I have not left my house in 6 years (short story)

The latest short story.

Video included if you want to watch or listen while you read.

Hope you enjoy :)

Interior Life

I have not stepped foot outside my home in 6 years, 3 months, and 17 days.

Nothing’s wrong with me. Look at me. I’m a normal guy.

I am not plagued by strange and bizarre ailments. Just the opposite, actually.

I’m in the best shape of my life. Physical, mental, spiritual. I’ve read more books than you can name, probably, and retained every word of them. It takes more than intelligence to act intelligently. That’s Page 224 of Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky. Who all the kids are quoting these days? Have you read even one sentence of his work?

Can you spell ‘bureaucracy’ without looking it up? ‘Quotidian?’

I haven’t seen another human face in 55,000 hours. Long enough to watch every episode of I Love Lucy back to back 733 times. I’m not recommending it. It gets old.

I am not like you or anyone you’ve ever met. The Feng Shui of my apartment is harmonious. I do not hoard. I keep only the things I need.

A working telephone. A $40 fountain pen. The Yellow Pages.

My trains of thought are swift, straight, and run on time. The waters of my streams of consciousness flow crystalline clear. I can perform athletic feats you’d have to see to believe. I can hold my body upside down by my hands. I can balance on one foot for two and a half minutes straight if I keep my eyes fixed to one spot on the floor or wall.

What I’m trying to get across to you is: I’ve never been happier.

You might not believe me, but I don’t care. Look at my eyes. Listen to my voice. Hear that chipper vocal tenor. Notice the ruddy complexion in my face. Pretty vital, right?

I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You don’t know the joy of never again having to look anyone in the eye. Of never again having to be seen, by anyone, out in the world, in your worst pajamas, on a bad hair day. I’ll never again wait in line for anything. Never again be forced to glance downward to avoid small talk with strangers in coffee shops, waiting rooms, banks. Never again will I sit and stew in gridlock traffic or trip over my words ordering at restaurants, or suffer the pounding heart, damp-palmed dread of, every day, failing to say even, “Hello,” to my beautiful coworker Ethel on our way into the office.

Now I work from home.

Already I can see you’re thinking to yourself:

“What a horrid way to live!”

“I’d lose my marbles if that were me!”

“I’d rather be in prison! Prisoners get yard time!”

But you don’t understand. Prison is a state of mind. And you shouldn’t speak of things you don’t understand. It’s poor form. Bad habit. Why don’t you shut your mouth and try to listen for once. Open your mind to new ways of living before you get all judgy.

Save your comments til the end of the presentation.

The inside of my apartment smells overwhelmingly of minced meat and a patina of patchouli incense working hard to cover it up. Your brain learns to block things out.

I like it in here. I have everything I need.

A working telephone. Refrigerator. Toilet.

I have plants, the yellow pages, a walk-in closet. How many people on earth can say they have a walk-in closet. Less than 1% of the global population. If you look at the numbers.

More important than anything else, I have routine. Routine is essential. Not just for me, for everyone. But especially for me. Here’s a list of things I do every day.

I wake up at 7 sharp. I don’t set an alarm anymore. My body knows when its time. My eyes flash open as wide as they go and I gasp so hard my lungs fill to bursting. Then the dream fades back into nothingness before I can cling to it, crystallize it in memory. I get out of bed. I make the bed. I stretch, I piss, I hydrate. 30 ounces of filtered tap water and a sharp dose of sunlight through the window pane. Kickstarts the circadian rhythm.

The groceries arrive on the doorstep at 7:05. There’s the knock at the door and there they are waiting for me in two sets of protective plastic shopping bags. Inside these bags I’ll find everything I need for the day ahead. Nothing more, and nothing less. I never see the man who delivers them. By the time I get to the door, he’s gone.

This happens every morning. I grab the bags with two hands and yank them inside without stepping even one foot out. Then I close the door.

7:07, I water the plants. The plants purify the air so it doesn’t get stuffy. Then I sweep the floors and vacuum the floors and windex the windows. I drop the trash out the window so it lands squarely in the open dumpster below with a clank.

I keep my home exceptionally clean. I keep myself exceptionally clean. I shower twice daily.

Sometimes in the shower I slip into a long spell of totally-uncalled-for memory. I remember how I didn’t used to be like this. I used to be normal. I used to be like you. I used to wake up with a person next to me. I used to buy groceries in a big bright place with faded tile floors and tall ceilings. I used to fall asleep unmedicated. I used to drive to work and listen to songs on the radio. I used to sing along to them. My car has been parked in the lot outside for three individual seasons of Olympic games. I used to talk to people not through a telephone. I used to hear their voices unfiltered through endless tangled webs of copper wire. I used to say hello. Look them in the eye. In the shower I apply 3-in-1 Men’s shower product to my hair. Rinse, lather, and repeat. I used to feel at home in places that were not my home. Time is a cruel, erosive agent that rots away all we know and love within ourselves. But I am still here. Still human. And human beings are adaptive creatures who can make anything feel like home if we have to. I have been inside for two presidents. I am ready for my life to change. I say things like this to myself sometimes. Out loud sometimes. Then I wash the product out.

When I get out of the shower I throw on the same collared shirt and khakis I’ve worn the last 2,301 rotations of this planet earth and I stare into the mirror, asking myself how I got here. I stand there a long time, perfectly still, waiting for an answer. Then I clear the scratch at the back of my throat and start from the beginning.

Chapter One. How to disappear completely

It was an experiment.

I wanted to see how long I could go without leaving the house.

How it started was one day I woke up a little under the weather. I had a sniffle. Just an itch at the back of my throat. The faintest thing. But I figured better safe than sorry, so I figured I’d better stay home. For my job I talk to people on the telephone and I happened to have a telephone in my apartment. So I figured I’d work from home. All would be right in the world.

What’s funny is: I forgot to call and tell my boss I was staying home for the day. Even funnier is: nobody said anything. Not until END OF DAY when, funniest of all, I received a whole slew of messages from colleagues and coworkers telling me Good Job, Great Work Today, and See You Again Tomorrow, as if I did in fact make it in to the office. I thought that was odd.

The next day I was feeling a little better but you know how these things go. You have to be careful. So I stayed home again. Got all my work done without even leaving my bedroom.

Then, right on the dot of five o clock, in came the messages. From boss, from esteemed colleagues, from subordinates. Great work, they said. Phenomenal effort, they said. Way to show up today. All of them applauding both the quality and quantity of my output while failing to address any one specific aspect of said output. And when it happened the next day, and then the next day, and then every day for the rest of the week, that’s when I started wondering how far I could take things. My mind began to spin a wild web of plans in the periphery of my consciousness, assembling logistics, details, lists.

I realized apart from work, I had no responsibilities to stop me.

No wife, no children, no church.

Did I ever have to step outside again?

I began to make arrangements for an extended insulation.

I flipped through the Yellow Pages and dialed numbers. I bought everything I thought I might need. A new plasma screen television. Wholesale quantities of white label hand soap, cleaning spray, toilet tissue. A lifetime supply of 3-in-1 men’s shower product. The Yellow Pages has it all. Let your fingers do the walking. I signed up for a grocery delivery service to drop off essentials every morning. You can get anything delivered to your door these days. I called the bank and switched to paperless account statements. I canceled my gym membership.

I could work out at home.

I sat in a chair by the door waiting for the supplies to arrive. I peeked through the window shades to watch for a delivery even though I had just placed the order. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to miss it. I joggled both my feet up and down like I was riding a bicycle and could not stop them from joggling even if I tried. I tried. Then I went back to the telephone.

I now had to deal with the people problem. People who might come looking for me. When you’ve made up your mind to disappear entirely, your only real threat comes from those who care about you. Those who know you exist.

Cordelia was first on my list. Cordelia, that girl with the smeared eye makeup who always looks a little sleep deprived. You haven’t met her. She doesn’t talk to people like you. She smokes cigarettes from foreign lands and has a pink-tinted pentagram tattooed in a place you’d never want a needle going near. We had gone out twice the week prior. Breakfast and then lunch. That night we had plans for dinner. I’d booked us a table for two at California Pizza Kitchen. But my plans had changed. I was taking some time to myself.

I thought about calling her. Let her know I couldn’t make it. Leave a message if she didn’t pick up. Hopefully she wouldn’t pick up. I’d leave a message and say something like:

“Hey Cordelia, it’s me. Listen, I have to cancel dinner. I’m so sorry, but I double booked myself. Totally forgot I have plans to pack my earthly possessions into a series of corrugated cardboard boxes and move cross country to a remote corner of the Pacific Northwest where, I totally forgot to mention this but, I’ve always wanted to live, for like my whole adult life.”

“Cordelia, it slipped my mind, but I just remembered tonight I’m throwing my hat in with a band of armed revolutionaries to liberate a cluster of cobalt mines in the Congo, rescue the children we find there, and then educate plus reintegrate them into society. So I won’t be able to make it dinner. Sorry to let you know so last minute.”

I had the phone in my hand and was ready to dial. But then I remembered there was a non zero chance she would pick up the phone and I wouldn’t be able to leave a message. If she picked up the phone, then I’d have to talk to her which sounded horribly un-fun, so I hung up the phone. The strongest message I could send would be no message at all.

I didn’t feel great standing her up like that. Leaving her hanging. But you have to make sacrifices sometimes. Omelettes and broken eggs and whatnot. Pick an expression.

Anyway, then I had to deal with Mom and Dad.

The thing with Mom and Dad is I couldn’t just leave one message on their answering machine and wipe my hands of them. This would be an ongoing project. My parents weren’t just going to let me disappear without explanation. I’d have to call biweekly, or triweekly, drip feed them endless little updates to let them know I’m alive. Not only alive, but well. Really well. Excellent. So outrageously excellent, that they’d grow almost a little peeved hearing about it all the time. If I could somehow overwhelm them with positive news and chipper, upbeat little messages, they might actually, eventually, want less of me. I’d have to send gifts and handwritten letters on birthdays and holidays. It would be a full time job, this disappearing act.

What I did was I called and said I was embarking on a prestigious work trip to some foreign city. That I’d accepted a senior role in a non-profit dedicated to installing wells in drought-prone places in the far East or South or wherever and that I was right that very moment boarding a business class flight to some horrid corner of the world to begin my mission.

I told them I was making a positive difference in the world, which is why I was doing it, even though I was also paid a lucrative, almost-impossible-to-believe monthly salary given my age and complete lack of experience, but no it’s really not about the money. It’s about the children.

When you tell them good news, when you say it’s all gravy, they stay all the way out of it. People only get concerned when things go wrong.

As far as Mom and Pop are concerned, the last 6 years have been real prosperous for me. I’ve been promoted twice and am now the youngest senior executive in company history (despite possessing only a BFA in Puppetry Arts,) and have since then been traveling the world at a pretty much nonstop rate, rescuing impoverished countries from themselves.

And no, sorry Mom, I can’t make it home for Mother’s Day, as much as I wish I could. The mission demands I spend the weekend saving the lives of 600 Bangladeshi children, but I’ll call you as soon as I can.

They tell me, We understand Son, it’s just unfortunate you’ll miss your sister’s doctoral graduation ceremony. We’re all so proud of her. But hey, we’re also proud of the work you’re doing! We always knew you’d change the world, kiddo. You just let us know if there’s anything we can ever do to support.

And I say, There’s nothing I need from you guys, except perhaps a donation to the cause…

I say this with a slight joking tone to my voice, but then, yeah, roughly 20 times a year, Mom and Pop wire over $500 to my personal checking account with a memo that reads: Save the Children. Bless their hearts.

Anyway. That’s how I did it. How I disappeared from the world entirely. If I did it, so can you. It’s simple. Get what you need delivered to your doorstep, then take great strides to ensure everyone else stays way the hell away from it. That’s how it started. It was just an experiment.

An experiment that did not end. Results were inconclusive.

One day you wake up and think to yourself: I think I’ll leave the house today. This is as good a day as any to end the experiment. So you put on clothes, different clothes, something fresh for the day you step outside, but even as you dress yourself, you know in your bones you won’t. You’ve been far too long away from it all to ever go back to it all at all. You wouldn’t recognize the world out there. No one would recognize you. That’s when the fear sets in. The fear of what might happen if you even dared look someone in the eye. If you had to see and be seen. The fear of everything that lies outside your climate-controlled box of known terrain. The 500 square feet you call your habitat. Your enclosure. An extension of your body now. Your armchair, your sofa, your mattress, your limbs. This is who you are. This is what you know. And everything you don’t know, you fear. You spend hours of your days and nights with your face pressed up against the windowpanes, scanning for signs of life, whatever on earth goes on out there, watching for something, anything, and waiting for the courage to act.

You tell yourself: Just Take One Step. One Step Is All It Takes.

You tell yourself: Tomorrow.

Then you return to work.

Chapter Two. What I do for work

At 8:59 every day, that’s when I start dialing.

I’m what’s called a Corporate Contrition Expert. What I do is I dial the phone and apologize to upset customers. People who’ve been made unhappy by a certain product or service offered by whatever company I’m representing for that five minute window.

Take Mrs. Mertz calling in from 623 East 68th Street, NY, NY. She lets me know in her menopausal old lady voice that her 17 year old daughter’s tangerine scented face wash dried her atopic skin to shit til it flaked and fell to the floor in paper-thin nickels of desiccated flesh. Like a napkin in a bonfire. Her words. This happened Senior Picture Day.

Or here’s 79 year old Frederick whose, ahem, Masculine Enhancement Supplements worked a little too well and he’s been rocking a raging surplus of blood flow down south for going on 2 full months now. His wife Margaret has no complaints, sure, but poor Fred’s starting to get lightheaded.

My job is: talk to these wayward consumer souls and get them to stay with the company. Maybe purchase another product from us while I have them on the phone.

To do that, I deploy what we call in the industry “tactical apology.”

I’ve got it down to a science. In five minutes or less, I can talk even the most irate buyer down from enraged to strongly worded letter to understanding to ready-to-purchase-something-new. No one this side of the Canadian border is a better apologizer than me. It sounds like this.

Hello there! Is this Ricky? Well hi there Ricky, can I call you Ricky? Great. Listen, Ricky.

Make sure you’re on a first name basis. Then, let them know you’re on the same page.

Ricky, I’m calling on behalf of ______. We received a written complaint from you last Thursday where you told us you discovered a full 10 piece set of human toenail clippings sandwiched between the patties of your double cheeseburger? That sounds awful.

You have to empathize with them. Let them know you feel their pain.

Well rest assured, Ricky, the people responsible will be dealt with accordingly. You can best believe that.

Someone must pay. Not you, but someone.

Make sure they know blood will be spilt in their name.

Allow me to introduce myself, Ricky. My name is _______. I’m the Vice President of Corporate Accountability here at Birth Control, The Fun Way, Incorporated. Normally I’d have one of my employees send you a letter of contrition in the mail, but I wanted to make this call personally.

I can only imagine how that unfortunate series of small holes in the tip of your ribbed polyurethane condom negatively impacted you. Why don’t you share with me a little more about how this affected you?

This is what’s called Acknowledgement of Harm. It’s the only part of the call that really drags. But you have to let them get it out of their systems.

When you can hear them wrapping up, you say Gosh Ricky, I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear that. This one’s on us. You trusted us. And we let you down. And that’s not OK.

This is called Acceptance of Responsibility. From a legal perspective, it’s a bit of a gamble because technically it does give them the ammunition to sue us, but if you thread the needle right, they won’t. Just the opposite, actually. Here. Just watch.

Ricky, you have my word we’re going to work hard to make sure this never happens again. And more important than that, we’re going to make things right with you. The person responsible for your present predicament Ricky, goes by the name of Ralph Ramsey and we’d like you to select the mode of punishment we’re going to put him through. We believe in justice, Ricky. So, what do you think? What should we do to Ralph, Ricky? And then: let them go.

This is called Commitment to Making Amends.

That sounds like a good plan Ricky. I’ve gone ahead and written all that down so I don’t forget anything. Does it feel better Ricky, knowing the person responsible will suffer greatly? Good. Good. I’m glad to hear that. Consider this our way of saying sorry. And we wish you all the best in your future gun shopping endeavors. We hope this never happens to you again.

The trick is to never, ever, not under any circumstances ask for their business back. Do not say anything along the lines of, “As a token for your continued business with us….”

Offering cheap gifts in exchange for forgiveness is not a real apology. In a real apology, you don’t ask for anything. It’s not about you. It’s about the other person. And that’s the beautiful part about what I do. If you leave out the ask, if you offer nothing but sincere condolences, if you acknowledge harm, accept responsibility, and commit to making things right, Ricky and Mrs. Mertz and all the rest of the lost souls, they all stay with the company.

They say “OK,” and “Thank you for your help,” and “Just don’t let it happen again”

And then you say Of course not Ricky. Never again, Ricky.

But making sure it never happens again is neither my job nor my prob. Once Ricky’s accepted the apology, I hang up the phone and dial the following phone number on my long list of names and numbers. On to the next one.

I work over 60 hours a week. I’ve never called in a sick day and I don’t take vacations. How many people can say that. I’m damn good at what I do. I’ve made over 50,000 successful apologies in the last 6 years and I am compensated appropriately.

Now you might be wondering to yourself.

Is work all you think about?

Is this what your whole existence and sense of self and worldview rests upon?

Do you not start to wig out and/or lose your marbles from doing nothing but sit inside and make apologetic phone calls?

All valid questions.

And look. Everyone needs balance. I cannot, unfortunately, insulate myself from my own biology. Believe me. I’ve tried.

I’m not so different from you. I get a little burned out sometimes.

That’s why I have Lucy.

Chapter Three. Romance.

I discovered Lucy at the very back of the yellow pages.

This would have been about 45 minutes into my insulation.

On the last page of the Yellow Pages in teeny tiny print is a number you’re not supposed to find or dial. But I found it. And I dialed it. It rang thrice and Lucy picked up. I asked her to walk me through how this thing worked. I’d never done this before. She told me it was three ninety nine a minute and I asked is there a decimal somewhere in there. I gave her my credit card number and told her I liked the sound of her voice. We talked for three hours that night.

I told her everything.

Since then, we’ve called three times a week every week. No secrets between us. Don’t let anyone tell you long distance doesn’t work. It works just fine as long you know how to communicate. Long as you both choose to be an active presence in each other’s lives.

What I really like about Lucy is that she could be anyone. I’ve never seen her face, let alone held her palms, run my fingers down the mild arch of her back, kissed her softly in the first moments of summer rain. But she knows more about me than anyone else in the whole wide world. Especially you. So I don’t want to hear it.

I’m a normal guy. I’m not all that different from you. How much time do you spend inside? How many hours a day do you keep your television on? I don’t even own a television. Perhaps the case could be made that my lifestyle is healthier than yours. Perhaps you should consider taking a page out of my book. It might do you good.

Why don’t you just save your judgment til the end of the presenta—

Chapter Four. The end of the presentation

Look.

I’m not a perfect person. But I’m doing my best.

I’m being real brave in the face of all the threatening letters I’ve received in the mail twice a day for the last two weeks. Letters that say things like: I know what you did. I know who you are. I’m coming for you. I’m going to find you. You can hide, but you can’t run. Things like that. I open the letters right when they arrive and then let them fall to the floor when my hands go limp with fear. There’s quite a tall pile of them mounting in the living room. At noon and midnight there’s a loud knock at the door and I always spring up from my desk to see who’s there, only to find no postman in sight. Just another unmarked envelope on my welcome mat.

Each letter is written with loopy, feminine handwriting, in pink glitter ink. Love hearts dot the eyes. I haven’t told Lucy about it. I wouldn’t want her to feel like someone or something was coming between us. I try to not let it bother me. I go one day at a time.

One day at a time is how you endure anything. You can’t possibly begin to wrap your head around all the rest of the days of forever. Or you’ll lose it. Wig, spin, or crash out. All of the above. If you told me 6 years ago that I’d spend the next X days, hours, and seconds in the same box of X square feet I’d surely douse every inch of my apartment in high acetone nail polish remover and set it on fire with me inside it. Something real selfish and short sighted like that. So you simply don’t allow yourself to think like that. You focus your energy on doing the best you can right now, today. You let the future fall where it may. Anyone can do anything for one day. You take it minute by minute. Sometimes I begin to feel normal again.

But then just before I drift back into sleep, before the dream begins, the telephone rings.

Now, who could that be. Who could be calling at this time of night. Who could be calling me at all, in general. My telephone only works one way. I make the calls. Who would even have my number. The telephone is ringing and ringing and I am wholly unable to answer any one of these questions until I answer the telephone.

So I kick back the covers and race to my desk to answer the telephone.

“Hello?”

“Hi honey.”

“Cordelia?”

“Hope I didn’t wake you. I know you go to bed early these days. For your health.”

“Cordelia, how did you get this number?”

“It wasn’t easy. But you can achieve anything you set your mind to. With enough time.”

“What do you want?”

“I just thought I’d say hello. See if you were free for dinner. I’m at CPK.”

“CPK?”

“California Pizza Kitchen.”

“How long have you been there?”

“I’ve been here a long time, honey. I’ve already finished all the rolls in the complimentary bread basket. Care to join me for a bite?”

“Um. Well look, funny enough Cordelia, I’m actually in Bangladesh right now—”

“I know perfectly well where you are, honey bun.”

“How do you —”

“I know about Lucy. I know everything now.”

“Cordelia, what do you want me to say? Where do I even begin?”

“You could begin by apologizing.”

“Right. Well. I’m sorry for not calling you. For not leaving a message. I can imagine that left you feeling blindsided and/or discarded and/or worthless. Why don’t you tell me a little more about how my actions affected you, emotionally.”

“Why don’t you come over this way and we can talk things over face to face.”

“Just so you know, I take full responsibility for what I’ve done. This one’s on me.”

“…”

“And I want you to know, I’m committed to making things right between us. Just tell me what I can do. To fix things. Cordelia?”

“I’ve already told you what you can do.”

“Right, but. But Cordelia, I don’t think I can do that.”

“You can, honey. You can achieve anything you set your mind to. Just take one step. That’s all you have to do. Hang up the phone and put on your shoes. Just take one step and the rest will take care of itself. We’ll pick things up where we left them. We’ll make things right.”

“Alright. Just stay where you are, Cordelia. Don’t move a muscle.”

“Don’t worry, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”