The sun had set a little over an hour ago as I pulled my car into the apartment complex's parking garage. I worked as a design engineer for Rockwell Aerospace; I had been with the company since completing my engineering degree at Florida State University. I lived by myself; I had always been something of a loner and had just never seemed to find a lady who was interested in me past the first date. I was twenty-four and wasn't really worried about being single, I knew eventually I would find someone I just hoped that it would be sooner rather than later. I killed the headlights of my car and got out. The parking garage was fairly dark, though there were lights. I walked towards the mail lobby, fumbling with my keys as I went. It was strange, I only had five keys, but I never seemed to be able to find the one that I was looking for. Eventually I found my mailbox key and prepared to check my mail as I opened the door to the lobby.
I opened up the small metal box, there were a couple of letters, and junk mail as it turned out and a key to one of the big delivery boxes that was nearby. When the post office had to deliver something to big for the boxes, they put it in the big ones and left a key in our little box. I wondered what it is that I might have gotten and opened up the big box. There was just a plain brown cardboard box inside. I pulled it out and looked at. It was odd, it had my name and address on it, but no return address and the writing was such that I did not recognize it. The writing had this odd flourish to it that reminded me of some of the Constitution remakes that you could buy at any souvenir shop in Washington. I let the door swing closed and put the cardboard box under my arm, I figured maybe it was something that I had won on an E-Bay auction and just did not remember.
I lived on the seventh floor and the elevator ride up was uneventful. The doors dinged open and I walked down to my apartment. I flipped on the light switch as I closed the door behind me. I had a fairly small apartment. Technically it was a two bedroom, but I used the second bedroom as an office of sorts. It was a good idea, but it ended up being a junk collection room. The furnishings were somewhat typical of a single guy, I had found my couch at a garage sale and the bed came from the Salvation Army store. The couch was this really odd red color, or at least it had been, it had become more of a brownish color by the time I got it. It had no holes in it and I found it to be pretty comfortable so it worked for me. I did not have any other chairs, though I did have a little coffee table that was covered with engineering magazines that I wanted to read but never found the time. Against the far wall, though, there was no second hand stuff. I had a twenty-seven inch TV, with a two thousand dollar surround sound stereo system. I suppose that my priorities were a little odd, but I was single and was not too concerned about other things. The bedroom only had a brass frame bed and a little wooden dresser. I only had three of the six drawers filled with clothes. I wanted to go clothing shopping, but always got sidetracked when I did go.
I dropped the junk mail in my trashcan, making a mental note to empty it in a little while. I dropped the box on the coffee table and went back into my small kitchen. I had not dirty dishes, which was due to the fact that I used paper plates, plastic forks and always had take out dinner of some kind. I opened the refrigerator; there was half a gallon of milk that looked kind of chunky, a jar of mayonnaise, several packets of ketchup and mustard and a few boxes of pop tarts. In the door of the fridge were several bottles of St. Pauli Girl and I grabbed one of them. I placed the bottle against the side of the counter, with a quick motion I hit down on the top and the cap popped off to rattle on the linoleum floor.
I sipped from the bottle as I walked back to the living room and dropped myself down on the couch. The couch made this creaking noise that it always does, but the noise was quickly lost as I turned on the TV and switched to Sci-Fi. Start Trek was just starting and as the opening credits ran I kicked off my shoes putting my feet on the table. I loosened my tie; I was wearing a white dress shirt and a pair of Levi's jeans. As I shifted my feet to get them comfortable I knocked the cardboard box off the table and it feel with a dull thud.
"Forgot about you." I mumbled under my breath as I reached for the box and put it on my lap. I wedged my beer bottle between the cushions of the couch and stared at the box some more. Finally I decided to find out what was in it, though I did wait for a commercial break first. The tape peeled off of it very easily and I opened the flaps on the box. Inside I found the typical collection of Styrofoam popcorn. I rummaged through the packing until I found something cold and metallic feeling. I pulled it out of the box and dropped the box on the floor.
"How odd." I said to myself as I placed it on my lap and lifted my beer from between the cushions. It was some kind of brass looking thing. It kind of looked like a teakettle, except it was shorter and longer. The brass was quite tarnished on it, not that it mattered as everything in my house was tarnished except for the electronics. "Don't know what the hell I'll do with you." I told it just as my show came back on and the whatever it was was quickly forgotten. After channel surfing for a few more hours, I decided to go to bed and left the odd brass thing sitting on the kitchen counter.
Most of my days at work are uneventful. As a designer I very rarely have to talk to people outside of our design committees. I spent most of my time staring at CAD drawings on a computer screen and checking various calculations. After spending another day staring at the new design profile for a solar panel on the Space Station Freedom, I began my short drive home.
Once again it had already gotten dark by the time I got home. My mailbox was completely empty this time; I had not even received any junk mail. The elevator seemed to never want to come down to the ground floor. Every time it would start down it would start going back up for some odd reason that I could not figure. I sat down on the little bench and waited for the elevator to decide what it wanted to do.
Eventually the elevator did allow me to go up to my floor. After getting out of the elevator I stared at the doors and watched the lights. It immediately went back down to the ground floor and stayed there. "Bastard" I said as I laughed at the elevator.
I opened the door to my apartment and immediately knew that something just was not quite right. The first thing that I noticed was that the trashcan had been emptied. I noticed this as I dropped the cap of a fresh beer into the trash. "Did I do that?" I asked myself and wandered into the living room. The coffee table, while it was not cleared off, was organized. The magazines were all in neat stacks that revealed the title of each issue, they were even organized into relevant categories. I had been meaning to do that for several months, but just never got myself motivated to do it. I sat on the couch and stared around at the room, everything that I had been meaning to do had been done, I just could not remember doing it.
The next day was a Friday. Usually I left work early on Friday's, but I had lost track of the time and ended up leaving an hour later than usual. As I drove home, I decided to stop off at a Blockbuster video and see if there were any new movies out that I had wanted to see. I browsed around their selection, but most of the movies I had already seen. As I wandered around I noticed a young lady who looked as though she was about the same age that I was. She had short blonde hair, I usually did not even notice blondes, but she was wearing a short skirt that got my attention. I wanted to watch her and see if maybe she'd bend over or something, but did not want to be an obvious pervert. I left Blockbuster with my hands in my jean pockets trying to hide the growing hard on that had developed from just thinking about the short skirt. I am sure that I had an odd grin on my face as I neared my car. I thought that it would have been nice to have someone to go home to, but since I did not, I figured that I would just log onto the Internet and spend the evening browsing around the various porn sites.
I had received a new stack of junk mail in my mailbox and I carried it up to my apartment with me. The elevator had decided to be nice to me that evening and it was waiting on the ground floor when I got there. I dropped my keys as I tried to unlock my door, and then dropped my mail as I tried to pick up my keys. I laughed and decided to just drop them both to the floor and start all over. After finally getting the door open, I tossed the mail into the trashcan while the door swung closed behind me. I opened the refrigerator then closed it and stared at the counter. On the kitchen counter was a bottle of St. Pauli Girl that had just been opened. I could tell that it had just been opened as there was still the little cloud coming out of the bottle that happens when you first opened it. I watched as a drop of water rolled down the side of the bottle until it came to rest against the counter top.
"That's odd." I said with a frown. I gazed around the room for a minute then looked back at the bottle. I picked it up and looked at it from different angles. I sniffed the bottle and sure enough it was exactly what it looked like. "Oh well," I said to myself with a smile, the frown now gone, "what the hell."
I took the bottle with me as I wandered into what would be the second bedroom of my apartment but was in actuality my little office. I took a sip from the bottle and turned on the lights. The bottle stopped in midair and I stared in shock. The room that had been a complete mess a week ago was clean and organized. I was almost positive that I had not cleaned the room, but everything was exactly as I would have done it had I cleaned it. I was one of those people who had a really strange method of organizing things, yet the stuff in the room was exactly as I would have organized it. I sat down in front of the computer and spun around in the chair just looking at the room. I took a long drink from the beer and could not help but laugh. I must have started cleaning the house in my sleep, as it was the only logical explanation that I could come up with. I had conveniently decided not to include the open beer into the puzzle of the clean house. However, when I spun back to face the computer, I could not help but include the bottle. As I saw the computer screen, I saw that it was already connected to the Internet and that the front page of my favorite adult site was on the screen. I put the bottle down and sat back, I wanted to laugh but I was too confused. I began patting myself on the head, "C'mon, you are trained to be logical, figure this out." I told myself. I stood up and grabbed the bottle of beer as I walked back to the living room.
