The 21st Floor

4. Gen X Friend

I’m ashamed to admit that I stayed under that bed for forty-five minutes. My apartment felt too big, too open, too risky. Eventually, I calmed down, and that was when I started to get really stupid about it. Ready, listen to this: There was nobody up there. It was probably just the TV, and I had flipped out and ran anyway. It was shadowy, and I must have just imagined that there was someone standing there. It was a creepy old trashed apartment, where nobody lives anymore. I slid myself out from under the bed, and sat heavily on it. Clasping my hands together, and letting out a groan.

“I feel like such an i***t,” I sighed, and I did. I felt so, so dumb. Now, if I had been just the right amount of stupid, I would have just… gone about my life, and forgotten about it. Don’t get me wrong. I tried, I tried really hard, but the fact that there were that many bugs up there had me on edge. What if they move? What if they all decide to infest the rest of the building? It just wasn’t sanitary. It put me off my food, or rather I felt it put me off my food. Sitting in the kitchen, half-heartedly nibbling on rapidly cooling toast. It had strawberry jam on it. There should be no ruining this. Scrunching up my nose, I threw the toast out. Wincing in guilt at the sound it made hitting the plastic bag in the bin. There are plenty of people who would cry if someone put down a plate with a couple of pieces of toast on them, and I just threw it away. Maybe it was the mess, maybe that was what was bothering me? That it had been lying there for God knows how long, and will continue to do so, because if somebody had any intention of cleaning it, then they would have done so already, and they hadn’t.

“I could do it,” I muttered, ignoring the way my blood seemed to get colder at the idea of going back there again. If I was going to do it though, it would have to be today. I have to go to work tomorrow. For a moment, I just stood there pondering it. Have you ever really wanted two things at the same time? Now, have those things ever been completely oppositional? I really wanted to go up there and clean the mess up, because otherwise the knowledge that it’s there? Totally going to taunt me. For the rest of my life, no I had to go and fix that… but on the other hand, nope. Not going back up there again. Both points equally clamour to be acknowledged. It was really starting to give me a headache. In the end, what clinched the deal went along the lines of this: It’s not like there is anything up there anyway, it’s just our imagination.

So I got a bucket from the cupboards, and started throwing in supplies. Garbage bags, cleaning products, cloth's, a dustpan and a broom. I even went and got my cordless vacuum, because I wasn’t going to go around assuming that the power is still hooked up, so that it could be… mmmhn let’s go with as good as I can get. I was bound and determined to go up there and do a nice thing, but when my front door shut I flinched, and every step to the elevator felt like ten. Not real, I reminded myself. Probably just the TV in someone’s old bedroom. In the back of my mind, a wild and impossible story struggled to come together. What if it wasn’t empty? What if some poor person had been squatting in there because it was so bad that it was abandoned, and they knew they would be safe there? I stopped that thought right on there. There was NOBODY up there.

I still didn’t go into the apartment right away. I left the elevator easily enough, but any time I so much as look at the broken door? Chills, lots of them. That was okay, I told myself. I could just go ahead, and start on the little waiting room thing. Entry? I don’t know, it was all too posh for me to have any idea. I put the artwork to one side, and picked up the plants. I was even humming to myself as I picked up rubbish, and ran a vacuum around. The less said about the amount of times I had to empty that thing, or the amount of bug spray I was using, the better. Although I think I was getting dangerously close to poisoning myself. Eventually, there was nothing more I could do out here. Not without water anyway, and I had to go into the apartment and hope that worked, because I really hadn’t thought about that. I shrugged. The worst case scenario I would go back down to my apartment and lug it back here. I went through the door. I know, it surprised me too. I thought I’d chicken out, but apparently I’m way more determined than I thought I was. Yay, brownie points for me. I still stepped in cautiously, and kept my eyes on the floor.

“You came back,” that same voice I had heard last time said, but the thing is, I could only remember what that voice had sounded like once they had spoken. It was like someone had immediately walked over my grave. Violent goosebumps rippled across my skin, icy and biting cold, and I shivered so badly that I worried that I would completely shake apart. I dropped the plastic bag, and clapped my hands over my eyes before I could say or do anything else, and just sort of stood there. “What are you doing?” he asked, sounding baffled, and… and normal.

“I didn’t freak out last time until after I looked at you. I didn’t understand what I was looking at, and I still don't. It was all colours, and shapes, and my brain very much refusing to cooperate and commit to anything,” I said, and I was rambling, I knew I was but I wanted to get it out just in case, “Given that I didn’t stop running until I hit under my bed, and stayed there for almost an hour? Yeah, I’m working to avoid that. I don’t know what or why that was, but it didn’t feel natural.”

“And you came back?” they asked, enough amusement ringing in the voice that I could help giving a small smile along with it, “Why?” I laughed, and it was purely because I knew how ridiculous I was being. There was no denying it, but there was also no sense in getting embarrassed over it if I could avoid it.

“Yeah, the mess was stressing me out… just, like, knowing it exists and was accessible,” I said, shuddering at the idea of it just staying like that up here, “Nope. Not going to happen. Also, by the time I climbed out from under my bed, I was completely and totally convinced that whatever was up here had been totally imagined.”

“Most people get freaked out by dead people,” he replied, “I still can’t believe you came back up here to clean.” I snorted.

“Hey, do you benefit?” I shot back, “Yes, yes you do. So stop complaining, because I’m going to assume this is your mess.”

“You heard me say I was dead, right?” they pressed, and I stopped for another second. No. No, I had not registered that, and now that he’d said it there were flashes behind my eyelids. A pale white-blue tinge to their skin, exposed bones, and red… absolutely blood red.

“Well, now I’m really disappointed in myself, and slightly wondering if there’s some sort of curse on this place,” I grumbled, keeping my eyes closed but crossing my arms over my chest and pouting.

“I’m sure I’ll regret asking this, but why?” he said in return. That brought me up short, because really? It hadn’t been obvious?

“This is like one of those cool, really old eighties movies my mum used to let me watch when I was a kid,” I said somewhat petulantly, “This should be so much fun, by the way go stand in front of the door.” I don’t think he was expecting that, and it was fun throwing him off. Out of the two of us, I probably should have been the nervous one, but I wasn’t, and I was always told that my weirdness wasn’t an asset. Ha!

“So you want the dead guy to block the exit?” he clarified disbelievingly, “So you can’t run?”

“See it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, but I’m going for a whole dead boy - Christina Ricci thing,” I told him, and it would have been nice if he didn’t laugh at me.

“You realise that Casper came out in 1995, not in the eighties?” they chuckled, and I rolled my eyes. Even though they were closed and I knew that he wouldn’t see it. Still, it was indeed my turn to laugh.

“Yeah well I wasn’t really born until 2000 soooo…” I told him, and that was enough to make him stop laughing. Hell it sounded like he was about to choke on something.

“2000, you didn’t even start playing the game of life until the year 2000?” he said in a faint voice, “Oh you poor baby, you. I was born in 75, and died in 99.”

“And I’m the poor baby,” I snorted, because this poor man had died with dial-up, before stopping and gasping. Actually, let’s be honest, I was bouncing up and down, near squealing in delight. “By the way, we're friends now,” I informed him. Was it smart to make friends with a random dead guy? No, probably not, but I promise you that there is a thought process… and that it even makes sense.

“Why?” he asked, and I was offended by how disturbed he sounded, “I mean, I’m happy and all, because you’re the first person that I’ve seen in about twenty years, but why? I’m fairly sure your initial reaction to me was the correct one. I don’t trust it. I want to know what makes it that easy.”

“You’re a Gen X,” I said simply, like that explained everything. Which was fair, because to me it did… To him? Well, that would require some explaining.

“That is correct,” he said slowly, and I sighed. Right, so I was going to have to break it down a little.

“Okay, so after that are your generation's kids. Gen Y, because all the Gen X-er’s looked at each other, looked at their children and said why? Just what did we do? Why?” I explained brightly, “Then after that there are millennials. Which is me. Hello.” I gave a little wave.

“Hello,” he echoed back, possibly out of habit because he wasn’t sounding all that with it.

“People used to think that my generation was like the worst thing to happen to the planet, as if all our problems weren’t the accumulation of the previous generations' screw-ups. And do you know what? Even if they had been right, there is now Gen Z. I can safely say that we don’t even qualify anymore,” I said with absolute certainty.

“How bad can they possibly be?” he asked curiously.

“They ate tide pods,” I said flatly, “Tide pods are laundry liquid in little plastic bubbles that dissolve in the washing machine.”

“Isn’t that bound to be poisonous?” he said in a blank tone. I figure that he was just trying to wrap his head around the fact that yes, people were apparently that dumb.

“Yep, and despite teenagers getting poisoned, they kept right on doing it,” I said, throwing my hands in the air in frustration. I had still been in school when this whole thing started, and it blew my mind just how many people went for it. No, just… mhnn, nope.

“Okay, I’ll admit that is pretty bad. How did they even come to the conclusion of trying it in the first place?” he asked, and I liked that he was doing a lot of the questions asking. I’m not sure if it was my paranoia that this was all some kind of prank, or if it was just good fun, but it felt like winning.

“Around 2012? I think it was 2012. Someone slapped some words on a picture and posted it on the internet. They decided to take it as a f*****g challenge, thereby justifying to the people that are the adults responsible for all the cancel culture,” I said, hesitantly opening my eyes. He was standing behind me, and I couldn’t see him. I could feel where he was staring at me though. Ignoring that, I resumed cleaning with my back firmly to him.

“The words cancel culture mean absolutely nothing to me, but they sound horrible enough that even the dead guy is feeling dread,” he informs me, sounding oddly disturbed.

“Considering books written just after the abolishment of slavery are losing awards that they’ve held for about a hundred years, for displaying period typical racism? dread. Dread is appropriate,” I replied. The room got steadily colder, and there was a buzzing feeling under my skin.

“So they took an accomplishment from a dead person, for not having a time machine and knowing that one day things would be better, because what?” he spat suddenly, really angry about it, “They want to pretend that it didn’t happen, because it makes people uncomfortable? If you forget history…”

“You’re doomed to repeat it,” I replied suddenly, very unnerved, “But it’s not like you have to worry. It’s a living people problem.” He snorted at that. It was still chilly, but it had stopped getting colder at the very least. Maybe let’s not make the dead guy angry.

“I hate to break it to you, but everyone dies in the end. So eventually all that stupid is going to wind up wherever it is that dead people are supposed to go when they die,” he pointed out. I winced, but the temperature was slowly returning to normal. Maybe the temperature was just like a mood indicator? I probably freaked out over nothing, I admitted to myself.

“Yeah, I figured death wouldn't be the be-all-end-all solution that some people make it out to be. I guess you do very much have to worry about it when you’re dead,” I said to him. He seemed to find that funny too, in a sad kind of way.

“You have no idea,” he said, and the warning rang clear across the room.

“Anyway, that’s cancel culture. People use it to boycott celebrities into obscurity and non-existence too, and we can’t even argue with it,” I grumbled, putting the ripped book in the rubbish back particularly aggressively, “And do you know why we can't even argue about it?”

“Because they ate tide pods?” he said wryly.

“Because they ate f*****g tide pods!” I exclaimed angrily. I swear to God, ninety percent of the requirements of being human today is literally just being guilty until proven innocent of other people’s stupidity.

“And all this means you need a Gen X friend, why?” he asked, and I started. Oh yeah, there had been an original point to this conversation.

“Sorry, got side-tracked. Because Gen X raised the later generations, and were raised by boomers… so it’s like shoving your survival kit into a person with a great sense of humour and a penchant for fun and chaos,” I said brightly, “We should be friends.” There was a ringing silence in response, and I hadn’t felt this on edge since the last time I tried to make friends with the mean girls in primary school. In high school, we were the mean girls. Which I'll admit wasn't a great way to solve a bullying problem, but let's face it... It solved the f*****g problem.

“Okay… if only to make sure you don’t go around eating tide pods,” he teased. The outraged squawk I let out had him laughing at me, so, needless to say, I told him to go f**k himself. He only laughed harder.