A Fugue of Small Spaces
Hardcover, e-book, and audiobook available online starting 30 March, 2021
I’m beyond happy to introduce the pending release of my debut novel, a horror book I’ve called A Fugue of Small Spaces. I’m thrilled to share this with everyone and hope this is only the first of many stories to come.
Lexington Delaware is a young man who is fond of small spaces. When he feels the world is too large, he folds himself into as small a package as he can manage and holds himself there until he’s calm enough to face the world again. It sometimes works. His life is too full of large places and he’s better in his series of small ones.
At least that had been the case before he moved into a new apartment in the city. He can’t explain the odd goings on, but he suspects they may have something to do with the unfortunate events that chased him from school. Scandals that cost him his friends, that set him back years. Or perhaps there’s something more sinister about his recently refreshed abode. A thing in the walls that pulls at his past troubles.
A tiny flat with a large appetite.
This debut horror novel will take your breath away and make you rethink the wisdom of that small studio rental. So, please enjoy a brief excerpt below!
Lex closes the door behind the vanished Super. He’s tempted to peek out the door and down the hall, see how quickly the old man’s fled his company. He knows better. The last thing he needs in that moment of silence is to have the withering look-back of disapproval. He wants to enjoy this brief moment of emptiness.
The apartment is quiet. Uncomfortably quiet. The kind of quiet that makes his ears ring, where the blood rushing through the veins in his head is too loud. Lex is easing into the silence, finding it odd how serene his little piece of the city is.
He fears he may be living a cliché.
Lex rests his bag on the floor in the middle of the room, the thickening clouds outside shading his world further. There are a pair of ceiling fans overhead, each taking a half of the apartment as its jurisdiction. He finds a bank of switches mounted to the wall near the door and flicks one. The nearest fan begins to whir. The next and its light blinks on. The next pair work the other fan. He leaves both on as he takes another orbit around the apartment, planning his next move.
He imagines how the far end of the apartment will look once he’s obtained a nice, wood-framed futon. He thinks about small, sensible Swedish side tables with nice lamps on top flanking it. He pictures the round dining table on the side nearest the door, the two areas separated by a simple, modern entertainment center, taller bookshelves on either side. His head nearly swims with the images of all the modern style his budget will allow him to stack into the place.
He feels moved to take his first, independent piss into his own toilet.
He pauses in the doorway, the bathroom fan whirring softly over his head, light flooding the bathroom and gleaming off of the tile, a small smile spreading across his face. He’s feeling more like an adult than he has at nearly any other point in his life. He’s free to be his own man.
It reminds him a little of his first day in his freshman dorm. That was a lifetime ago. Images flash of Oscar standing, arms crossed against his chest as Lexington hauled an oversized duffel along a short walkway leading to the mid-sixties era three-story dormitory. Lorraine had stayed home, arguing that she’d already been crying the entire morning and seeing her baby boy walking into his dorm would have been far too heartbreaking. So, there he’d been, hauling his stuff on his own as Oscar waited. At least his father didn’t leave until after he’d passed through the front doors.
Lex was greeted by a very eager RA in a pale blue t-shirt emblazoned with the words “ASK HOW I CAN HELP.”
He’d been pointed to a four-sleeper on the second floor somewhere near the middle of the building and found that he’d been the first of his roommates to arrive. For fifty-two glorious minutes, he’d had the entire place to himself, clean and pristine.
Fifty-two minutes of peace that he wouldn’t experience again for six and a half years.
He flushes after using his new place’s toilet and leaves the seat up and the light on as he saunters into the living space. He’s going to grab the Ikea catalog out of his bag and really start game-planning his trip later that afternoon. He reaches the middle of the space and stops.
Blink.
“. . .the fuck?” Lex asks aloud. He whirls around, scanning the small and empty space. He moves quickly to the door, opens and looks down the hall. It’s empty as well, doors closed to the common space, light steady from the sconces positioned between the units. He closes the door and looks around the room once more.
He can’t find his backpack.
The very backpack he’d sat in the center of the room. There had to be a reasonable explanation. He is, after all, in the middle of downtrodden downtown. In the time he was in the toilet, someone must have snuck into the apartment, quietly snatched his bag, and made off into the rainy morning. His good mood is fading and Lex is once again beginning to doubt his decision to move to the heart of the city. The old part of the city at that. The part of the city that was just beginning a resurgence, a new awakening. He should have listened to his father when he warned about getting mugged and robbed moving to such a haven of crime and amorality. Oscar’s exact words.
Lex sighs and drags his feet to the kitchen. He stops again.
Blink.
“What the. . .?” Lex again speaks aloud to no one. His backpack sits on the kitchen counter. Placed neatly, leaning against the tile backsplash at the mid-point between the stainless steel stove and the sink. The straps are tucked neatly behind it. The contents have settled onto the counter, as if the pack had been there for hours. Days. The thing looks like a back-to-school retail display.
Lex stands for a few moments just beyond his kitchen, thinking. Maybe he’d moved the pack from the middle of the room to that spot on the counter. Perhaps he’d wanted to mentally measure the room for his imaginary furniture. He thinks it’s likely he didn’t sit the pack on the floor in the first place. The counter is, after all, the best place to sit a pack in such a small place.
He’s done it to himself. It’s early, he’s not had a coffee yet, the paint fumes are still awfully strong. He begins calming himself, feeling a little less crazy.
His pulse slows as he opens the pack, retrieving his laptop computer and an edge-worn Ikea catalog. These two items are joined by a small, lined notepad. He turns a few pages past random scrawl and finds a blank sheet.
“This works,” he says, leaning over the kitchen counter to map his morning.
He doesn’t notice that the ceiling fans have stopped spinning.
A Fugue of Small Spaces will be available for preorder soon.