, dressed in a blue suit with a red tie and hair slicked back as if he was attending a gala right after our meeting. I was almost embarrassed to approach him, afraid that it was not actually the agent I was seeing but rather some tenant of the blocks, however the absence of any other people in the surrounding area coupled with the confident upward flick of his chin at spotting me gave me at least some suggestion that this was indeed the person I was looking for.

‘You must be Amon?’ he said, raising his voice slightly to reach me as there were still a couple metres between us.

I only smiled politely as I approached him.

‘Yes,’ I confirmed in a calm tone when I reached him.

Levi beamed a wide smile, and that was when he introduced himself, alongside a voiced confirmation that he was in fact the agent for that building. His demeanour was exuberant and boastful, with attire to match, and from the moment I spoke my initial affirmation, I could not fit in another word, for he did not allow me a moment to speak. He elaborated on his illustrious career, of all the apartments he’d sold in this very building, breaking records for apartments sold in a building only he represented – and in only two years, no less. As he guided me inside the small corridor which contained the ground floor elevators, he spoke of the six blocks that stood there, how fantastic each of them were and how overjoyed were their tenants to be living in them, and as we entered the elevator, he was still exhausting the breath he took when he first spotted me. Eventually, however, he did have to take another, and in that moment of silence I noticed him look at me with subtle scrutiny. 

‘Let me guess: Arrha?’ he said as the indicator on the elevator reached floor three.

I gave him a surprised look, as the stranger had managed to successfully guess the college I had just graduated – expressions had been my sole means of communication with him since uttering my first word. I lost myself in thought momentarily, pondering whether I had at any point specified my place of education for whatever reason, but a slight chuckle from my company returned my attention to him.

‘I can tell these things, you see,’ he said. ‘Even without meeting a person, I can tell. I graduated from Arrha myself.’

I changed my expression from a shocked one to a pleasant one, and the elevator reached the eighth floor, slowing down and letting out a subtle ding as it settled.

‘This is the floor,’ he said, and gestured for me to leave the elevator before him.

We walked out into a typical corridor, covered below us with a fresh, untrodden red carpet, and walls painted in an uneventful, almost unnoticeable teal. Each door was painted a light brown, with bronze numbering at about head-height indicating the number of each apartment. All apartments on that floor were three digits long, each beginning with an eight – indicating the eighth floor – and increasing from the elevator on, which was found at one end of the corridor. The corridor was straight with a sharp turn to the left at the far end, where I could also see a fire exit door leading to a staircase behind it. Though I could have found it myself, Levi escorted me to the door that held behind it the apartment of interest.

‘807,’ he declared, producing a pair of keys from his pocket. ‘That was the apartment you were looking at, correct?’

The question was obviously only courteous – no part of his demeanour suggested that he was anything but certain of that being the correct apartment – but nonetheless I welcomed the silence that followed his question, allowing me an opportunity to speak.

‘Yeah,’ was all I managed to meekly spurt out.

Delighted at my cooperation, Levi inserted one of the keys into the bottom keyhole, with what I believed to be exaggerated ceremony, and upon unlocking both the bottom and the top locks, he pushed the door open.

‘Please,’ he said, once again extending his arm out in front of him. ‘After you.’

Levi pushed the door only slightly ajar, leaving it for me to open the rest of the way, so I took the brass handle into my hand and pushed my way in. In my haste, I pushed the door with more force than it required, which sent it flying inwards and hitting off the wall.

‘Oh my,’ I said quietly, and turned to look at Levi with an apologetic glance, but my company’s expression remained calm and slightly amused.

‘Some of the doors are like that. No door stopper for them,’ he explained, with directness and sincerity I found odd when compared with the praises he had sung for the seeming perfection these apartments were supposed to represent.

As I walked inside, I gave the other side of the door a look to check if there was a mark visible from the impact. Retracting it from the wall it hit, I found that it had in fact never made contact with the wall, but was rather struck by another door handle, one belonging to a door which resided directly adjacent to that of the entrance, so close that the two interfered when opened simultaneously. Checking the spot where I felt the connection, I saw that I had in fact been so eager in my ingress that there was a visible dent in the wood of the door. This I elected to keep quiet, and refused to provide a visible reaction, but internally I felt ultimately stupid for not being slightly more gentle with my entrance.

Walking into the apartment, I found myself placed in a small hallway connecting all the rooms inside, of which there were two, as well as a bathroom and a small storage closet. I had already browsed enough photos of the apartment to recognise some of the doors and what they led to. I knew, for instance, that the door to my immediate left – the one whose handle I hit when coming in – was the door leading to the bathroom: a small, metre-by-metre chamber, containing a toilet on one of its walls, a shower opposite it, and a sink placed under a mirror between the two of them, with a boiler in the corner between the sink and the toilet. It was small, but sufficient, and although the claustrophobic space might have dissuaded some,  I knew that personally I did not mind it, and I did not need any more than just what it was.

Next, the door beside the bathroom and directly before me after entering the apartment, was one that led to what was supposed to function as the sitting room: a relatively spacious open area, with space for a couch and a TV to put on the wall. To the left upon entering the room was a tiled area surrounding a countertop by the wall in the corner, intended to function as a kitchen, with cupboards resting above and a fridge standing at the far end of the countertop; it even came with a microwave. 

This room was also the first to expose the second point of contention in the apartment’s disfavour: on the far wall of the chamber from the entrance door, there was a large window, spanning almost the whole length of the wall, and behind it one could nicely see the brutish, crude grey unpleasantness of the side of the adjacent apartment building. Indeed: all the windows in this apartment were pointing in the direction of the building to its side, allowing for just about no opportunity for natural light to find its way through the windows and into the rooms, requiring that one depend solely on artificial lighting for the illumination of their home. Initially this was a bit jarring to see, as I had come to be used to windows providing the one function they seemed to be designed for: allowing a neutral view – a window – into the world beyond the interior, but after a couple moments’ consideration and walking through the half-illuminated rooms of the apartment, I actually came to quite enjoy it. It reminded me of a feeling I got when the afternoon tipped over into the evening, and the world began to fall into shadow. With the darkness that followed that time of day, and then ultimately made its home during the night, there came a certain comfort: a certain feeling of this large, warm mass engrossing me entirely, concealing me from the world without and locking me into my thoughts, where I could ponder the greatest imaginings that might come to my mind without the obstructions of every-day operation. I did not fool myself: it was not perfect, perhaps unhealthy even, and I supposed that to be eternally confined to such a state of enclosure might be tiresome after a while, but nonetheless it was definitely not something to make me stop considering the apartment immediately, as I quickly began to imagine ways that I might occasionally choose to enjoy my time outside to escape the illuminatory depression.

The small hallway inside the apartment bent sharply right upon entering, and only a little ways down its length was the door to the small storage closet. In reality, it cannot be said that this closet was necessarily smaller than the bathroom, with about half its depth, though it did not include the additional utilities that the bathroom provided. It was simply covered on all surfaces with planks of wood, with a sole exposed lightbulb dangling from its ceiling, and three wooden shelves spanning its width. It was not a remarkable storage unit, but from the instant I saw it I began filling it with mental images of possible boxes it might store, containing a variety of things, from spare parts and components to entire creations that I did not want to discard. Although perhaps the least eventful or interesting room, it was the first to fill me with a certain excitement that occluded the dread I was feeling when beginning to search for a place to live. The kitchen was important, of course, as was the sitting room no doubt: but this, this small storage closet, was a blank canvas which I could fill with endless possibilities. I had engaged myself so wholly within my captivation, that it was Levi who had to snap me out of my daze and back into reality.

‘It comes with a storage closet, as you can see,’ he said. ‘— for all your storage needs,’ he added, almost in afterthought.

He had earlier commented in one way or another on the tiny bathroom and the dark sitting room, but, despite my best efforts, I had failed to listen closely enough to recall a single detail of his commentary – though I did not doubt it was all adulatory, without fail. This comment, however, summoned me right to attention, and I was more alert now than ever. It did have a storage closet, and I loved it.

It was perhaps because of this sudden inspiration that I had come to find the next and final room so compelling – though not nearly as much as I had found the storage closet. It was the bedroom, and if not by direct architecture then at least by destiny, since no other room could suit that purpose very well. It was much smaller than the sitting room, and it was made of much more depth than width. Though it lacked many furnishings, it did come with an empty bed frame sized for a single bed, to be made complete with a matching mattress. With little to go off of in the almost empty chamber, the sparks of inspiration had already lit their fire, and the images which I had used to fill the storage closet from before were now prancing about the space before me: I imagined the bed complete and cosy in the corner, and a wardrobe next to it, but my interest was most strongly gravitated to the desk I would place on the wall opposite the bed, upon which I would place a flexible adjustable desk light, as well as a nice shelf near its back, so that I could comfortably store all the necessary components I required for the completion of my machines as I was making them. It was an almost idyllic scene: me, sitting at my desk, the room dark from the oncoming night and illuminated solely by by my desk light, itself focussed solely on a single point somewhere between my hands, occupied intently on the project I was building, leaving room for nothing else in the world. It was a scene I had longed for, and to be standing near the place where I could nearly imagine its attainability, I felt helpless to conceal the smile that visibly illuminated my face.

‘You like it, I suppose?’ said Levi, as he creeped up next to me in the small room and saw my smile.

‘I do,’ I told him, with an air of determinism that already claimed the room as my own. ‘I like it a lot.’

I suspected that my mother might advise me to investigate other options first before jumping on the first one that caught my eye, but she was captivated by such – almost insulting – joy at the fact I had found an apartment that suited  me at all, that she compelled me with every fibre of her being to take the opportunity.

‘You like it, don’t you?’ she asked me when I appeared hesitant to her haste.

‘Um, yes, but…’

‘Then take it!’

‘I mean there were parts of it I liked, but maybe…’

‘You know, such opportunities don’t show up all the time! You can’t let this one go!’

‘Right, I know that, but perhaps…’

‘And it’s not reserved for you! Anyone else could get that apartment if you dawdle.’

‘Of course, yes, but what if…’

‘Where’s your phone? We’ll call that agent right now…’

I moved out promptly after, and as I was on my way out of the house with the final box of my things, my mother turned me around at the threshold of our home. There were tears running down her cheeks.

‘Oh, my baby…’ she sobbed, ‘all grown up…’

I looked into my mother’s eyes, ones I had so often ignited with anger with the sparks of my own capricious outbursts, and for the first time in a long while, I felt overwhelmed with love for her. It was as though I was already missing her, though she stood right before me.

‘You know, I can still come visit on the weekends…’

‘No that’s alright,’ she comforted me, patting me on the chest, her tears drying up already, ‘go live your life.’

‘It’s okay,’ I reassured her, ‘I’m sure it won’t be that difficult. Once a week…’

‘Really, it’s okay,’ she assured me, very nearly stern, but certainly declarative, with intention in her expression. Only a second after, a smile sprung up on her lips.

‘You better catch that taxi,’ she said, and the patting on my chest turned into a soft push. In that instant, almost autonomously, my arms tried to move to form an embrace; but in their firm position supporting the box, they stayed right where they were. Instead, I gave the woman that birthed me a smile, as brief as her own, and removed myself from the premises, giving her one last wistful glance as the taxi drove away.

I have lived in the apartment for five years now. In that time, I have managed to form the space into the one I dreamt of when I first saw it: the supply closet filled with boxes of my old machines, at least on the top shelves, and underneath them a collection of MREs that serve as my primary sustenance – I have managed to find a cheap seller online, the deficit in the price being accounted for by the technicality that the MREs were past their date of expiry, but were actually still quite fine for a good while after their regulatory cutoff point – and my bedroom, bedizened by more boxes of mechanical parts and ingenious conclusions; more recent than those I store in the closet in the hallway, which are themselves not the oldest ones I have: the oldest ones I archive chaotically on the floor of the sitting room and kitchen, whose original purposes have been usurped by my absolute need for more storage. I keep the boxes in my bedroom stacked by the walls as high as they can go, reaching all the way up to the ceiling, in their own way forming a new wall for the chamber, reducing the space even further past its original diminutive size. Tucked between those boxes in the corner is my single bed, and I have a wardrobe in that room too, though I intend to move it soon into the archives to allow for more space for boxes in my bedroom. Finally, there is my desk, precise in its design as to match that which I had seen in my idyllic vision, and there is no moment where its surface is not scattered with miscellaneous parts of my various creations.

It is this desk that I am sitting at, amidst the towers of black, plastic boxes, each labelled with the date of their storage, my adjustable desk lamp pointed firmly at the device I am soldering in my hands. The time is perhaps ten at night, though it might be considerably later as I am not wont to check it often, and I am enveloped by that delightful darkness which comforts me so, leaving me in a private audience with my creation. In the peaceful silence of the late evening, I engage in a mute dialogue with my brainchild, asking it what it needs to feel complete, attending to its every desire, when a sudden explosion of noise erupts from the wall before me, and nearly sends me flying out of my chair.

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