When the woman from Housing knocked, I figured she wanted to sell me pest control. Or solar panels. Or Jesus. I can always tell by the clipboard.
“Ma’am,” she said—ma’am, like I was about to scold someone for leaving a wet towel on the floor—“we’re conducting an occupancy check.”
A man stood behind her, his shirt the color of mop water, the washed-out gray government workers think looks friendly. He held a tablet, my address glowing at the top, my name almost right, off by one letter.
Arguing over spelling never won anyone peace.
I let them in.
They went room to room, tapping walls and photographing outlets as if the house might confess something. The woman trailed a finger along the banister. “You’ve kept it up nicely,” she said. “Mr. Elias will be pleased.”
“Who’s Mr. Elias?”
“The tenant on record.”
After they left, the air smelled like melting plastic. I opened drawers, found my pinking shears, old twist ties, that bent spoon I never threw out. Everything looked fine, I guess, but it felt wrong, like the place had been rebuilt backward, with left where right should be, right where left belonged.
On the fridge, I found a Post-it note with my handwriting. It read: appointment confirmed. The loops were too loose for my cursive, so maybe I’d clicked some online I agree form inadvertently. The government changed files, after all. Maybe it now changed people, too.
That night, I dreamed the house split, quiet as a bone cracking in winter. In the morning, the kitchen reeked of melted plastic again. My chipped blue mug was nowhere to be found. A tin cup sat there instead, stamped Property of the Department of Residence Affairs.
By noon, I heard a key turn in the lock, smooth as butter, and a man rolled a suitcase through the front door. “Miss Carrie?” he asked, which isn’t even close to my name.
“I think you’ve got the wrong house,” I said.
He smiled like a social worker. “I’ve got the lease.” He handed me a laminated card that read 412 Ash Street. My address. The owner was listed as The State. Then he went up the stairs and moved into the guest room.
I spent days on hold with numbers that played a tinny flute tone on repeat. My lawyer—if you can call someone you pay in pizza a lawyer—told me the system showed I’d been relocated six months back. “They’ve got receipts,” he said.
“I never moved.”
“Then you’ll need proof you exist.”
So I sent the department photos of myself in the house—blowing out candles, opening presents under the Christmas tree, petting Minnie, my cat, as she curled on the radiator like a warm loaf. They wrote back: metadata unverifiable; possibly fabricated.
A week later, Minnie vanished. Not a single white hair left on the sofa.
Mr. Elias mostly stayed in his room. I heard him typing, fast, steady, like the house had given him orders. Once I asked, “Why are you here?”
“Everyone needs somewhere to live,” he said.
“This house is mine.”
He smiled, the kind that said you don’t know yet. “Then why does your name keep disappearing?”
Days blurred. Mail arrived for the Current Resident. None for me. My bank account locked itself. At City Hall, the clerk peered over her screen. “You’re listed as temporarily reassigned.”
“I’m right here.”
She glanced at the line of people behind me. “Are you sure?”
Outside, all the front doors on my block had grown small black eyes that blinked red in the dusk.
***
Mr. Elias invited me to dinner. He made rice and beans heavy on the cumin. “No reason we can’t be neighborly,” he said, telling me how he’d lived in the house before redevelopment. “They said the block was unsafe. Moved us out. When they rebuilt, my number came up again.”
Behind him, a pale rectangle marked the wallpaper where my grandmother’s clock had once hung.
“My mother was born in this house,” I said.
He nodded. “Maybe it’s yours in memory, but documents say otherwise.”
After that, I took to the porch. The air turned mean with cold, but it was still free. I watched the streetlights do their little dying act every night—blink, gone, blink, gone. New fences went up, strange cars parked and disappeared, people argued behind closed doors. A drone would pass overhead, dragging its yellow light from yard to yard. Sometimes it paused above me, gave me the once-over like a clerk scanning produce.
After a while, I stopped picking up when Housing called. The woman’s messages always began, We’d like to help you transition.
Transition to where? The moon?
***
The house forgot me. The thermostat wouldn’t listen. The lock refused my key. The floorboards went silent under my feet.
One sleepless night, I opened my laptop and searched real estate listings just to torture myself. There it was. My house. Two bedrooms. Safe neighborhood. Surveillance included. In one photo, a woman who looked just like me stood by the porch light, waving.
I gave up. I packed a coat, a toothbrush, a photograph of my family on a dock in a lake, all of us smiling in the hard sun. Then I walked through each room, memorizing each detail. In the entryway, I leaned into the wainscoting and whispered my name. The wood was pliable. I’d painted that wall a deep teal with my mother when I was twelve. “Color,” she said, “can change your life.”
At the door, Mr. Elias waited, arms crossed tight.
“Will you take care of this house?” I asked.
“I’ll keep it safe,” he said.
I stepped outside and eased the door shut. Snow drifted heavy, steady as static. When I reached the corner, the street was blank. I looked back, but my footprints were already gone.
