The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin

Author:Lisa M. Matlin [Matlin, Lisa M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

June 4

Dear Diary,

The first time I knew something was wrong with me was the day I lost my arms.

Okay, that sounds crazy, but hear me out. I was a teenager, lying in bed, reading a book I wasn’t interested in. Dad had mercifully left us a few months earlier and not once asked for custody rights. It was hard not to take that shit personally.

Sarah walked to school at 8:30, laughing loudly with the school kids who lived on our street, and I followed numbly behind. I spent my school hours looking out the window, holding my breath and pretending I was dead. Mum would retreat to her room at 4:00 P.M. and emerge red-eyed and drowsy at 8:00 to make dinner, but mainly she didn’t emerge at all.

I called them Ditto Days.

One Ditto night, Sarah snored quietly in her single bed, and absolutely everything was normal.

And then it wasn’t.

I snap the diary shut and drop the pen. It rolls off my desk, falls to the floor before coming to a stop next to my big toe. My heartbeat is frantic. My hands cold and jittery. I feel like I’ve been caught stealing. I remind myself that this is what I wanted. This is why I bought the diary this morning on one of my rare trips to town. But it doesn’t make it easier. This time I can’t just erase the words with a click of a button. This time they remain.

I lay there in the quiet dark and became intently aware of my forearms. The pale skin from wrist to elbow and everything underneath. I bolted up, heart pulsing, making noises like a panicked animal. Something was wrong with my arms. I held them out in horror and watched them disappear. It wasn’t like a flickering light. It was more like someone came along and hollowed them out, removing all the pulpy flesh and blood and bone. I felt like a gutted fish. I could not feel my arms, and it was pants-shittingly scary.

Maybe I yelled to Sarah for help. I don’t remember. All I know is she was suddenly there, wild-eyed and frantic at my bedside. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

I held my arms up, teeth chattering, trying to show her that they were hollow. That they were gone.

She ran for Mum, and I bit down hard on my left wrist, hyperventilating until the room spun in dizzying circles. I bit until I drew blood. And finally, I felt it. Yes, I could feel it. My arms were still there. Then what the fuck was all that about?

Mum arrived, bleary-eyed and annoyed, at the doorway, knotting her bathrobe with a vicious twist. And I held my bleeding arms out, palms facing up like a waiter balancing plates.

Days later, it happened again.

I was sitting quietly in the passenger seat, Mum blowing cigarette smoke out her window. My right forearm lay on my thigh, and the buttery sunlight lit it up until my arm glowed golden.

But I couldn’t feel a thing.

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