Shelter In Place

A short gothic tale

It was a dark and stormy night, on the final season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina The Teenage Witch on Netflix. Sophia sat in her pyjamas, the last fifteen episodes a thrilling blur in her mind. She looked distantly out the window, and realized she’d no idea what day or even time it was.

The markers by which Sophia used to measure her life had all disappeared: morning lectures, weekend soccer practice, Saturday night binge-drinking; in the stroke of a week her life went from busily preparing for her final year exams to a single-female version of the Shining. She walked down the empty dormitory corridor to her favorite bathroom, the one with plentiful ultra soft 3-ply (trust-fund Sorority girls weren’t all bad Sophia decided).

Sophia watched her classmates hurriedly pack up, as closures dominoed across the country. Her homeland — Italy — was off-limits a week before, and she sat in the common room, reading her book, watching the whirlwind of stressed students around her.

Living alone in a fifty-person Victorian dormitory was pretty cool. Recognizing the unique opportunity, Sophia’s imagination ran wild with ideas. One morning she reenacted Titanic, walking down the grand staircase wrapped in a scarlet curtain she stole from the cafeteria, tearing it off and jigging around in the basement pantry. She went live on Instagram lip-syncing “All by Myself” whilst whirling down the corridors in a desk chair. One night she recorded herself exploring by flashlight, narrating her own Ghost Hunters.

Each morning Sophia sat on Skype with her parents, conversing with them in her broken Italian about the minutia of their appartment-bound lives. “We cannot find good Parmesan anywhere” her mother complained, the severity of the pandemic not seeming to register against their gastronomic concerns. “Mom, please stop going out” Sophia begged.

As Sophia walked down the dorm’s main staircase, she conversed with her favorite paintings. “Esmerelda,” she began, staring at a staunch woman wearing a bonnet, “you simply must come for tea this week”, inviting the long-dead governor to a social function she was ill-equipped to provide.

The faculty was in disarray, and Sophia was glad for the break from studies. From the copious left-over food supplies, she made a greek omelet, chopping to the beat of 50 Cent’s Candy Shop. She lifted up her top and began to seduce a nearby statue. As she imagined the cast of pink backup dancers around her and waved her hands in her best rapper impression, she turned and saw a wall of flames on the stove, every ring flaring up blue spikes. She cut off the gas and retreated to making a pair of pop-tarts.

As the days wore on, slowly Sophia’s fortitude diminished. She found herself longing for Jacob, the boy she went on dates with walking around the pond, and she missed her girlfriends, even those that sometimes irritated her. One night she found herself walking into her best friend Sarah’s room, tracing her hand over the left-behind objects on the desk, looking at dust-shadows of everything that used to be there. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, conversing with Sarah in her own ventriloquy, “Oh Sarah I missed you!”, “I missed you to hon”, “You wanna watch a movie tonight?”, “I’d love to!”, “What you wanna see?”, “Maybe Panedmic? Or Rosemary’s Baby? Or let’s watch Saw!” — Sophia’s skin prickled at her imagined friend’s focus on horror, and she backed out of the empty room.

Sophia tried her best to avoid reading the news. No headlines were making her feel good. Every time she opened up her news app she felt her anxiety rise. It was bleeding into her imagination. She invited Esmerelda to dinner, but Esmerelda kept staring at her and saying nothing. Her own game was unnerving her and she asked Esmerelda “What is up with you? Can’t we see we’re having a lovely tea?” (It was pasta in butter, her culinary skills were far behind her imagination). Esmerelda tilted her head and opened her mouth showing the dark recess inside. Sophia sent her straight back home to her portrait.

That night, as Sophia lay in agitated sleep, voices woke her. “Is this even real” she asked herself. Irritated at her lack of sleep, she went downstairs and found the common room TV switched on. It was Fox News and a busty blond lady explained how things would be back to normal in five days. Sophia’s minor in Public Health scoffed at the unrealistic projection. The camera cut to another news anchor, this one wearing a surgical mask. He stared down the camera, “Sophia, you wont get out”. She screamed, and tore out the plug, the room bathed in dull afterglow. That night she took two painkillers and fell into a deep drugged sleep.

The next morning Sophia got up to bright sunshine. She opened the french doors downstairs and threw down a mat, and did yoga in the heat of the morning sun. She reminded herself to get out more.

Later, on a call with her parents she heard something at the door. “Mi scuzi”, she turned and walked over, a Great Dane stood at the glass, pawing to get in. Sophia let him in, briefly considering the ethics of adopting this animal, then deciding her need was greater. She brought him to the laptop and introduced him “I’d like you to meet Steve”. Her parents objected to the name, and after some back and forth he became Marcello.

That night she cuddled Marcello, grateful for the warm company. She dreamt she was riding white horses through the grounds of the campus.

She woke up, uncomfortably aware of the empty expanse of the day ahead, and petted Marcello. “I think I’m becoming a bit depressed” she told him, his pensive dark eyes absorbing the statement.

She opened her phone, and saw none of her friends online. After dozing for another hour, she rolled out of bed. In her bed clothes she walked down to the kitchen and pulled out some milk. A cockroach swam circles in the bottle and she gasped, dropping it onto the tiles. Shards of glass and white milk exploded across the floor, no black-bodied insect to be seen. Nauseous, she walked to the sink and threw up, reeling with her head over the basin, and watched something skitter down the plug-hole.

“I’m really losing my shit” she thought to herself. The adrenaline wore off and she sobbed beside the common room fire, Marcello coming down and lying in her lap.

She lay in a puddle of blankets, salt-stains dried upon her face. She consumed a season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, laughing pathetically as she tried to lip-sync along with them. Marcello napped beside her and she thanked fortune for the companion.

She briefly skimmed the news, the hockey-stick graphs of new cases and stories of impending hospital collapse at once addictive and also horrifying. She felt helpless, and closed the laptop again. It had been a cold day, and in the dying evening light she saw snowflakes flutter down, thick like pieces of torn cloth, the lawns fading into pale white.

As she curled up in bed, an extra wool blanket upon her, she heard Marcello paw and whine at the window. “Come, come boy” she beckoned, turning over.

The next morning she awoke to the silence of snow. The rolling hills and gravel pathways had all been erased, leaving only the other dormitories as landmarks. She opened the cafeteria door to rescue her sneakers, and found feet of snow up to her hips. She waded, waving her arms through the powder, searching for them. She found them, her fingers coming out blue with cold. She retreated back indoors.

“You must be cold Señor Steve” (she had to call something Steve, and this was the unfortunate fate of the statue), wrapping him in left-behind garments until he looked like a frumpy emo-teenager, a hoody covering his bronze head. “My, I haven’t seen you around here before” she said coquettishly, tilting her chest and staring sidewise at him. His cold hand ran along her exposed midriff and she jumped away with a gasp.

Calling her parents, their presence a keystone of her days, Skype would not connect. Opening the electric closet to reset the router, everything lay dark. The power was gone.

Sophia cried. She thought herself strong and resourceful, but the isolation had left her empty. She made a pot of coffee and sat eating biscuits at the breakfast table, keeping to one side so the drops from her nose wouldn’t fall into the mug. Esmerelda sat opposite her, “Fuck off. Please”. “No” Esmerelda curtly replied.

She was abrupty shocked out of her woe by Marcello barking in the other room. She ran to him, briefly imagining him in peril, the idea too distressing to hold onto, and found him growling at the glass door. She saw bear prints, and ran around the rooms, the prints encircling the building. Marcello followed and leaped at windows, barking at each one.

She sat sleeplessly in her room that night, turning over plans in her head. She tried to call friends, to no reception. She knew she must escape.

The next morning wrapped up in her boots and winter coat, and began to shovel to her car. The whole morning went by, the car entombed in snow. She climbed in, the windows a dark cave amidst the snow. Marcello sat in the passenger seat and she started to notice the cold wetness all down her body. She turned the keys and heard the starter whine, the engine never igniting. She tried. And tried. And tried. Finally she punched the horn and gave off a scream, Marcello cowering. She returned to the dorm, crossing the bear-tracks in twilight.

She warmed up some water on the stove, and brewed a hot toddie. She poured the bourbon imbibing the rich fumes through the heat. She toasted to the room “Cheers to you all”, somewhat more loudly than she intended, scanning the man with the mask on the TV and Esmerelda, sitting in the corner at a stalemate. She knocked the beverage back and poured a straight whiskey in its place, pushing herself up against the glass in defiance of the outside world. The huge bear sat on its rump in the white-haze, watching ambivalently. “Cheers to you, fucking bear!” she called spiritedly, and threw Spotify on, her morning work-out mix blaring through the speaker.

The alcohol warmed her spirits and invited further pours. Shania Twain played, and she stomped around, pleased she could still get white-girl-wasted given the circumstances. “That don’t impressa me much” she serenaded the bear, stumbling to the table. She watched beetles march over the succulent on the table.

The hot ebullience of the alcohol began to subside. She greeted the other portraits “Hello Mr Henrys”, “Good evening Sir Chumsworth”, “It’s good to see you again Lady Patricia”. In the mixture of white LED light and candles, their expressions all looked glassy and indistinct. “I know all of you have made a great effort to be here, and…”, her address cut short by the sight of Marcello and the bear facing off through the french windows. “Marcello, please, no, come back”, she shouted through beading tears, “can’t any of you, please, help,,” she begged, as shrieks of claws-on-glass began to ring across the room. She ran out, the glass shattering and howls erupting behind her.

She ran up the staircase, her portraits ashen in the dull winter light. She blocked out the sounds from below. She entered her bedroom, pushing her desk against the door.

Wrapped in a blanket, she stared listlessly out the window. She chewed her nails, her cheeks thin and pale. She watched for lights, for car headlights, for any signs of other human life out amidst the falling snow.

The days went by.