ROOMMATE WANTED: Looking for someone chill who can move in ASAP. Rent negotiable. Must be okay with creative chaos and the occasional smell of paint thinner. Serious inquiries only, please.
I hover over the post button, reading it one more time. It's still somehow both too depressing and not depressing enough. It's the truth, just packaged slightly less like a cry for help and slightly more like a legitimate housing opportunity.
My finger hovers over the post button. This is insane. This is how people end up on true crime podcasts with titles like "The Artist and the Axe Murderer: A Tragedy in Three Acts." But what choice do I have? I hit post before I can talk myself out of it and slam the laptop shut like that will somehow make this less real.
The apartment feels too quiet now. Too still. I can hear my neighbor's TV through the wall, some cooking show wheresomeone's passionately describing the proper way to caramelize onions. My stomach growls in response, reminding me that I haven't eaten anything except black coffee and half a granola bar since yesterday.
I should clean. I should do something productive. I should update my portfolio or finish that commission I've been putting off or at least wash the dishes piling up in the sink.
Instead, I just sit there on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest, staring at the eviction notice like if I glare at it hard enough it might spontaneously combust and solve all my problems.
Hours pass. The light shifts from afternoon gold to early evening amber. My phone stays stubbornly silent except for more automated notifications about failed listings and suggested price cuts. No calls. No texts. No miraculous roommate inquiries from normal, stable people with good credit scores and a respect for personal boundaries.
I'm about to give up entirely and start googling "how to live in your car in a city with winter" when something makes the entire apartment vibrate. It's not a sound exactly, or rather, it's a sound so deep and resonant that I feel it in my bones before my ears register it at all. The walls seem to shudder. A coffee mug I'd abandoned on the bookshelf rattles against its neighbor, and somewhere in the kitchen, I hear the soft clink of dishes shifting in the sink.
Not a knock.
Apresence.
Something large and undeniably real is on the other side of that door. I can sense it the way you can sense a storm rolling in, that prickling awareness of something massive and atmospheric shifting the air pressure in the room. My fight-or-flight response kicks into overdrive, and I'm genuinely uncertain which direction my panicked body is going to choose. My hearthammers against my ribs with the force of a jackhammer against concrete, and I find myself frozen mid-floor, still hugging my knees, unable to decide whether to hide or run or scream or open the door and face whatever this is head-on.
The kind of heavy, authoritative sound that rattles the door in its frame and sends my heart into my throat. For a second I think Mr. Abernathy has returned with reinforcements, maybe the actual police or a SWAT team specifically trained in evicting broke artists from rent-controlled apartments.
I scramble to my feet, my knee popping in protest, and storm toward the door with all the dignity I can muster while wearing overalls covered in paint and what I'm now realizing is probably dried ramen broth. My hair has completely escaped its claw clip and is now hanging in my face in a tangled, frizzy curtain. I shove it back and grab the doorknob.
"Look, I already told you I'm working on it!" I yell through the door, my voice pitching into that hysterical register that makes me sound like a chihuahua trying to fight a Rottweiler. "I posted the ad, okay? I'm getting a roommate! I just need a few more days to?—"
The knock comes again, but this time it's even more insistent than before. Heavier. More deliberate. The kind of knock that reverberates through the thin walls of my apartment with such forceful precision that it says, unmistakably, "I am not Mr. Abernathy and I am absolutely not here to negotiate with you about anything." It's the knock of someone who is used to being obeyed, someone who doesn't waste time on pleasantries or second chances. Someone who means business.
Something cold slides down my spine. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the moment I become a statistic, the cautionary tale other artists tell each other about what happens when you get too desperate and post ads on sketchy websites asking for cash and no questions.
But I'm already in too deep. Already past the point of rational decision-making.
I rip the door open with both hands, ready to scream, ready to fight, ready to do whatever it takes to defend my disaster of a life from whatever fresh hell is waiting on the other side.
My head tilts back, my neck craning at an angle that's quickly becoming uncomfortable.
And back.
And back again, further still.
The hallway seems to compress around us, or maybe it's just that he's so impossibly massive that there's nothing left to see beyond the sheer, overwhelming presence of him. The walls, the faded paint, the flickering overhead light that's been broken for three weeks, it all dissolves into insignificance. My entire field of vision is consumed by the broad expanse of his charcoal suit, by the corded musculature visible even beneath the expensive tailoring, by the sheer gravitational pull of his presence that makes the air feel thicker, heavier, harder to draw into my suddenly constricted lungs.
The hallway might as well not exist anymore. There's only him, filling every available space with an authority that seems almost physical in its weight.
Not a person.
An Orc.
And he's standing in my doorway like he owns it, like he owns the entire building, like the very concept of personal space has never once applied to someone of his stature. His amber eyes are still tracking downward, taking in every mortifying detail of my paint-splattered existence with the kind of methodical precision that makes my skin prickle with self-consciousness.
A massive, slate-green Orc who has to be pushing seven feet tall, maybe more, with shoulders so broad they nearly span the width of my doorframe. He's wearing a suit. An actual, custom-tailored, charcoal-grey suit that probably cost more than six months of my rent, fitted perfectly across a chest that looks like it could stop a freight train. The fabric strains slightly across his biceps as he shifts, holding a leather briefcase in one enormous hand that makes the expensive accessory look like a child's toy.
His face is all hard angles and sharp tusks that jut up from his lower jaw, framing a mouth that's currently set in a completely neutral, businesslike expression. His eyes, a startling shade of amber that catches the hallway light, sweep over me with the kind of methodical assessment that makes me suddenly, painfully aware of every single paint stain, every coffee smell, every piece of dried ramen on my clothes.
I forget how to breathe.
He looks down at me with the kind of slow, deliberate movement that makes it abundantly clear just how vast the distance is between his height and mine. Down, down, down, his amber eyes traveling the considerable expanse that separates his massive frame from my decidedly compact one, like I'm something small and potentially problematic he's discovered lurking on the bottom of his very expensive shoe. The sheer physical act of him lowering his gaze feels monumental, a calculated assessment that somehow makes me feel even tinier than my already-diminutive five-foot-three inches.
