Incongruous Object

Ever since I moved here, I haven’t felt quite real.

The houses all look the same— Straight laced, angular, suburban. It’s easy to get lost. People live in those, but I rarely see them. Every now and then a car goes in or out, but I don’t see them, the humans that should be going about their human activities. It’s always quaint and quiet. Everyone stays shut in. Am I being paranoid? Their curtains and blinds are always drawn, permanently. Every. Single. House. At any hour, on any day. It makes me feel like an aquarium, an exposition, when I go outside and see into no one’s windows but mine. Especially at night, when the house shines from within and you can see every single detail. It’s probably unsafe, but I refuse, I refuse, to shut myself in. I’ll go insane. And just to make sure there is truly an outside, I leave my house.

It’s the holiday season now. It doesn’t snow here, but everyone still plays pretend at a White Christmas. I go get the mail, and the streets look liminal, as always. It’s night, but not late, in the winter way. No stars are visible, but still the sky casts a blue hue on everything that clashes eerily with the decorations on too-few houses. The dark plays tricks with my vision, silhouettes too vague to be anything but too distinct to be nothing move about. I hear a distant droning sound— car, helicopter, plane? It’s so quiet I have to strain to listen to it over the sounds of my echoing steps, my breathing. I get the notion that if I stop for too long, I’ll become a prop, a part of this set, and so I keep moving. The sidewalk feels like it stretches unnaturally, in directions that lead nowhere, and I don’t take the time to prove otherwise: I stay in my path.

Faint music. Turning a corner, I see a house brighter than anything around it, across the street. Glowing letterings, a huge inflatable snowman, a Santa Claus winking holding a sign that says “welcome”, a huge deer with eyes too realistic, tilted down. The lights flicker at odd moments, and the song, this jolly tune that is just a tad too slow and too deep, prickles my skin. I stare at it, mesmerized, wondering if I’m the problem, or if this truly looks straight out of a horror movie. What is this anachronistic feeling?

I must be the incongruous object.

I keep on walking, and only after the warm glow of the house no longer reaches me, do I realize how unusually cold it is outside. Still, I hear that uncanny music following me, getting ghostlier the further I walk, and at some point, I can’t tell if the sounds exist just inside my head, to accompany the afterimage of the lights burnt on my eyelids. It doesn’t matter. I reached the mail.

If the streets are liminal, the cluster mailboxes look downright sinister. Each box unit on its little pedestal looks almost like large, hunched men with big coats, as if they too feel the cold. A singular bleak white-bulbed lamppost casts stark lighting on the whole scene directly from above, making all the shadows look elongated. I can hear the electricity coursing through it. Everything I do sounds too loud: the keys I take from my pocket, the lock, the hinges as the tiny door swings open— and for a second I pause and think I don’t quite remember looking for the correct number, don’t remember reaching this spot— and I find its metal insides empty. Nothing at all.

I only feel my frown because my face was too cold and stiff. I head back— and though I only know one way, though I was sure I retraced my steps, I don’t encounter the glowing house. I simply walk and keep walking until, to my surprise, I see my place, indeed like a glowing aquarium— see straight into the windows, straight into my room, straight into the chair I’ll soon be seated at. Something in me calls attention to the fact this doesn’t feel right, that this is odd, that I should have seen and thus ought to find that house. The other part of me, yearning for the warmth inside, opens the front door, realizing how senseless a task that’d be.

The houses here all look the same. It’s easy to get lost.