Alec pretended to go along with Beef’s plans. He bought food at the grocery store that he knew he’d never eat. He could cook basic things, but he hated doing it. It was a lot easier to buy a pizza or eat a bowl of cereal. Alec reasoned that if the boxes of crunchy rice, wheat, corn, or oats were good enough for kids, they were fine for adults, too.

Beef helped carry the groceries inside. As he prepared to leave, Alec wanted to ask for the pills back, but he knew the answer he would get. He knew he hadn’t been on them long enough to be addicted. He didn’t even think about taking any until he found them again in the nightstand a week after Coral was gone.

What bugged him most was that he knew the pills were helpful. He didn’t care about them during the day. He wanted them when the sun started to go down. That’s when the house felt empty. That’s when he realized he didn’t have anyone left to call for a night out. The pills helped him not care about the night. They helped him fall asleep early, and the world was always a much better place the next morning.

After Beef left, Alec was happy that no one was around to nag him, but he was already dreading nightfall. It was November, and it got dark far too early. Fortunately, the night was still two hours away. Alec busied himself putting the groceries away. He looked at the head of cabbage and the bunch of broccoli and shook his head. He might as well have bought a fennel bulb or kohlrabi. He’d never eaten either of them as far as he could remember. In their whole, natural state, the cabbage and broccoli might as well have been just as foreign.

After Alec finished dutifully tucking all of the groceries into the cupboards and fridge, he pulled out a loaf of bread, shaved turkey, and American cheese. He did like sandwiches, and he knew that he’d eat them as something different until the bread or meat ran out.

Alec carried his plate to the living room and settled on the couch. He pointed the remote control at the TV and settled in to watch some ridiculous 20-year-old horror flick. The only surprising thing about the movie was the fact that the main character was a writer. He got carved up by the bad spirits in the end, but his presence made Alec think.

He hadn’t written anything since Coral arrived at the house. Sometimes the writing was cathartic. Alec hauled himself off the couch and ambled up the stairs to look for his laptop. It was in the nearly empty bedroom lying on the surface of an old desk. Alec remembered leaving it there when he got his last rejection letter. He’d submitted a story about the lighter side of his family’s Thanksgiving celebrations. Apparently, comedy was not his strength. While Alec waited for an answer, he’d started a much darker tale about other incidents in his childhood.

Alec wasn’t sure why he suddenly felt so compelled to return to his writing, but he didn’t even take the laptop downstairs. He plugged it in and settled into the desk chair. The room was empty of any other furniture. He’d meant to do something more with the room from the moment he moved in, but it never happened.

As he sat down, Alec glanced at the window on the far end of the room. The sun was starting to go down, and the outdoor light was growing dim. Bare tree branches danced in the breeze just outside the window.

Alec re-read what he’d written so far. He didn’t make a lot of progress. The story was about what he experienced as a child in the weeks before his parents split up for good. Friends told him for years that at least he didn’t see or hear his dad hit his mom, but Alec always wondered if there was much difference between that and what he did witness.

The memories of almost constant psychological warfare began flooding back. The house where Alec grew up had old-fashioned vents in the floor designed to circulate heat throughout the two floors of the building. That meant that Alec could easily hear conversations as they filtered up through his bedroom’s vent from the rooms down below.

On multiple occasions, Alec heard arguments between his parents descend into shouting matches. They always ended with one or both parents using their sons as an excuse for staying together. One of his parents, alternating between his mom and dad, would pull Alec or his older brother Jack out like a shield from the other. They were objects used for protection. “If you do that, you know what it will do to Alec.” Or they would say something like, “You can’t do that. They’ll take Alec and Jack away if you do that.”

Alec remembered the shouting matches fueling nightmares. In his dreams, shadowy figures came to the house and stole him from his bed in the night. They crept up to his bedroom, wrapped him up in sheets and blankets so tight that he couldn’t escape and left while his parents were still asleep. The most terrifying part of the nightmares was that Alec wasn’t upset by the strangers stealing him away. Instead, when he woke up in the morning, he was upset that he was still living with his parents.

Alec smirked to himself when he read back what he wrote. In his story, the young boy, named Seth, was terrified. He had the same nightmare three days in a row, and then it became real. Shadowy figures that talked like the bullies at school snatched him from his bed and shoved him into the floor in the back seat of a car. When they arrived at their destination, Alec had to stop writing. He knew that he would conjure up a horrific end for Seth if he continued.

By the time Alec stood up from the desk, it was dark outside. He turned out the ceiling light fixture and walked up to the window. An eerie glow from the street light illuminated the dark branches outside. In the summer, it was impossible to see anything beyond the leafy expanse of the maple tree. In November, Alec could see the house next door.

For the first time since moving in, he wondered what was going on in that house. He saw lights on in what he guessed were the living room and the kitchen. The upstairs was dark. Alec thought about Jensen making dinner in the kitchen while some program ran on the TV in the living room. Alec wondered if he was alone. That would be two men alone in two houses twice as big as what they needed.

Alec exited the spare office and planned to return to the living room below. He stopped in the bathroom on the way. In an almost habitual fashion, Alec opened the medicine cabinet and looked for Coral’s pills.

As he rummaged through the collection of pills, ointments, toothpaste, and shaving devices, he shouted, “Damn! Maybe you’re more fucked up than you think.”

Alec closed the medicine cabinet again and stared at himself in the mirror. He shuddered thinking that he looked at least ten years older than he did before Coral arrived. With the pale streaks of gray in his hair, he could be mistaken for 50 instead of having just turned 40.