The Uninvited Arithmetic

The humming of the fluorescent light above my desk was the only sound in the small apartment that evening. I was wrestling with a calculus problem, the scratch of my pencil against the paper the only other noise. Ever since I moved into this converted attic space a few months ago, I had felt a persistent unease, a prickling at the back of my neck that told me I was not alone. The landlord called it ‘character’; my therapist called it ‘anxiety.’ But I knew better. There were signs: the way the strip of copper tape on the hall closet door would sometimes flutter, the occasional click of the door handle when no one was there. I tried to ignore them, chalking them up to old pipes and drafts.

That night, my right eye began to itch, a maddening, dry tickle. My father always said to blink rapidly when your eye bothers you, to clear it out. I set my pencil down and started blinking, fast and hard. First blink: the room was as it should be—the wooden desk, the stack of textbooks, the closet door to my left, and the narrow window showing the grey rooftops of the neighbouring buildings. Second and third blinks: same scene. But on the fourth blink, something was different.

There, between the desk and the closet, stood my mother. But it was wrong. It was her, yet it wasn’t. She was facing away from me, her grey bathrobe hanging loosely, her hair in its usual messy bun. But she was floating, a good two inches off the worn floorboards. And she was utterly still, not even a sway. My breath caught in my throat. My father died five years ago; my mother lived three states away. I had not seen her in months, and she certainly would never appear in my attic apartment without calling first.

I slammed my eyes shut, my heart hammering against my ribs. Sweat broke out on my palms. A presence, heavy and cold, pressed in on me from all sides, as if the air itself had thickened. It lasted only three seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Then, as suddenly as it began, the pressure lifted. The itch in my eye vanished. I opened my eyes slowly, trembling.

The spot where my mother had stood was empty. The room looked as it always did, mundane and tired. But my legs were jelly. I pushed my chair back and fled, leaving my homework scattered, the pencil rolling off the desk. I didn’t stop until I was in the hallway outside my door, pressing my back against the cold wall, gasping.

I stood there for what felt like minutes, trying to rationalize what I had seen. A trick of the light? A hallucination from fatigue? But the cold certainty remained: something had been in that room, something that wore my mother’s face. And it had waited for me to blink, to catch me off guard.

I never went back to that desk. The next day, I called my mother, just to hear her voice. She was fine, busy with her garden, complaining about the neighbour’s dog. I didn’t tell her what I had seen; I didn’t want to worry her. But I knew I couldn’t stay in that apartment much longer.

A week later, I moved out, leaving most of my things behind. The new place is a ground-floor flat with no closet, no weird drafts. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, I still feel a prickling at the back of my neck. And I catch myself blinking, just to make sure the room stays empty. It always does, for now. But I wonder: what if I blink the wrong number of times, and something else is waiting there, behind me, floating just inches off the floor?

I’ve started blinking only an even number of times. It’s a superstition, I know, but I can’t shake the thought. And the worst part is, I know my mother is real, and she never came to visit. So what was that thing that wore her face? And why did it choose my bedroom, at that exact moment, when I was least expecting it? The rational part of me says it was a hallucination, a misfiring of my tired brain. But the other part, the part that believes in the creeping unknown, knows that some doors, once opened, can never be closed. And I’m afraid that door is still ajar, waiting for me to peek through again.