Red Room Where the Writers Are

Short Story

April 18, 2006

He was vacuuming when the phone rang.  He would push the machine the entire length of the wall-to-wall carpeting, then made a careful U-turn and pushed it along the next row.  He hated to be interrupted while vacuuming, for fear of not being certain where he left off.  A single square inch of unvacuumed carpet could contain hundreds of dust mites, or thousands of grains of pollen, or millions of mold spores.  Best not to take any chances.  So, he let the answering machine get it.  

"Mister Gerber?  This is the front desk.  There's a gentleman here says he's supposed to meet with you, something about a presentation you signed up for.  He's got a letter here from you saying to let him in, so unless you say otherwise I'll send him on up..."  

Gerber returned the vacuum to its upright position and switched it off.  Damn that watchman, I told him not to do these kinds of things.  Peeling off his rubber gloves, he snatched the phone from its cradle.  "Hello?  Don't send him up, you hear me...?" 

A faint clicking at the end of the line was his only response.  The watchman had already hung up.  Gerber would have to file another letter of complaint against him.  For the amount of money the Homeowners' Association charges, they should hire some quality people to work the front desk.  And they expected him to tip them every Christmas? 

He went to the front door, opened it a foot, and peered out.  The hallway beyond floated in a white-on-white fluorescent haze.  It was empty, but then the elevator at the far end chimed softly.  He quickly closed and latched the door.   

Perhaps I won't answer, he thought.  He would just stand there, silently, for as long as it took.  From beyond the door he heard a soft shuffling sound.  The plush carpeting muffled most noises, but Gerber would have swore he heard the man dragging one foot as he walked.  The shuffling paused outside his door.  Gerber held his breath.   

There was a knock.  

I will just wait until he goes away.  Gerber stood there, one minute, four, eight.  His left foot was going numb.  He shifted his weight to his right foot, and the floor groaned.   

There was another knock.   

Gerber sighed.  He was resigned to his fate.  Slowly, he unlatched the door and pulled it open a few inches.   

Outside stood a tall, bulky man.  The scraggly black hair on his head seemed to have slid down to the bottom of his chin, leaving his bald pate to glimmer in the fluorescent light.  Heavy glasses glinted at him from in front of narrow eyes.  "Mister Gerber?  I'm Wilson.  From the HomePure website? Remember? You were interested in cleaning equipment."   

Gerber blinked.  "Oh yes," he said, "Right.  The free product demonstration.  I thought you were going to mail me a DVD."   

"Video cannot express the true value of our products.  May I?"  He inquired, still grinning. 

Grudgingly, Gerber edged backwards, opening the door wider.  The man was surprisingly large.  He wore a beaten full-length leather duster over a suit that had been, at one point, quite fine, but was now threadbare.  He reached behind him and pulled a large suitcase into the condominium.  Gerber winced as he saw the suitcase's wheels leaving deep tracks in the plush cream-colored carpet.   

"The products I am going to show you, are unparalleled in the industry.  No one, and I mean no one, can match our filtering technology."  He stood the suitcase upright in the middle of Gerber's living room, unlatched it, and pulled the halves apart, standing behind it as if it were a lectern.   

"Have you heard of HEPA filters?" Wilson asked.  

"Of course," said Gerber.  

"Trash," said Wilson.  "Utter trash.  The HEPA filters will catch 99.97 percent of all particles.  Sounds good at first, until you realize that that 0.03 percent of the typical household's dust-load still represents millions of particles.  That is more than enough to cause symptoms in sensitive individuals."  

He withdrew a bulky apparatus from the suitcase.  Gleaming chrome and black plastic wrapped around each other to give a sense of motion and finesse to the collection of tubes, cords, and canisters that he placed on the carpet.   

Gerber was not impressed.  As Wilson searched for a power plug, he prattled on.  "Five horsepower motor, a six-quart dustbin, and a three-stage magneto-hydro-dynamic centripetal filtering apparatus. This is the type of technology they use for filtering the air on the Space Shuttle."   

Gerber refrained from pointing out that most of the systems on the Space Shuttle represented technology that was thirty years old.  But then, snapping out of his reverie, he noticed Wilson had a paper bag in his hands.  He marched out into the middle of the rug and began opening it.   

"Hold on.  What are you doing there?"  

Wilson looked up, his eyes bright.  "Your apartment is too clean.  To truly demonstrate the capabilities of the apparatus, we need to dirty things up a bit."  With that, he tipped the bag over, and several tablespoons of grimy soot spilled out onto the carpet.   

Gerber's reaction was immediate.  His eyes instantly started watering.  His skin crawled. A sick, heavy feeling settled into his stomach.  "What are you doing!"  He shrieked. Wilson continued on nonplussed, spreading the filth around the carpet, swinging the bag back and forth.   Gerber's fingers curled into claws. 

"Stop it, stop it, stop it!"   Gerber cried.  Wilson did not look up as he started working the soot into the thick pile with his foot. 

"Gotta make sure its in there good... this will illustrate the deep cleaning action..." 

Gerber had had enough.  His face red, the veins on his neck bulging, he snarled at the interloper.  "Get out!  Get out of here now!"  He charged Wilson, grabbing his coat, twisting him, pushing him.  Gerber pulled him to the door and shoved him out, throwing all his equipment out after him.   

Finally, he was alone.  He threw the bolt on the door and leaned up against it, exhaling deeply.  He looked over at the devastation that had been wreaked on his condominium carpet.  Tears filled his eyes and his knees became shaky as he saw the tracts of soot.  Edging carefully around the perimeter of the room to avoid stepping on any of the filth, he retrieved his vacuum from the closet and began trying to undo the damage.  Frantically, he pushed and pulled the machine back and forth, on the ragged edge of hysteria. He filled up bag after bag of soot, carefully removing them from his machine, placing them in a larger plastic bag, and putting it carefully by the front door.  When he could no longer see any soot on the surface, he took his hand vacuum and crawled across the carpet, prying the fibers apart looking for particles that had fallen down deep into the matrix.  Then, he carefully sprayed carpet freshening solution over every square inch. 

                                                                                         ***

Sweating, shaking, exhausted, he was done.  The carpet was clean again.  He sat on that vast expanse of white for a while, running his hand over it.  Never again, he thought.  That's what I get for letting strangers in. I don't care what my therapist says.  Never again.   He looked at the clock and was startled to see that it was past two A. M.  He showered, changed, and was about to go to bed when he remembered the trash bag filled with vaccum bags by the door.  He went to his entryway and snatched it up.  It seemed heavier than what he would expect.  He shuddered to recall the image of that filth pouring out of Wilson's paper bag; but, in reviewing the scene, the amount of soot seemed to be significantly less than what was now in his hand.  Shrugging, he undid the latches on the front door and carried the bag out into the hallway.  Feeling like Perseus delivering the severed head of Medusa, he triumphantly carried the bag to the trash chute and stuffed it in.   

He marched back down the hallway to his condo. Pausing before the door, he was struck with a distinct sense of unease.  If it was so easy for this fellow to gain access to his space, what else could happen?  Why had he left the door open when he disposed of the trash?  Some miscreant could easily have slipped inside while he was focused on the trash chute.  He entered his condo tentatively, half-expecting to see a wild band of hoodlums laying waste to the furniture.  But all was quiet.  Shaking off his unease, he latched the door and went to brush his teeth.   

                                                                                     ***

Gerber awoke with a start and checked his bedside clock.  The red LEDs spelled out 4:18.  Gerber had been having dark dreams in which he was drowning is a whirlpool of turgid water.  Shaking his head to clear it of the disturbing images, he climbed from bed to relieve himself.  However, he stopped before entering the bathroom.  There, in the moonlight, he could see a spot of soot on the living room rug.  He walked over to it and bent down, probing it tentatively with one index finger.  He was annoyed at himself for missing it.  He stood and reached to the light switch, but recoiled from the touch of it.  The switch was coated in a thick layer of grease.  

He went to the kitchen to turn on the light there.  As the overhead fluorescents flickered on, Gerber was greeted with a sight that wrenched his stomach.  Soot was scattered all over his marble countertops.  The formica flooring was obscured by what looked like several cups of topsoil that had been spread evenly around the kitchen.  A glob of mud had been hurled against the refrigerator door, splattering there.  Gerber felt weak.  How did this happen?  How did that wicked man get into the kitchen without me noticing! Unless...  

Gerber spun back to the living room to see the tall, bulky silhouette of Wilson standing there. 

"You should have let me finish the demonstration," Wilson said.  In one hand he held a bulging paper bag.  He reached into it with the other hand and withdrew a fat handful of soot.  Staring at Gerber, he opened his hand, and the clump of filth fell to the carpet, exploding there with a miniature puff.   

"I'm calling the police," Gerber said, and moved for the phone.  Wilson reacted with surprising speed for such a large man.  Moving to intercept Gerber, he dashed to the phone, quickly reaching into the bag.  As Gerber's hand was a foot from the handset, Wilson tossed a handful of soot onto the telephone.  Gerber froze.  His mind was filled with the image of pressing that sooty piece of plastic up against his head, the particles getting into his hair, his ear, his mouth.  He could feel his bronchial passages tightening up.   

"Get out of here!"  he screamed, but Wilson just stood there, with a glassy look in his eyes and an empty smile.  Wilson made a dash for the door, but Gerber produced another handful of soot and tossed it on the door handle.  Wilson stood by, grinning, as Gerber stared at the door.  He could not touch it.  He could only think of the soot getting on his hand, getting lodged deep under his fingernails, trickling down his sleeve.  His hand was four inches from the metal.  He tried forcing his hand to touch the knob, but his arm would not move.  Then, he tried leaning his weight towards the door, forcing the reticent hand into contact by moving his entire body.  This only made his knees buckle, and he fell to the floor, landing heavily on the plush carpet.  The breath went out of him as he realized the carpet he was sitting on was once again spread with filth.   Wilson chuckled darkly. 

"I sell quality products, mister Gerber," he said, towering over Gerber's prone form.  "I would not lie to you."   

Gerber knew what he had to do.  Overcoming the burning in his eyes and the weakness in his legs, he leaped to his feet and ran for the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen.  He cringed as his bare feet registered the dirt on the floor; his stomach turned as he imagined the dirt clinging to the soles of his feet, the mud squishing between his toes.  Pushing those thoughts aside by sheer force of will, he crossed to the far side of the kitchen and snatched a large knife from the butcher's block.  Turning, he saw Wilson still standing there in the middle of the living room, hands at his side, the creepy vacant smile still playing on his lips.  Gerber pushed off from the counter and ran straight towards Wilson, the knife held high.  He ran across the dirt on the kitchen floor, but almost stopped when he realized he would track it onto the living room carpet. Gathering his strength, he forced himself into the living room, his muddy feet crushing the soil into the rug as he charged towards Wilson.   

Gerber was about to plunge the knife deep into Wilson's chest when he suddenly visualized Wilson's blood spilling out all over his carpet. The image brought him up short.   That would never come out, he thought.  Wilson stood there calmly, deliberately, staring at Gerber and smiling.  Gerber steeled himself, raised the knife high, took a deep breath... 

Just as Wilson raised his clenched right hand and tossed a large handful of soot directly into Gerber's face.  Gerber rocked backwards on his heels.  The grit was in his eyes, in his mouth, his sinuses, he had sucked it down into his lungs, it would get trapped in the alveoli in his lungs, they would get lodged there and serve as nucleation points for tumors, he could not breathe.

Wilson collapsed onto the floor in a paroxysm of coughing.  He dropped the knife and tried to wipe the soot from his eyes, but he only managed to grind the particles in deeper.  His throat was closing up, his sinuses were filling with mucus.  He coughed harder and harder, fighting to suck a few ounces of air in between explosive coughs.  A large hand gripped the hair on the back of Gerber's head and pulled it back, twisted it around, tipped it upwards.  Gerber imagined Wilson reaching back a huge fist, preparing to strike. He had to open his eyes, so he could see to ward off the blow.  He had to take a breath, so he could keep fighting.  With all his might, with every muscle on his face, he pried his burning eyelids and swollen mouth open. 

Just in time to see Wilson, towering over him, still smiling, upending the paper bag directly onto Gerber's face.   

                                                                                                       *** 

"Dammit," the taller policeman said.  "The rug is too white.  Can't see a thing." 

Chalk in hand, he was trying to outline the body on the cream-colored carpet.  "I think they keep some graphite powder in there, for that kind of thing," said the shorter policeman.   

"Oh yeah," said the taller one, rummaging about in the bag.  He withdrew a vial and began sprinkling the black powder around the body.  As the sooty substance outlined Gerber's rigid form, the shorter policeman shook his head and sighed.  "Hell of a way to go," he said.  "Just look at the expression on his face.  When I die, I hope it's nice and peaceful, in my sleep.  Not like this guy."