Chapter 8: An Unexpected Guest

I woke up from the sound of my door being kicked in.

Or not, it wasn't. It was just someone knocking on it very passionately.

Still a little bit disoriented from sleep, I rose from the bed and shivered in the morning cold. Or was it noon already? My head was pulsing mercilessly from the hangover, and it felt like some small mammal had crawled into my mouth and died.

As far as awakenings go, this one wasn't optimal.

'Coming!'

The knocking stopped, thank Heavens. I felt around on the floor, searching for my jeans, and breathed in sharply when a sudden burst of pain shot through my left hand. There was a nasty burn on my palm where it touched the blue-eyed man's sizzling hot skin.

Shit. That really happened.

I put on some clothes, making an honest attempt to make myself look half-decent, and opened the door.

'Hey Matt! Rise and shine!'

I blinked a few times, trying to decide whether Claire standing at my doorstep was a hallucination or not. Then I raised my hand, reflexively, and smoothed my hair.

'Hey, Claire.'

There was a big box behind her, almost as tall as Claire was. I blinked a few more times, looking positively dumbfounded.

'What are you doing here?'

'Bringing you this.'

She pointed to the box.

'No, I mean... how do you know where I live?'

'Oh, that! Nikki told me.'

'... Who?'

'Nikki, the waitress? I went by the bar in the morning. You weren't there, so I talked to her a little bit. She's cool, man! Anyway, I asked her where to find you, and she looked it up.'

I frowned.

'She just... told you where I live?'

'Sure! Why? Is it, like, a big secret?'

I guess it wasn't. I mean, I never made an effort to make it one and it was recorded in my employee file. It's just that not a lot of people have ever shown up at my door.

'Are you going to let me in or what?'

I reflexively looked back, trying to remember if there was anything to hide in my flat, like a big neon sign with the words 'BEWARE OF A WRAITH' on a wall. Or something. Of course, there wasn't, so I moved away from the doorframe.

'Sure, come on in.'

She did, dragging the box with her, and looked around with curiosity.

'Welcome to my humble abode, I guess.'

My apartment wasn't much to look at. It was one room and a kitchen. The room was mostly empty: there was a bed, a clothes cabinet, a desk littered with a wild assortment of different types of puzzle cubes, a chair, and a bookshelf. Books were spilling out of it, standing in heaps on the floor, on top of the cabinet, even serving as a prop for the bed where one of its legs had broken off.

Claire took the picture in, noting the number of books, and shook her head.

'Gee. Why am I such a nerd magnet?'

I closed the door.

'You're an aspiring sorceress, right? Nerds and sorcery go well together.'

I returned to the bed and fished out a black notebook from under the pillow. The pen was tucked between its pages.

'What are you writing?'

I gave her a quick look, trying not to lose concentration.

'That's my dream journal.'

'Dude. You have a DREAM JOURNAL?'

I managed to put the fading memory of my nightmares on the page just as it disappeared, and relaxed.

'Yup.'

'WHY?'

The honest answer was because I was scared of not remembering my dreams. I've heard that it's how the Disease starts: of course, it was just a rumor. But a persistent one. Many of the wraiths I knew tried to document their dreams in one way or another. Sometimes I wrote them down, sometimes I drew sketches of faces and places I saw in my dreams.

I couldn't tell that to Claire, though. Now, what reason would a sane person have to be obsessed with their dreams?

'It's, uh... just an interesting thing to have, you know.'

She was very amused.

'Can I read it?'

The thought made me shiver all over.

'That's not a good idea.'

Now there was a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

'Why? Did you dream something naughty?'

'What? No...'

'Like, about somebody I might know?'

'That's not it at all!'

'Your mouth says 'no'. But your eyes say...'

'No they don't!'

She laughed.

'Relax, Matt. I'm just yanking your chain. I don't really want to read about your depraved dreams.'

'Well, good. Anyway...'

I took a deep breath, trying to take the situation under control. First, be polite and offer her a... a beverage? Then find out why she's here.

Why WAS she here? Alone and announced? Having Claire so near to my bed put some thoughts in my head, but I tried to squash them. Any man knows that you can't trust these thoughts.

Unless sometimes you can?

'Uh... do you want coffee?'

She gave me a suspicious look.

'Why, you want to poison me?'

Oh, right. Claire had a thing about my coffee.

'Say what, though. This box is hella heavy, and I was carrying it around for half a day. Worked up a real appetite. Do you have, like, human food? Or do you alien robots just charge yourself from the power socket?'

Food, sure. That I could do.

'I can make something. How about fried eggs?'

'Perfect!'

She smiled, took off her jacket and sat on the chair.

'What are you waiting for?'

'Right.'

I put the dream journal back under the pillow and went to the kitchen. There, I put a kettle and a pan on the stove and opened the fridge.

'How many eggs?!'

'... How many you've got?!'

Right.

I cracked the eggs, poured them into the pan and came back to the room. Claire was looking over my puzzle cube collection with a strange look on her face.

'One day I'll find out what your geometrical obsession is all about, Matt.'

I shrugged.

'It's just something that helps me relax.'

'Nope, that's not it. Like, what even is this thing?'

She pointed to an unsolved Golden Cube standing proudly at the center of the table. It looked like a chaotic explosion of geometric figures made of mirror shards, or a pool of liquid gold frozen in the moment of some weird magnetic anomaly. It was pretty impressive, if not formidable. But in the solved state it did, indeed, formed back together into a neat reflective cube.

'That's a Golden Cube.'

'A what? Dude. There's no way that this shit has any relation to a cube of any kind.'

'Well, it does, actually. Although it is more of a skewb than a traditional puzzle cube. But more of a super skewb, you know? The point is, the pieces are not color-coded, they actually each have a unique geometrical shape, which means that there's only one right position for each of them. It looks cool, but it's not that hard, actually.'

'I don't believe you.'

I sighed and picked up the Golden Cube. After a minute or so of tinkering with it, it was assembled back to the magnificent form it was meant to be.

'See?'

'Uh-uh. I see that 'it just helps me relax' is total BS, that's what I see!'

She laughed.

'Jesus. A super skewb? Do you hear yourself?'