I arrived at the apartment a few minutes before the company’s scheduled time. No vans were in the lot, no trucks idling. Just the faint hum of the street and the occasional car passing.
I went into the main office, the same cramped space with a flickering fluorescent above the counter. Behind it, a woman glanced up from her paperwork. She looked at me like I was just another form to process.
“They came in extra early,” she said, her voice casual, almost too casual. “Finished before the scheduled time. Everything’s done.”
I paused, frowning. “Already? No one called?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t think it was necessary. All under control.”
The word control hung in the air longer than it should have. Something about it felt deliberate, precise, like a message in a sentence no one would read twice.
I left the office, the hallway stretching out in front of me. Empty, quiet, too quiet. No vans. No men with masks. Just the faint echo of footsteps that weren’t mine.
I stopped by Denise’s apartment. The door was ajar, and the hallway smelled faintly of stale air and old paper. Inside, her space was disheveled—bookcases shifted, furniture out of place, piles of things stacked in precarious towers.
I couldn’t tell if she’d done too much to prepare or if we hadn’t done enough. Maybe the company had needed to be in her apartment more than in my mother’s. The thought spun in my head, relentless, like the hum of a faulty light overhead.
I felt myself spiraling. My chest tightened. The apartments, the warnings, the red circles—they all blurred together. I wasn’t even sure I knew what was real anymore. Every detail seemed suspect, every shadow a potential signal.
I stood there a long moment, scanning the chaos, the faint echo of footsteps from the hall, the hum of fluorescent lights. It was too quiet, and yet everything in the room pressed at me, as if waiting for me to notice.
For now, there was nothing left to do but wait—and vacuum.
For the next two weeks, my siblings and I took turns stopping by in the evenings. The plan was simple: keep the floors clean, keep the bugs at bay, keep Mom safe.
She didn’t seem impressed. She welcomed the visits, sure, but there was a look in her eyes that said we were intruding—stealing from her TV time, rearranging her order of things. Judging her, maybe. Though we weren’t.
Sometimes I caught myself wondering if she felt embarrassed. Or maybe she was grateful, in her own quiet way. Maybe both.
Maybe I was the one being delusional. Maybe we overdid it. Maybe she would’ve been fine on her own, like Denise.
But as I left that night, locking the door behind me, I noticed something new taped to Denise’s door.
A single piece of paper.
A red circle drawn in marker.