Apartment 905 by Sahin, Ned (readnow .TXT) 📕

We take a hot shower one by one and get in the comfortable pajamas and sleepwear we find in the wardrobe. Despite my concerns about our safety, the comfort we have in this house makes me think that our decision to stay was a good one.

Toshi is already passed out on the couch. Kathleen gets on the bed and looks at me as if trying to figure out where I am going to sleep.

“I will stay awake for a while… Then, I don’t know… I think I will make a bed for myself on the floor with blankets,” I say.

“You want to stand a watch here too?” Kathleen says snickering. “Well, I will have beautiful dreams!” she adds. She is enjoying the moment as usual.

“Night!” I say turning the lights off. I sit on the chair next to the window. The moonlight makes most of the street visible. I can see the Centaur from here. I always liked seeing my vehicle from where I stay. It’s another useful habit I got from my father.

Half an hour passes by. Toshi is already snoring, but Kathleen’s sleep is deep enough to ignore him. I feel sleepy, especially after that tea, but I decide to go on a little discovery trip anyway.

I open the door quietly and check the hallway. It’s all dark. Our room is close to the stairs. The master bedroom is probably at the end of the hallway. They shouldn’t hear anything if I use the stairs to go to the first floor.

I go down on the stairs with one quiet step at a time. The candle in the living room is still lit. The kitchen is merged into the living room with an island between. The entire room has enough light to check out drawers and find out more about their life. I walk into the middle of the room to have a better look around.

I freak out when she enters the room in a white sleep dress and messy hair. I hold my breath for a second and feel goosebumps all over my skin.

“You want something, son?” Bernice asks. She is holding a glass of water.

“Um… I was very thirsty, Mrs. Bernice. The dinner is kind of burning inside me,” I say with a fake laugh. I hope she is not suspicious of my reason for being in the living room.

“Let me give you a glass of water too. I felt the same way.” She fills a glass from the jug and hands it to me. “Have a good night,” she says while passing next to me.

“Good night,” I say, trying to smile. I hear her footsteps on the stairs.

I wait for a few minutes standing in the middle of the room. My body doesn’t want to obey my brain. I have never felt this much intense sleepiness, but I can’t resist my curiosity even though I feel exhausted.

I take the candle with me and walk through the first-floor hallway. There are three doors. Two of them are brown doors with the same pattern on them. The other one is significantly different. It’s a white door without any curves and additions on it. If the other doors are for the bathroom and closet, this one must be for the basement if there is one.

I look around above the stairs. Everyone seems to be enjoying their rest upstairs.

I slowly push the door handle of the white door. It’s open. The door hinges creak. I look around again. I don’t hear anybody around. I open the door wide enough to squeeze in. I go down the stairs that end up in a medium-size basement.

There are old chairs, desks, and containers with a thick layer of dust on them. There is a bike possibly from the 90s, several drawers that look damaged, toolboxes, and shelves with a variety of stuff on them.

I extend the candle and have a better look at the shelves. Among everything that looks disorganized and dusty, a huge amount of tiny white boxes grabs my attention in the corner of the lower shelf. I get closer to read the labels on them. As soon as I read one of them, a shockwave travels through my veins. I almost drop the candle.

Oxyrica.

There are maybe a hundred boxes of this drug that created those extremely aggressive human beings, Ricas. This would explain why they don’t get sick even though they don’t use masks. Oxyrica is protecting their bodies against the virus. Then how come they are not aggressive like the Ricas?

I look at the upper shelves with a similar stockpile of little boxes. Unlike the Oxyrica boxes, they are in blue. There is a gray fish image on each of them. I reach to the shelf to take one of them. It looks like some kind of medicine for fish. Why do they have many of them? They don’t have any pets.

I turn the other side of the box to see the Drug Facts table. The top ingredient in this drug brings old memories back.

Fluoxetine.

I remember this hard to read chemical. I had difficulty spelling it at a pharmacy when I went there to get an antidepressant for a close friend years ago.

Since the pharmacies got hoarded quickly, they must have stocked on pet medicine that has the same ingredient used in human antidepressants.

They are using these antidepressants to suppress the side effects of Oxyrica.

In other words, they are Ricas.

But they are the happy ones.

I have to go back to our room and wake Kathleen and Toshi up. We have to get out of here right now.

I can’t find the energy to move even an inch. I can’t even continue standing. My legs give up on me. I fall to the floor. My vision gets blurry. The candle drops on its side. The light slowly goes off. I see Harold standing next to me and Bernice behind him as my eyelids get heavier and it becomes dark.