Bedside Monster (House Beasts #1)

Uninvited

Oliver stepped out of his car and took a few steps to stretch his legs after his ride home. He looked up at his building complex and his eye, automatically, went to the large "For Sale" board that had been set at the window of the flat across his. Instinctively, his fist tightened.

Not wanting to dwell on the events that had taken place in front of his door but two weeks prior to this day, he grabbed his things from his car, locked it and moved to his flat.

Or at least he tried to, because he didn't resist stopping for a moment when he got to his floor. The place where her front door mat had been was empty, but Oliver could just see it, as well as the head of the man that had been laying on it before the events of that fateful night. He vividly recalled his surprise. He had been coming back from work, just as he was doing right now, when he had come face to face with the man lying across the doorway of his single mother neighbor. In retrospective, Oliver wondered why he had not asked the intruder what he was doing or called the cops to deal with what obviously was a fishy situation. Instead, like the coward he was, he had just thought to himself that it wasn't his problem and had ignored the stranger. He had wondered later on if that was maybe the father of her kid, and then he had almost forgotten about it before he heard screams for help from the other flat. She was lucky that the police and the firemen Oliver had called had arrived before any serious harm could come to her, but this had probably been the longest minutes of their lives: she trapped with a crazy man and he stood on the other side of the locked door, helpless, his mind too numb to think of anything else he might do besides a couple of calls. He would never forget the feeling of utter helplessness. Just the thought of her dying - and it would be his fault for not reacting fast enough - still made him shudder in dread.

But she was safe. Scrapped, probably traumatized forever, but safe. He had later learned that the man was indeed the father of her child, aka her blood-thirsty ex that had not been able to stand the idea that she might live a normal life without him. All was well that ended well except for the memories... the ones she carried in particular. That's why she couldn't leave fast enough and had moved back to her parents under a week.

"I'll be fine," she had told Oliver before she left. He could only hope that she would be, as they would probably never see each other again. She had also hugged him and told him thank you.

But now wasn't the time to dwell on such things, he told himself as he realized that it had been five minutes since he had been standing there, reminiscing. Now was the time to get home, kick off his god-awful shoes (he honestly needed to go and buy some new ones this weekend) and maybe do something he enjoyed. Baking sounded nice but he felt lazy, so cookies it would be.
Oliver was a man that approached his thirties, yet he had never saluted anyone as he entered his flat since he had moved out from his parent's place. Why would he? He had always lived alone, and he was fine doing just so. What a bother it must be to share a living space, he told himself, and maybe even come back to a home where things might not be where he had left them. If he needed company, he would meet up with friends, but on most days he had more than his dose of company from having spent a day with his colleagues. Heavens, just thinking about Remy and his bottomless energy reserves while being on his time off gave Oliver a headache.

And here he was again, thinking about things that were unpleasant. He chastised himself under his breath. Talking to himself was what he considered his quirkiest habit. Wasn't it weird that he could think, yet chose to talk when he was alone? Never mind that an outside observer would find his habit of making sure that the five bird statuettes on the shelf in his entrance were perfectly aligned every time he came home far quirkier but he never really stopped to think about that. Nor did he stop to think about how he had spent two solid hours measuring his entire hallway to make sure that his five framed paintings were at the same distance from one another or how he tended to have five of everything. Well, maybe not exactly that, but at least in decoration. But he wasn't causing any harm to anyone. He simply liked arranging his space however he saw fit, and wasn't precision the most audacious of all aesthetics?