My Houseguest

    I've lost my cream cheese knife. That's so upsetting, because I think I just sold my other three at Kitchen Culture. I thought I was being efficient by not keeping three extra cream cheese knives.

I don't know what could have happened to it. I'd just had a bagel the other night, with cream cheese and smoked salmon that hadn't kept well in the refrigerator, so I'd scraped off the salmon to eat the remaining cream cheese and bagel, but by then the bagel had gotten soggy, so I know that it was used recently. My dish rack gets overfull sometimes, so I could see how it might have fallen into or under something out of sight. There are only so many places it could be in that tiny kitchen, though, and I'm sure I've checked almost all of them.

I also wonder if it could be somewhere obvious, because I couldn't find my celery salt the other day and just found it in plain sight on the second shelf above the counter. I couldn't find my gummy cola candies on the pantry rack and nearly jumped to conclusions about that as well. What's more terrifying is that I went to get my bikini top, which I had specifically brought in from my storage unit and laundered not more than two weeks ago, with the intention of going to Poets Beach to get some sun, when I found the string had been cut. I cut a small piece with scissors to compare, and the cuts were identical. The only plausible explanation that doesn't involve a friend with BPD who has made me her favorite person or a serial killer or an Illuminati assassin making a point, that I can think of at the moment, is that I may have cut the string with a utility knife while opening moving boxes. But, how could I not have noticed that during the process of bringing it in from the unit and laundering it? My friend he thinks a psycho would have left a threatening message scrawled on the mirror in lipstick, but I think subtly is more ominous. Am I losing my mind? That's what you want your victim to be thinking.

    
This apartment stands atop the Portland Shanghai Tunnels, which may still be used today to whisk young men off into a world of servitude and torment. There are secret doors connecting it to neighboring businesses and it was once, not too long ago, actually, used as a crack house by itinerant people looking for a secluded place to do drugs, and I've heard the legend of Panda, a nomadic gutter punk who allegedly shat on the apartment hallway floor before disappearing.

I've also heard there have been shootings and gang activity, not to mention rampant drug activity, in the vicinity, though nothing about drug-crazed psychopaths breaking into the apartments of single young women. Of course, one wouldn't hear about such things, except from a living survivor.

There also is a known vampire problem in Portland, and they ain't all the sparkly kind.

So you see, it does seem that somebody has been living in here while I'm away from the apartment or asleep, like in an Asian horror movie. I have exhausted all other possibilities, so that has to be it, right?

Either that or a very clever racoon has gained access to the rooftop alcove outside my apartment window.