It’s Monday. Rush hour. You’re headed home after a weekend-long business trip. Tired and ready to sleep until Wednesday. You’re only about twenty minutes away from your apartment, but you’re stuck in traffic. Unable to find any music on the radio that gets your foot tapping, you keep scanning until you land on a local news station. You turn up the volume. The anchorwoman on air is reporting about a missing person in your area. Not only in your area, but in your neighborhood. The anchorwoman then says the apartment building the missing person lives in. Your apartment building. After hearing her first name, you remember speaking with the person the other day on the elevator. It was your first time meeting her.
You call your roommate and ask what he wants to eat for dinner. “We can get whatever you want. It’s on me.” He says.
Dinner flees your mind, and the missing person invades her way in. “You hear about the girl that’s gone missing from our building?” You ask him.
“No, but that explains the cops.” Your roommate replies.
After the slog of traffic, you finally arrive home. Upon your entrance, you notice a mailbox is open. The thought of the missing person flashes through your head again. Was it hers? You can’t remember. She lives on your floor, but you’re unsure of her apartment number. You brush it off and head upstairs to your apartment.
Down the hall, you hear voices on a radio. The police are down there, standing in front of an open apartment door. It could have been hers, though you aren’t completely sure. It had to be, though.
You head inside your place, closing the door behind you. You turn and look through the glass peephole and see the police walk by. As you turn back around, you immediately notice a drastic change in the apartment’s appearance. The wall behind the cream-colored couch is a new color. It’s dark green, changed from what was the most neutral of grays, and doesn’t match the rest of the furniture. It wasn’t like that when you left town on Friday.
“I’m home. Where are you?” You yell out.
A voice answers from afar. “What do you think?”
“About what? This…paint?” You answer. “Why green?”
“I thought it would shake things up. Not everything has to match to a tee, you know.”
You approach the couch, scan it, looking for stray paint splotches, only to find a smear on the edge. It’s one that was not there when you left before the weekend. You kneel to look at it.
“What happened to the couch? This doesn’t look like green paint. Is this rust?” You ask.
“Oh, yeah. Rust. Not sure how that got there.” The voice says. “Those cops finally gone?”
“Think so.” You answer.
As you inspect the couch, you hear the kitchen drawer open and close. You now realize that the smear isn’t rust, but blood. It’s dried and smeared, as if someone attempted to clean it up. You turn and see your roommate approaching you with one hand behind his back.
“Hey, you didn’t get your welcome home hug. Bring it in.” He says.
