An Unusual Stain

I had just moved into a new apartment in Colonia Lindavista. Not the most chic neighborhood in Mexico City, I admit, but quiet and relatively safe. I worked from home and am something of a hermit anyway. I’m a novelist. I needed somewhere quiet to read and write.. My editor already paid the advance on my new book and though I assured her things were coming along smoothly, I hadn’t written a word.

I didn’t notice the stain when I’d first been shown the apartment. I can assure you of this. I am very meticulous when it comes to big purchases. I am led to believe that at that time, there had not yet begun to be a stain. It formed only after I’d begun living there.

I noticed it two or three weeks later. I had a fairly large living room with ceiling-high windows that let in plenty of sunlight. My bedroom, austere but comfortable, sported a king size mattress (I move fitfully in my sleep and have fallen off smaller mattresses) and a small guest room.

The guest room.

I left that room mostly empty. Only a few boxes and books that didn’t fit on the shelves. The walls were bare. Of this I am absolutely positive. At least, they were when I had first been shown the apartment.

It must have been that third week I first noticed it. I went into the guest room for reasons I can’t possibly remember now and saw a dark patch on the wall to the left of me just as I walked in. I felt immediate anger, suspected a leak somewhere, and got close enough to inspect it.

Strange. Flat as paint. I ran my hand over the stain and it did not even seem raised. It was a dark, reddish brown at first, but grew darker by the day.

Within a week a great, yawning black spot had affixed itself to my wall and I called in mold specialists. This being the only reasonable conclusion I could reach.

The specialist shrugged and told me, “It isn’t mold Mr. Montevideo, it looks more like paint.”

“What do you mean it isn’t mold!? What else could it be?”

“To be honest, I have no idea. It’s flat to the touch, slightly wet, and it seems to leave a film of grease on my gloves. Here, see for yourself.”

I touched a latex gloved hand to the stain and indeed, it had grown soft and wet.

“Could it be a leak?” I asked?

“I’ve never seen a leak do this, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask your landlord.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

The young man looked genuinely sorry for me. He scratched the back of his head and nodded.

“We can install fans. To dry it out. You just run them with an extension cord and point it at the stain. This should at least help dry it out some. It’s how we normally treat mold, along with chemicals, but since this isn’t mold, or at least no unlike any mold I’ve ever encountered, I can’t say that the chemicals would help. Not with certainty.”

I thanked him and tipped generously. An hour later he returned with two waist-high fans that I pointed directly at the stain.

It was then I noticed the shape of it. What used to be a circular, reddish brown stain had become black as ink with a bulbous new section spreading from the top. Beneath it stretched an elongated shape. It dumbfounded me how this stain could appear out of nowhere, change color and shape, and continue to grow.

I closed the door to the room and left the fans whirring all night.

That night I had a terrible feeling like someone or something had sat itself on the end of my bed. In my dream I couldn’t move. I felt fully awake, but paralyzed. I kept waiting for the figure to come into focus, to do something to me, but all it did was watch.

The next morning I entered the room for the last time. Rather than help dry the stain, the fans had done nothing. I entered the room with my morning coffee and upon seeing what had become of the stain, I dropped the mug to the floor where it shattered.

The stain had sprouted limbs. Two arms, much too long to be human arms with fingers three or four times the size of human fingers. Its legs, in contrast, were much shorter. The bulbous spot I’d seen before could now clearly be identified as a head and the main trunk of the stain, a torso. I felt the hair stand on the back of my neck and had the unmistakable feeling this form, this stain, was watching me.

I locked the guest room door and never entered again.

Now I plan to move. Most of my things are in boxes and I’ve found a new place, much smaller and more expensive in Colonia Roma. I can’t sleep at night for fear of the dream, always the same, the weight on my bed and the total immobility that’s taken over my body. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a dream at all.

Inside the guest room I hear steps. Not full steps, not the steps of a man, but something lighter and padded, almost a whisper. I see shadows beneath the door and once, a long fingered hand slid underneath, flat as paper.

I know I need to get out as soon as possible. Stay in a hotel if it comes down to it. I’ve told no one and plan to burn this writing once I’ve finished it. I had to put the truth down somewhere because, who would ever believe me?

The scuttling grows louder and my sleepless eyes grow heavy. Tonight will be my last night sleeping in this place.

Tomorrow, I’ll be gone.

***

Christopher Flakus was a recipient of the InPrint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship in 2019 and graduated from The University of Houston with an MFA in Fiction in 2023. He was awarded the Fabian Worsham prize for fiction in 2017 as an undergrad at The University of Houston-Downtown. Christopher has twice attended and received an honorary degree from The Institute for World Literature, most recently over a month-long period of study and presentations, talks, and colloquiums in Mainz, Germany. And has been an active member of international academics since. Christopher is also a contributing staff member of both the Dublin-based literary journal New Square Magazine. His work can be found in Misery Tourism, Houston Public Media, UH’s Poetry and Prose series, The Huffington Post, New Square Magazine, Glass: Poetry, and elsewhere. He has published several chapbooks. His latest chapbook "Big Country" published through Bottlecap is the first chapter of this novel, which is a rogue’s gallery of outlaws and cowboy poets explored and explained through the author’s own multicultural experience of the southwest region of the US and life beyond the border, Christopher grew up in Mexico City and writes in both English and Spanish.