​I had been hearing things. 

Never anything sinister. No doors squeaking open or phantom steps down

the hall, nothing like that. But the noises, as far as I could tell, were not caused by physical disturbances of material reality. They were just sounds. Sounds my boyfriend couldn’t hear.

Most often I would hear the dissonant percussion of thunder on a sunny

afternoon, but—sometimes: a crack and thump of something heavy falling on the roof. When I’d check the exterior cams to assess the damage there would be none. No tree branch, no sagging gutter, just the echo of a thud in my ears. Once, I plummeted into a full-body chill when I streamed a song for maybe the thousandth time and heard new lyrics sung to a melody I knew by heart. 

It was disconcerting, but I’d gotten used to it. It was benign enough that I

didn’t live with my hair standing on end, and infrequent enough that I wasn’t questioning my sanity. As a kid, I’d had an overactive imagination that routinely scared my pants off, and perhaps this was just the grown-up equivalent of things that go bump in the night. 

I had other things to worry about. Namely, keeping the peace with my

boyfriend in a world where we couldn’t leave the house. 

We’d already been living together for about a year when the shelter-in-place

orders were issued. We met on one of those dating apps targeted to successful young professionals. Even among the multitude of profiles belonging to impressive men who wore designer suits and traveled to Iceland and summited mountains, Lucas stood out. He has a magnetic quality that somehow colors even his pictures. Dimpled cheeks, sculpted physique, tall tall tall. His amber eyes and shoulder-length black hair, shot through with premature gray, give him a fierce, cunning allure. Honestly, he’s the type of too-handsome guy I’d normally swipe left for out of self-preservation, knowing that in no universe would I have a chance with someone like him. But I was tipsy and doom-swiping and thought, what the hell. I literally gasped when I saw it was a match. 

For our first date he chartered a private jet and flew me to the beach where

we shared a bottle of fifty-year-old champagne in a little restaurant overlooking the pier. He sent flowers to my office every day, and every time he picked me up he brought a gift—a Louis Vuitton handbag that matched my eyes, Chanel perfume he couldn’t wait to smell on my throat, Louboutins that made me just the right height against his giant frame. It was like I had stepped into a fairy tale. Not only was he generous, but he was smart and funny and practically sparkled with health and charisma. So when, two months to the day after our first date, he asked me to move in with him, it was an easy decision. I said yes. And then when I admitted I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up my cozy little cottage, he said of course I shouldn’t have to, and he moved in with me instead, bringing his suits and his leather club chairs and his Italian espresso machine and his mahogany partner’s desk that filled up the office so completely that my desk moved to our room. I didn’t mind. He bought me a closet full of beautiful shoes and a crystal vase, which he restocked with fresh roses every Sunday. 

I didn’t realize how much he worked until we lived together. His job was

prestigious and demanding, with early mornings and late nights and even some weekends sacrificed on the altar of his clients’ demands. I realized also that he had never exactly told me what he did for a living, though I remembered something about finance from his dating profile. Having lived alone for so long, I was already used to doing all the chores and cooking on my own, and, because of my lighter workload, it made sense for those responsibilities to stay mine. I didn’t mind the work, but I did miss spending time together. He would get home at nine, ten, eleven, sometimes bringing steaks dripping with bloody marinade, sometimes with a gold-foiled box of French macarons, and sometimes empty-handed and starving. I never knew which it would be, so I got in the habit of having dinner ready for him, just in case.

Something else I didn’t know until he moved in: he was mean when he was

hungry, and he was hungry a lot. He’s a beast of a man, physically, so it makes sense that it would take a substantial diet to keep him satisfied. If I didn’t have something tasty at the ready, I would see the fury come over him like a flash flood, that fast and that deadly. Actually, it was more like something fell away from him. A mask that slipped off his face, offering me a brief glimpse of the primal rage that lay coiled inside. In the throes of that fury, he was an entirely different man, one who could berate and curse and scream and smash, one who saw me as the enemy. The kind of man for whom nothing was off limits. But then he would take a bite of my beef bourguignon and close his eyes, and his features would settle back into their handsome repose, and the sharpness would be swallowed up by his extravagant praise of my cooking.

After about six months, he suggested that I quit my job. He didn’t want me

to be overwhelmed with the housework and cooking, he said, and he worked enough for both of us. I was secretly relieved. I started going to the market every morning to browse for inspiration. I learned to cook lobster bisque and coq a vin and mushroom risotto and braised game hen. I baked meringues and souffles and profiteroles. 

I dreamed of houses made of food. 

I started hearing things.

But then, the lockdown. No more grocery trips. Ingredients were scarce and

meat was expensive. I had to downshift from spaghetti alla carbonara with homemade noodles to store-bought fettuccine and Preggo. Lucas sequestered himself in the office and took work calls night and day. His clients were not panicking, exactly, but the climate was tense. He made it clear that I was not to knock or disturb him when the door was closed, and, because he had no particular schedule, I had no way of knowing when he would come out. And oh, was he hungry. All the time he was hungry, and all the time he was angry, emerging from his office with a snarl, determined to sniff out a fight. I moved a chair to the kitchen and spent my days there, waiting. 

The thing is, our fights had always been intense—lots of crying, fleeing,

following, shouting—but they were infrequent because I kept him well-fed. But with the food shortages and general fraught nature of a life spent entirely indoors, I started to feel as though we were in one of those infinite time-loop situations: new day, same fight, rinse, repeat. No resolution, just an archive of hurtful remarks and a gallery wall of fist-shaped dents above our headboard. 

I hadn’t thought about the Cupboard in a long time, but one afternoon in

the bath it came back to me with abrupt lucidity. It had been a tense week, full of resentment and barbed comments that had culminated in a high-water-mark clash the night before. I needed to withdraw and lick my wounds in private, and thankfully Lucas never begrudged my self-care if it didn’t interfere with his own comfort. Baths in the master ensuite were a relatively safe indulgence because his office had its own bathroom. I couldn’t lock the door, of course—too suspicious—and closing it fully was a risk, but leaving it cracked toed the line between privacy and Lucas’s approval, so I settled for a mostly closed door and the illusion of solitude. I set the tap to boiling, dumped in some Dr. Teal’s, told Alexa to shuffle my soundtrack, and lowered myself in, determined not to think about the fight or anything else. 

The day before had been a Saturday, and one of Lucas’s rare days off. We

slept in and enjoyed a luxurious morning in bed. His mouth was ravenous and I was there to satisfy, skin and teeth and lips and flesh. After, I slipped into my wine-red velvet robe, a six-month anniversary gift, and padded to the kitchen. Food shortage be damned, I thought; a fight-free morning was worth celebrating. I piled toast and eggs and breakfast sausage and raspberry jam on a tray. I brewed a fresh pot of blackest coffee and poured it into two bone-china teacups. I took it all back to the bed and fed him bites of toast and forkfuls of egg and sausage. His teeth glinted as he licked a carmine spot of jam from his lower lip and then leaned down to press his mouth against mine. 

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, “what have I done to deserve you?”

I smiled into his lips. His praise was all I wanted.

In the afternoon, Lucas read the news in his office, while I brought my last

two cups of white flour out of the pantry. I wanted to surprise him with something special. His favorite of all my desserts was a humble gingerbread cake, a recipe passed down from my German grandmother. I would make it in a bundt pan and drizzle orange cardamom glaze over the top as it cooled. Then I would start on dinner, something hearty and flavorful, and he would eat and be happy. And finally, I would produce the cake and he would sigh in satisfaction and call me Little Red, the nickname he used when he was most pleased with me.

I was setting the table that evening when he ambled into the kitchen and

leaned a hip against the stove, peering into the pots.

“What is this that I smell?” he asked quietly. 

Indian food, I told him. 

“Look,” I chirped, “homemade naan! I figured out a recipe with whole

wheat flour.” 

I worked all afternoon, I did not say. Be pleased with me, I did not say.

His response was soft and measured: hadn’t he informed me repeatedly that

he does not tolerate spicy foods? Didn’t this decision to make a goddamn curry prove that I ignore his needs and desires? He told me calmly that I didn’t love him. 

“What?” I said it too sharp, my eyebrows raised too high as I turned too

quickly from the cutlery drawer I was bent over. It was the wrong reaction, but I was blindsided. Our day together had been tender and peaceful, totally free from the usual warning signs.

“How do you expect us to have a successful relationship when you never

listen to me?” He pushed off from the counter, arms thrown in the air to match his growing volume. His eyes glowed yellow.

“I’m so sorry, Lucas, I wasn’t thinking!” Shit shit shit.  I angled my body

towards him, attempting conciliatory posture. “Next time I do meal planning, will you give me some ideas for what you’d like to eat?” 

It was not the right apology.

“Damn straight you weren’t thinking,” he hissed. “The real question is

whether you think at all. You’ve just proved, once again, that you don’t think about me.” He was agitated, pacing and snarling. “And what about our relationship? Have you noticed that I’m the only one who’s willing to talk about it? You’re always saying you’ll work on it but here we are again.”

I knew I had one more chance to smooth this over before it became an all-

night affair.

“I know babe, you’re right, I need to try harder and I will, I promise.” I

pasted what I hoped to be a penitent smile over my face. “Let’s order dinner. I’ll save this for my lunches this week! What do you feel like tonight? Pasta? Steaks?” The pitch of my voice was rising like helium.

“It’s too late now, you stupid bitch!” He was shouting now, right up in my

face as I stepped back against the counter. “I was hungry an hour ago and now I’m fucking starving.” His teeth gleamed white against a red, red tongue. “How about you listen to me for once and do something right the first time! But who am I kidding, you’re too lazy to think about anyone  besides yourself.”

I tried to sustain a neutral expression but I’ve never been good at stopping

the tears. They made  wide tracks over my cheekbones.  

He gave me an appraising glance, and his voice softened. “You do know

that’s why your friends don’t talk to you, right?” He caressed my chin with his thumb and forefinger. “You’re a selfish person and everyone knows it. It’s why my family’s never liked you.” 

He dropped his hands to the counter on either side of me and draped his

extravagant body over mine like a comma. I stood very still as his breath lapped my ear, my hairline, my chin, enveloping my face with his decadent scent of cedar and bergamot and something else I could never identify, a cloying sweetness that bordered on rancid. Then my eyes snapped open as I felt his tongue, wet and plump and firm, sliding from chin to cheek, first the left, then the right, swallowing up my fat tears with a low moan. Like a dog, I thought, and shuddered. Leaning back to meet his gaze, I saw his face rearrange, a predatory smile lifting the corner of his mouth into that dimple I’d once found charming. No—the thought settled on me uninvited—not like a dog. Had his canines always been so sharp, so white and long?

“Babe,” he groaned, thrusting his hips into mine so I could feel his hardness,

his weight and strength. “I don’t know how such a repulsive girl can taste so good. All I want—” his mouth grazed the shell of my ear “—is a little gratitude.” His teeth nipped my earlobe. “Is that too much to ask?”

I shivered again, feeling chilled and empty. The night had changed course

and I knew from experience there was no escape. I didn’t want this, but everyone knows there’s no arguing with a wolf. I could run, but he loved to chase. And when he caught me—would it be a punishment he was after? Would it be shouting and blaming and teeth? Or was he seeking pleasure tonight? There was no way of knowing, and both options filled me with a dread so potent it turned my stomach sour. So, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I left my body like I had done many times before, and went to a safe place behind my eyes.

That’s the last I remember. I woke hazy in the late morning, Lucas still

sleeping heavily beside me with one leg slung over mine in a possessive cage. It wasn’t difficult to slide out of bed without disturbing him. He always sleeps like the dead after his rages, like he’s purged of something powerful. Standing just inside my closet, I felt for bruises, testing my flesh for tenderness that might jog some recall of the night before. No contusions—I was lucky. But I was also aware of a certainty, sitting thick and undigested in my bowels, that something bad had happened. I blanched at the thought of what might lie behind the locked vault of my mental furlough.

Ignoring the faint scratching sounds on the periphery of my hearing, I

studied Lucas from across the room, wondering if it’s possible for men in their thirties to die in their sleep. Unlikely. I thought longingly of how still the house would be without him. If I stayed quiet, I might still have an hour before he woke.

In the kitchen, no signs of disturbance. Chairs tucked in, placemats straight,

table set for two, food still on the stove. What a waste. I dumped it all, the warm aroma of spices curling around me as I spooned rice and chutney and curry into the bin. I’d have to take out the garbage before Lucas got up or he’d for sure comment on the stink, but I figured I had time for coffee first. A cat’s yowl, shrill and unworldly, came streaking through the sealed window as I ran the kettle under the faucet. I shivered. We have so many strays in the neighborhood that I didn’t bother to look up from my forensic analysis of last night’s phone activity. No new texts, no outgoing calls.

I settled into my morning ritual as the water heated: check daily mortality

rates, check social media, check email, check headlines, glance outside to check the weather. Not that going out was really an option, but old habits, etc. Outside, the same crispy grass, same bank of dead leaves, same dusty patio furniture, same blanket of chartreuse coating every surface. I’d long since become accustomed to its muzzy glow. Across the backyard, lining the fence, was a row of apple trees that had first made me love this house. Now leafless and skeletal, I wondered if they would ever fruit again. With their new patina the trees could have been spun from gold.

Was that the sound of Lucas stirring? I jumped for the trash bag, tearing the

pull handle in my haste to rip it from the bin and banish the scent of last night’s blowup. I thought I could just hear the high-pressure stream of piss entering a toilet bowl as I fumbled the bag into a knot. Hefting it across the kitchen, I pulled the back door open with one hand poised to flip the light switch, and a cold tide ran down me, scalp to tailbone. 

The garage was already awash with light. 

The garage door was raised, open wide to the world and I couldn’t

remember the last time I’d even used the car or had a reason to open the door. Lucas said it was too much of a risk.

And I wasn’t wearing my respirator. And we’d never upgraded the back

door seal because of all the money I’d forked into the garage containment system.

A silky yellow dusted the car and floor and shimmered phosphorescent in

the air, and I heard a line from a fairy tale murmur past me.

“Creep in, and see if it is properly hot.” Did I whisper it myself?

I heaved the garbage out and clicked the garage door closed in one swift

gesture, slamming the back door and locking it with trembling fingers. Unease bloomed heavily in my belly. Should I tell Lucas? Maybe he took a drive last night and forgot to close the door when he came back. Or, worse, perhaps I had forgotten at some point during the last week or month and it had been open this whole time, a scenario I would certainly rather keep to myself. Did he hear me slam the door?

The air felt sticky and I tamped down the urge to pant like an animal. The

bedroom door was still shut. Glancing around the kitchen, my eyes caught on the pan of gingerbread and I could have cried with relief. I grabbed a clean mug from the dishwasher and filled it with coffee so dark it was opaque, adding a splash of cream that swirled through the oily surface like caramel. I scooped a thick wedge of cake onto a plate and took a deep breath. Plate in one hand and mug in the other, I toed gingerly down the hall and paused before the bedroom, giving myself an inner shove before opening the door. 

“Lucas?”  I sang, poking my head around the corner, “I brought you

breakfast.”

He wasn’t there.

He must be in his office already. It was a bit early to start work for a Sunday,

but then again, this was Lucas. Outside the closed office door, I heard the tap of his keyboard and the muted strains of Chopin’s Nocturnes. He liked to start his days with Op. 9, No. 1, swearing that it sharpened his focus better than coffee. Apparently, he hadn’t heard my kitchen antics after all, praise be to all harkening gods. 

I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I retreated to the bedroom,

left the door cracked, took a large bite of gingerbread, and decided to treat myself to a bath. Maybe the hot water would disperse this unsettled feeling that lingered in my stomach.

In went the Epsom salt, the lavender bubbles, the scalding water, the music:

I sifted them together like incantations. Fragrance and steam and familiarity were an effective spell; by the time I lay in the bath with the water lapping over my ears, I was feeling hidden and safe. 

I bobbed up reluctantly when my breath ran out, and a new song started

just as my ears surfaced, a song with a plunging, insistent bass line. It was a song I’d never heard before and I was startled; something about the newness and the aggressive bass and the timing of my rise from the water left me briefly but vividly disoriented. My sense of self guttered like a snuffed candle. 

Even as I was registering confusion and surprise, I felt something shift in

me. It was a physical sensation, a half turn in my gut like a key unlocking a bolt I hadn’t known was there. Strange, I thought, and sank under the water again. As the water closed over my eyes I had a vision of the dark bunkbeds of my childhood and the quiet house that opened beyond the secret door. 

We moved a lot when I was a kid, a new house every six months or so. It felt

normal to me. My mother had a lot of love to give and very little luck with men. Or, more accurately, she had a little luck with a lot of men. When one romance expired, it was time to move along to the next town, city, state, away from soured memories. Big sister and I would pack up the house while Mother wept in her room. It never took long. We traveled light. I had a backpack full of treasured junk I brought to each new bedroom, carefully portioning my stash of Blu-Tack between pictures I’d arrange over each new wall—the same fleet in a fresh formation. At night as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, I would hold my watch to my ear and listen to the measured tock of seconds passing by. I had recurring dreams of finding secret passages and hidden rooms in houses I’d already lived in, waking up with a throbbing bereavement. My loss was always right beneath the surface then. I hadn’t learned to bury it yet.

The Cupboard fantasy started when I was about twelve. It was my most

private treasure, traveling with me from house to house. In bed, darkness cloaking me like a shroud, I would close my eyes and imagine an alcove shelf set in the wall next to me, the size of a milk crate. Quietly, without waking Sister in the bunk below, I would swing open a small door concealed in the left wall of the space and crawl in. It was a tight fit, but I could angle my way through headfirst with a little wriggling. Once through, I was careful to close the door behind me, and then I was alone in a place no one else knew about. 

It was a hidden house, a whole secret house, quiet and spacious and mine. 

It was always daylight in the secret house, and it was always empty. The

hidden door opened into an upstairs bedroom with shiny hardwood floors and two twin beds set against the long wall opposite. Other elements of the floorplan changed with my imagination, but this room was always the same. I imagined myself lying on my back in a generous rectangle of afternoon sun, fingertips gently stroking the varnished wood, breathing in the peace of a place that would always be mine.

Decades later, the power of my fantasy was strong as ever. I was pierced with

longing: my kingdom for a tranquil place to be alone.

Later, after the bath was drained and I was towel dry, I saw that Lucas had

used the last of the toilet paper roll and left the cardboard empty for me to replace. Housework was my job, yes, but this level of casual disregard had become his standard practice and it wore on me. But would I mention it? No. I would cede to him once again, completing the task myself with festering bitterness gathering around my temples. 

The extra toilet paper was stored in a cupboard next to the built-in vanity,

the old-fashioned kind with a hatch for dropping your dirty clothes through and a proper door beneath the hatch for fetching the full basket out on laundry day. The combined doors meant the interior space was large enough for a grown person to comfortably sit up in (a great hiding place, I had often noted) and would have been better utilized for blanket or pillow storage, but I had deposited the TP there soon after moving in and there it had stayed. 

I opened the cupboard door and sank exasperated to my heels, angry with

Lucas for his selfishness and angry with myself for enabling him and for being a perpetual coward, too afraid to confront him about these things and too afraid to leave him. And if I did leave him, how would I ever get him out of my house? It was my name on the mortgage after all, not his, and boy, did that rankle him. Our first big fight was right after I sent him a Venmo request for rent. Nothing like money to peel back the romance and reveal what suppurates beneath: in this case, resentment and accusations about how all I wanted was his paycheck. 

I imagined using a crowbar to prise loose a Lucas-sized barnacle from the

wall of the office, and it made me tired. I was tired from the bath and tired of never leaving the house and too tired to think about what it meant that I was the kind of person to choose a partner who liked to belittle me. And as I leaned in to grab a roll of toilet paper from the back of the ridiculously large cupboard, I noticed for the first time that —

(I notice that)

— there is a gentle divot around the interior perimeter of the Cupboard

wall—the left wall—and it looks like a painted-over gap. And as I peer closer at the paint-encrusted hinges of what looks remarkably like a hidden door, the invisible bolt in my gut twinges again with a sharp tug. I am suddenly out of breath. 

I walk quickly, so quietly on my bare feet, to the bedroom door and close it.

I can hear the muted sound of Lucas’s conference call down the hall and wonder for a brief, delusional second if I dare lock the door. No. I scramble through a desk drawer until I find an old metal ruler. I’m half running now with my damp feet, one hand clutching my bathrobe closed and the other in a death grip around the ruler, and now I am back at the Cupboard, crouching to clamber inside. I thumb open my phone flashlight and use the sharp ruler edge to break the painted seal in three even slashes. I marvel at the steadiness of my hands in contrast with my bounding heart, even as I am slipping the ruler through the gap and leveraging the door open with a crackling sigh.

The door is open. 

The door is open but I cannot see through because it opens flush with the

Cupboard entrance and I am on the outside. I see that I must climb inside before I can peek into the secret passage, and my stomach twinges again with anticipation or fear, because the door will either open onto the vanity drawers directly abutting it—or it will not.

I don’t hesitate. I ease the inner door mostly closed and crawl into the

cupboard, pulling the outer door shut behind me, and now I’m glad I left the flashlight on because it is suddenly dark, and pulling the secret door open around my cumbrous knees and torso is a trickier challenge than I had anticipated but if I hold my breath and loosen my limbs I can just manage and there, now the door is open. 

The door is open but I cannot see through, and even with the flashlight

beaming directly into the blackness it is inky and impenetrable and I see that I must climb inside, and—oh god—I think I hear footsteps down the hall.

I do not hesitate.

I push my head and shoulders through, and the darkness lightens, but

everything is dim and blurry, an unfinished sketch until I wriggle the rest of my body across the liminal threshold. As I jackknife my knees into my chest and shimmy through a clumsy half-spin into a squat, the room resolves itself around me. Glossy varnished wood floors the color of warm gingerbread. Buttery sunlight flowing in from windows on the narrower ends of the room to my left and right. Opposite me, a long bare wall with two twin beds made up in neat candy-pink sheets. 

I crawl to the center of the room, careful to close the cupboard door behind

me. I’ve read enough fairy tales to know this is perhaps not wise, but I also cannot abide the thought of a gaping black maw behind my back. My heart is thrumming like an outboard motor and I’m dizzy with excitement as I spread my fingers wide on the warm floor and turn my face to the sunny window. I know this is the room constructed by the power of my childhood dreams, just as I know there is a whole house beyond the arching doorway to my left, and that a kitchen down the hall will overlook a grassy ridge with the sea in the far distance. Perhaps the kitchen will be full of pomegranates or porridge. Perhaps it will be empty. Perhaps there will be a sink full of tropical fruit from my childhood. I already know I will eat it all when I come back with a hammer and boards and a handful of nails.