It’s a popular model of a house – standard trees by the corners, standard plan with a basement, standard life arrive-live-die. An old birthday calendar on the wall – months in German, names in English. Many are crossed out. A rusted working bench, kids’ drawings under stairs, falling apart sewing patterns. Any place we attach to, becomes a grave. I didn’t touch anything here for a year. This basement smells with damp wood. The apartment I lived before smelled with boiled cabbage. It used to belong to an old guy who ate boiled cabbage every day. I didn’t touch anything there for a year. All was cleared to the concrete box then and left to vent for six more months. But the smell of boiled cabbage overplayed even the renovation odor.

I learn about people by things they possess. Old photos of girls I don’t know in the dining hutch, a shoebox of watercolor sketches on the attic, a collection of minerals on the shelves sheltering the bed from the rest of the studio, a poster of a mermaid wearing only a string of pearls in the corner. My grandma had a collection of hills. I treated myself taking them down from the top shelf and sorting by color. Some were fully covered with sparkles and didn’t fit any party. She taught me to put feet on one imaginary line while walking. In the cabinet under the shelf, grandpa kept his honorary rifle. My young uncle played with me on his babysitting shifts, tying hands, pointing the gun and locking in the cabinet. When I took practical shooting lessons many years later, my shoulder was black-and-blue the next day, and it felt satisfying.

That alien apartment building is a meeting point in my nightmares. Long perpendicular hallways intersecting at elevators. The smaller ones were my friends, most times they noticed my presence. With the bigger guys I was in trouble. Often, they closed the doors and turned the light off, pretending no one was in there. Too lightweight to proclaim my existence, I jumped to wake them up and get them move. Stairs were a scary alternative. Anyone or anything could inhabit that stinky, smoky, shady place. In some dreams I felt adventurous enough to explore it. It goes a hundred stories down and ends with a shallow pool where moms teach their infants to swim. I learned to swim at seven. Grandpa tossed me in the sea from the tip of a breakwater.

The doors closed, the light turned off, but the elevator moved. The doors opened and closed behind. Kind tenants brought live plants downstairs. The lobby connected to a spacious atrium interrupted by stairs to a hidden mezzanine where they sold newspapers, was like a conservatory. This place looked nothing like that. There was no button on the wall to call the elevator back. The cold room was completely dark and smelled with dampness. It was filled with boxes and tubes running along the walls. Time was not felt. When some of it passed, I recalled that in labyrinths one must move along the same wall and this will lead him to an exit. It led me to the gates closed by a jail lattice. I didn’t tell anyone.

I wouldn’t tell, but dad returned from work earlier that night. I was sitting on the dirty concrete stairs, shaking and soaking wet. He sat next to me. By that time, I was on a swim team, still hating swimming. Long and fast swims set my lungs on fire. A deep industrial style fountain stood right next to the sport center, surrounded by a tall black metal lattice. Easy to climb up and over. Easy to slip from in a wet foggy weather. Water supplying tubes served as design elements and run above the surface. I missed them and safely landed in the water. The steep slopes were covered with slimy green mud. Nothing to step on or grab on. I felt I wouldn’t be able to hold there for long against swirls and didn’t think of crying for help.

Dad took me fishing once. The area was famous for it. When stores run out of food, black caviar became the core of our diet. We had a gallon-size jar of it in the fridge, and sometimes it was all food we had. He turned to one of the quiet secluded tributaries. We moored, hid the boat in tall grass and moved by foot along the stream. Fish was committed to suicide that day. It took just few minutes to get a new one on the hook. We stacked fish in a neat pile on the bank and moved to the next stop. In a couple of hours, we had a dozen of fish heaps left behind. The riverbank turned black of crows feasting on our catch. They were screaming and chasing each other tearing the carcasses apart. We stopped for a rest under a standalone tree watching the full moon and a caravan of camels on the horizon moving along a field of wind turbines.

On way back, we saw a house on fire. I stayed to watch it burn. Skin on my hands broke of water and wind, hundreds of tiny cuts were slowly bleeding. One should swim in the salt lake if he wants to realize own body. The path to the water was a mile-long walk through the meadow of sharp crystals, shoes tangling in the salt lace. The water was shallow and viscous like hot jelly. Zero gravity felt like flying. It wrapped the body as a cocoon. The next moment I learned the idea of the body surface. Suddenly I was aware of every single scratch on my skin and could give the exact coordinates of it. Dipped in a lake of pain, for a minute I dissolved in my misery, not being able to get out of the water.

The burning house was old, they let it down. New apartment buildings were being constructed at the edge of the town. They called them Seven Winds. Taller than the rest of the landscape, they were first to hit by steppe storms. The new houses were built on an ancient burial place. Excavators pulled the bones to the surface. Some were gathered and reburied, some were tossed around the town and became new toys for the local boys. Hair never decomposes. It remains attached to the skull with dry brown scalp. Skulls kicked around like balls reminded comets with black tails. When I lose a hair in a new land, I think it will be still lying there in the dirt hundreds of years after I’m gone. I often went to the construction lot to watch bats flouncing in the dark.

I was not afraid of bats or skulls. Imagination scared me more than the reality. It wasn’t always easy to distinguish the two, and I took everything in the most literal sense. The Running Man was shot as a TV show, and for many years I believed it was one, shocked but not surprised by its existence. On my way home from the office, the road came to a river and made a sharp turn. The imagination drew me holding the wheel straight, hitting the fence and flying to the water. When the temptation became too strong, I changed the route. Noise in the old night house sounds like steps. It takes an effort to think carefully about a rational explanation.