An estate agent is forced to choose between a sale and his humanity when facing the inhuman eldritch forces that feed off rental tenants across the United Kingdom.
Novelette | 10,215 words
Mr. Three arrives fifteen minutes before his appointment, then rings the doorbell repeatedly. Three p.m. is a straightforward instruction, with no ambiguity, yet still the piercing sound ruins my concentration. Perhaps he’s hoping the extra quarter hour will help him discover the secret code. Maybe he’s hoping he can win me over, as if I’ve got anything to do with it at all, as if I’m anything other than a worm wriggling on the hook.
He leans on the doorbell again, an old-fashioned one, just a shrill bell echoing up and down the corridor, vibrating the nails of my headache.
I squint down at my phone, trying to remember the correct sequence of buttons, the glyphs that will let me pay off my credit card with the last of my salary. Has to be today or the interest payments mean baked beans next month. I’m taking slices off my debt pile, clinging on to solvency, just about. But a sale lives or dies on appearances. You win by manifesting the person you want to be—that they want you to be—so I have to bottle it all up for the clients. Mr. Three wants me to be fifteen minutes early. Mr. Three wants things on his time. Mr. Three wants an absolute kicking if he doesn’t stop ringing that bell.
The landlord calls me into the bathroom and shows me the state I’m in. I wet my hair down, shoot my cuffs, and straighten my tie in the cabinet mirror, making the best of myself I can as I peer around the distortions in the glass. It’s a cheap suit, and it never sits right, but it’s all I’ve got. This was my first permanent job straight out of uni and the only one offering a guy with a mediocre degree a hefty salary. I know everyone hates estate agents, but I never had a dream, just my student debt. There’s that second shadow on the wall behind me again, as if the mirror is giving out its own light. No time for that.
I open the front door to find Mr. Three leaning on the garden wall, flicking at his phone in the drizzle. ‘Nice and early, I see. Do you want to come in?’ He looks straight past me into the flat, mumbling as he shakes the rain off his waterproof. He’s lean, well-groomed, dressed in unremarkable office wear—a pastel cotton shirt, black trousers, black leather brogues—a man permeated with the quotidian. He should be Rafe’s client, but Rafe has fobbed him off on me. Single, fortysomething, buying past-sell-by-date pork pies for dinner. I see a man of restraint, routines and structure, regular savings and moderation. Fastidious. Immeasurably predictable. Hardly what the landlord is looking for.
I show him anyway.
The property is the downstairs flat of a Victorian terrace conversion. A long corridor reluctantly reveals a bedroom in the original dining room, a dining room—complete with a jug of wilting daffodils—in the original reception room and a kitchen where it has always been, although the bathroom extension into the garden is new. Fully furnished, integrated dishwasher and washer-dryer, access to the dingy garden shared with the landlord, who occupies the upstairs property. Recently repainted, with a particularly muddy red-brown accent wall in the bedroom, it will be several weeks before the mould becomes visible again, by which point the spores will have permeated the new tenant’s skin completely. They will carry the fungus out into the world, leaving traces of it across the trains, their place of work, their friends’ houses. They will hold it close under their duvet at night and coat their guests with every loving hug.
But Mr. Three is more concerned about break clauses than rising damp. He comments on the very competitive rent for the area. He can imagine his finances all the way to next year, while the ichor of blood sacrifices across centuries runs through the bricks and mortar he covets. He thinks wealth matters, that it will keep him safe. His kind are two a penny.
When I explain that all aspiring tenants must provide a written statement, take a breathalyser test, and provide a drop of blood he merely raises an eyebrow and says, “Is that all? The last place wanted my financial records going back three years.” I have to be more subtle normally, but there’s no risk here. I know the landlord won’t accept him. This meagre man.
I steal his breath, prick his thumb. He’s writing down his true names when the boiler releases a powerful crack. I’ve wasted enough of the landlord’s time. I usher Mr. Three out with the constant babbling of my trade, the next viewing arriving, stacked up all day, terribly sorry, such a popular property, call the office if you want to make an offer.
A gust of wind from upstairs slams the door shut behind him, and the pipes growl and creak around me. It’s got worse lately. Its hunger has been growing. Once, deep into a two-day bender I couldn’t afford with the guys from the agency—an early mistake, to think I could buy my way in—Misha whispered to me, “The more people there are on the planet, the harder they have to fight.” He blanched once he realised he’d said the words out loud, that he’d broken one of the covenants of his class. That was the night they brought me in, in a fit of MDMA brotherhood. In their drug-addled way I think they meant it as a sign of respect, that in another life I could have been one of them. The comedown was harsh, but it paled against Rafe’s grey face in the office the Monday after, when he realised what he’d done.
Things never change. Even though there are more have-nots than ever before, power like Misha’s lies in the illusion. They all live in terror of the landlords, and they all wish they could become one.
The game is bringing fresh meat to the table. Anyone can find tenants. It takes a finer touch to procure a feast.
The landlord keeps me busy after Mr. Three, just because it can. By the time I’ve ushered the prospect out the door and back to whatever grey iteration he calls a life, beetles and flies litter the property and a thick layer of grease is spreading up the kitchen splashback. Owning everything doesn’t stop them being petty.
I spend half an hour scrubbing the kitchen clean again, trying not to imagine what kind of fat it is. It’s stubborn, a bloody red-brown in colour, and the air tastes salty as I work. I sweep up all the insect carcasses, and dust down surfaces I cleaned this morning. I’m sweeping the hallway clean, almost finished, when he comes. It’s a tight feeling in my chest like always, a dank stink of panic before he enters me in that thick rush like I am a glove being ripped by ragged claws a sharp tug down my spine and the fit is snug the weight of a heavy blanket so warm in my bed at nigh—
I am an emperor begging for scraps. This is all you can offer? Do you dare to starve me? To draw my hunger out until I am forced to consume you simply to secure your silence?
Legions have crumbled under my gaze, the blood of continents has poured off my back like rain. This world was born from the darkness of my home. You are my subjects. You are tools at my disposal. You are the salt-and-wort tang of marrow in my throat. Your history is my banquet.
You know what I need. I must feed. Nourishment. To regain my strength and cut your plane asunder and open the door to home. Now, share my hunger, feel what waits behind the curtain. Beneath all you know, under the glimmering disorder of your world.
There, can you feel it?
You know what I need.
I peel my eyes open, my head throbbing. Things slowly come into focus, and I see a bright red streak on the corner of the radiator. Probing gently, I feel a sharp hit of pain above my hairline, my fingertips coming away red. I lift myself from the floor, wadding tissues to the wound to stem the bleeding. I watch the blood run back up the metalwork of the radiator as it is sucked into the bleed valve, every last drop.
I panic when I see more on the skirting board. Just ten minutes until the next viewing. I wipe it clean as best I can with more tissues, my stomach twisting as if a snake is coiling inside it.
I’m so hungry.
“Asda Spice called, he says he’s interested in the flat, but has a couple more viewings. Fucking tease, eh?” It’s Misha’s turn in the office today, so he’s running the phones. It’s Saturday, game time in our world, but Misha’s ahead on targets as always. He’s hungry, same as all of us, but gluttons can be lazy too.
Everything is on the line for me today though, last weekend before the salary run. I’m off my monthly and quarterly targets. No targets, no OTE bonus—no OTE and I’m back to syphoning fuel out of Rafe’s Audi to keep my car running. No company car with mileage for me, you have to earn that. Saturday is the day. Today. All the young professional couples are in a thousand knife fights for viewing slots. Everyone is ready to overpay for the prime locations, the recent refurbs, the fully-furnished local amenities and twenty-four-hour transport links. Just one weekend to get it done before they’re back to burning next week on the pyre.
I ask Misha, “You mean Mr. Three, right?” It’s easier to avoid real names, Misha is right about that at least.
“Hold on.” I hear pages being turned, then he says, “Three p.m., Tuesday. You called him ‘indigestible.’ The landlord wasn’t a fan then?”
“You could say that.” I barely slept last night, with my throbbing skull and the whipping ruination of my guts. The cut on my head doesn’t show to clients, at least.
It’s not the first time the landlord has taken its anger out on me. I’ve tried everything for my stomach across the last year—eating, not eating, probiotics, a high-fibre diet, carb loading, spirulina shakes, keto and paleo diets, the 5:2, milk of magnesia—but I still feel like mouths are birthing inside my bones one tooth at a time, feeding on my marrow like it’s egg yolk. “Tell me you’ve got something good set up.”
“Yeah, I do. Rafe handed one over last night. They’re in a rush and he’s booked up with the Anscombe-Branks couple. Said he’s already sampled and they’re ‘plump for it.’” Rafe is another public-school boy impervious to his averageness. His clients get names; they have futures. Misha’s run with him since they were kids. They’re both from families that have served the landlords for generations, this whole fucked-up social scene of intermarriages, secret handshakes, and disclosing which landlord they’re under before they make out. Kids born into it. Fucking travesty of a childhood, if you ask me, turning out these stunted little men who thrive on their inadequacies. It’s my sole consolation since taking this job—because I can never leave it now—at least people like Misha and Rafe finally make sense.
“Send them over. Don’t screw me on this one, Misha. I need the sale. The landlord is already talking about asking the agency for a volunteer.”
“Keep your merkin on, twinkletwat,” Misha laughs, but it’s hollow. We all know the stories, and we all believe them.
Don’t be a Barnaby, they say. They bat it about the office, braying like donkeys as they talk about old school friends and the depraved shit they did. Rafe was the one who told me what it meant, eventually.
Oh fuck, Francis, this is just the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever heard. So Tobias was the most extreme bender in the school. He’d stick his dick in literally anything. Once over the Easter holidays—his parents were on safari and Mummy had taken Father to Antigua for their anniversary—we broke into the school’s wine cellar and got absolutely rascalled on vintage amontillado, totally blottoed, and he fucked a loaf of bread right in the breadbin, then left it there. Pre-buttered toast! He’s such a fucking delinquent.
The morning after that, hanging out of a dog’s arse, Tobias’s got a telegram from his Mama—Uncle Barnaby had to volunteer. Total calamity for the family, obviously. Barnaby was doing super well until Black Monday, when he got wiped out. From star agent to impoverished cretin overnight, selling off his stockholdings and properties in secret until there was nothing left. He started turning up to work in suits from Marks & Spencer, if you can believe it—and, you know, there’s no coming back from that. Poor old Barnaby was given a choice in the end—and he bloody well stumped up. Took out life insurance then volunteered himself to the landlord. Tobias said his family ended up buying a house in Reading with the insurance. Poor bastards.
Poor Barnaby, if you ask me.
Misha says, “All yours. They’re booked for this afternoon.”
Misha sends over the written statements from Mr. and Mrs. Four-Thirty in advance, so I read them in the car, where I’ve parked several streets away. It’s over if they see me climbing out of my rusty, dented old Nova. They need to believe I’m one of them. He’s oversold it, he always does, but there is something there.
Mr. enjoys a career in finance with the investment branch of a leading multinational bank, where he is training to serve high-net-worth clients. He was cox for the college first boat, and played 1st XV for Richmond’s Under 21s. In his spare time he plays jazz saxophone (only at reasonable hours haha!).
That’s all in the past, now he spends fifteen hours a day in one of the glass-and-chrome prisons on Bishopsgate. Entry-level smell to him, fresh out of the packet. They mention the rowing at the beginning, while they still remember what it felt like to watch the sunrise over frosty meadows from the river. Still, his first job will out-earn everyone I knew at Oxford Brookes. One and a half miles, and generations of wealth separate us. It’s all about the pursuit of wealth for him, his path to success a coded labyrinth of status. It’s nothing as crass as money. He’ll earn a fortune and never be free to spend any of it.
Mrs. gained her MPhil in the radical political roots of sixteenth-century Japanese ceramics at Goldsmiths, where she worked with such artists as Beth Lo and Jonathan Yamakami. Her own work focuses on reimagining kintsugi traditions in the post-colonial Anthropocene spaces of twenty-first-century London, using materials such as reclaimed plastic and Victorian glass she finds as part of her amateur mudlarking team. She is a social media manager working for a major high-street biscuit brand.
She’s the catalyst, of course. Mr. drank the Kool-Aid, but Mrs. spent too long nurturing her essences to ignore them. All that hope and imagination will fester. She’ll start nesting and going out with new friends Mr. has never met, forgetting about kintsugi but taking up pottery, perfecting glazed marigolds on handmade teacups. Anything to fill the time as Mr. works longer and longer hours, then weekends and public holidays. As she realises she has more and more money to replace him with, and her specialised knowledge of obscure arts is cracking with age, and the only gold she has is wrapped tightly around her finger.
Rafe is right, give them a few years for their despairs to flower, and they’ll be perfect. But I have days, maybe hours. I get out of the car, straighten my tie in the wing mirror, and head for the property.
Mr. and Mrs. arrive on time, announcing themselves to the street with an avalanche of clattering heels and muttered swearing. They walk with all the arrogance of a young couple masquerading as shambolic—bickering and boundlessly confident.
The simmering resentment of their argument helps, so the door whispers open to a brightly lit corridor, the air soft and warm on the skin as they step in from the cool afternoon. The shadows of leaves dance on the hallway walls, hinting at an Arcadia just beyond the combi boiler. In the bedroom, bedside lamps cast friendly glows on the burnished terracotta accent wall, the newly made bed lacking only a chocolate on the pillow. The carpets are plump and fresh, like spring meadows beckoning bare toes to relish in their pile. In the dining room, a shaft of sunlight picks out the vase of pussy willow, complete with silvery silken nubs.
Mr. and Mrs. immediately fall into their roles, their conflicts suppressed so easily, and start planning out their new lives. Where their TV will go, “It’s 4K, 72 inches, total beast, you know,” and then the sofa, the prints, the cabinet for displaying Mrs.’s pots. How well their linen suits the walls, the red such a bold choice. Soon they’ve held dinner parties with Tracy and Alex and Alex and Alex. The tipped heads and laughs as they tell me, “We only make friends with people called Alex,” as they open kitchen cupboards, barely looking inside. “Just don’t tell Tracy, haha.”
Mrs. lets slip a hushed, perfectly enunciated, “Oh fuck,” when she opens the last cabinet and a sharp twist of metal from an old broken latch just inside the door bites at her finger. She sucks a drop of blood from the tip, and looks at me nervously. “Sorry, that hurt a bit.”
“It takes more than that to upset an estate agent, don’t you worry. We’ll get that fixed right away.”
Mr. isn’t paying attention to his wife, instead leaning over the sink to peer into the garden. The window is the only thing not gleaming clean. He huffs a heavy breath, which vanishes into the glass as the landlord steals it away, onto a smudge, and wipes with his sleeve to make a tiny clean patch. He can see thick brambles and tall grass. “Do upstairs not use it at all?” he asks.
“Not really, as you can see. Upstairs mostly keep to themselves. I’m sure they’d be delighted if you wanted to take it on as a project.” The couple flinch, Mr. gasping in shock, as an air bubble suddenly squeals through a pipe like a distant howling dog. “You would need to ask permission first, of course.”
Mrs. laughs and says, “He’s not really a gardener. More a concrete-it-all kind of guy, aren’t you, babe?”
He replies, “I could be up for it. Look, it’s west facing. Lovely light in the evening. We could have barbecues. I can finally show Alex how to make a proper burger. I have the best recipe.”
Mrs. continues to suck at her finger, which hasn’t stopped bleeding. She looks like a little girl upset at Daddy, while Mr. dreams of the man he’ll never be.
I tell them, “I’ll give you a couple of minutes to yourselves.”
Paltry morsels. I grow more hungry with every rotation of this pathetic globe.
I remember how it felt when we first saw your kind shining in the darkness. We grew fat on your souls even as you cowered. We were titans you dreamed of capturing in stories. You so few, but so bright. Swollen, fat with light in your hovels. You were succulent. Your essence cascaded through me as I gorged myself.
Endless forest covered this world, a vast animus that sang like the spirit shrikes of home, root and claw, earth and taint. But the parasite has no regard for the beauty of the host. You have sullied your flesh, made poison of your flesh. Your tiny cruelties. Cobbles and bricks and fire and concrete and cities and smog and wealth and cholera and poverty and rivers of shit in buried tunnels and vermin and rust and rot and mould and waste and tiny jealousies and gold and gold and gold and luxury and greed and ownership.
So little, made from so much.
My empire is reduced to solitary watchtowers. My army is a facile child. My altar this house.
Just once more. One great meal, and I will rip open the air, return to the beautiful shadows, where space is a dream, where all these limbs and muscles and flesh and blood and bodies are nothing.
I come to slowly, drifting in and out of the narcoleptic haze the landlord leaves me with after a consultation. It has returned to wherever it is it spends its time. It is dark. The Four-Thirties left hours ago.
I’m on the bathroom floor, so I push myself up on the bath to turn the light on. The bulb carves stark shapes from the room, leaving thick slabs of shadow behind every angle. In the mirror, I check the extent of the abuse. My face is sore, where I must have bruises forming. A whispery grey form behind me seems to caress my cheek. I double over as hunger staples my stomach into ever smaller pouches.
I breathe deeply until the pain clears. Eventually, I draw water from the sink for a drink, hoping I can trick my starving body into quieting, if just for a moment. Looking at the mirror again, I see my eyes are bloodshot, with shadowy bags underneath. And the dragged finger-mark smears on the glass tell me it tried to reach something in the reflection again. What is it looking for? Can it open a doorway there, truly? Does it just like torturing me? My stomach unleashes its fury again in all-consuming cramps. I need to sleep. To eat.
The doorbell rings. Strange. It’s late, early Saturday evening. Nothing is booked. My clients are all preparing for nights out with loud music and shitty coke. I check my phone—no messages from Misha. I head for the front door, leaning on walls to stop myself tumbling to the floor.
I open the door to find a woman who looks as exhausted as I feel. Forty-something, mousy hair, on her way to curvy, dressed in high-street denim. I doubt she can afford this place. She was pretty once, past the wrinkles that have consumed her youth, under the black bags of her eyes. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, the collar of her jacket high and buttoned closed. She quivers, like she’s on the cusp of screaming.
A tiny face peeks from behind her thigh—snotty, tearful, and full of the remorseless sorrow of a child. The woman breathes in sharply, spreading her hands to grab the invisible reins of the doorstep, as if she’s afraid it will buck and throw her back to the kerb. “I saw the sign. The ‘to let’ sign. And I saw the light on. I thought maybe I could . . . Could I? Bit of an emergency, really.” Her smile is all mania and fear.
It’s time for me to be knocking off and getting what sleep I can before Sunday’s viewings. Behind her a group of lads walk along the street, chattering like rooks, no doubt heading for the pub. It’s the time when the drinkers annex the streets for another night. No place for a child. I need to go home, swallow as many painkillers as I can, and force down whatever food the landlord will allow me. Wash. Try to sleep. But the way this mother keeps shooting glances over her shoulder gets to me. It’s not those lads. She wants to be off the street.
I step back, and welcome her in with an arm. I say, “Sure, I’ve got a bit of time, nothing planned for tonight anyway. Let me show you around. It can be a lovely place, for the right viewers.”
She scuttles into the hall, pulling her daughter with her, and shuts the door quickly. Her eyes linger on the locks an extra moment, as if she’s memorising each one, learning how it can be opened. Lost in a private catechism, she gives herself permission to breathe again. She rests both palms on the door for a moment, then says, “Love the place. How much is it? I can move in tomorrow, all packed and ready to go. I can pay the deposit, I’ve got some money put aside. Really, honestly. How much is it?”
“It might be best if you can call the office in the morn—”
“No! Sorry, no. I need a place right now. I’ll sign whatever you want. Please.”
She pushes past me down the hall, turning sideways to fit through the space, so that her jacket catches, the button at the neck popping open, giving me a flash of finger marks on her throat. Dark, livid, deep. She quickly closes the buttons and disappears into the kitchen.
I bend down to the little girl, who is still in the hallway with me, smile, and put out my hand for a shake. “Hello, I’m Francis. Do you want to live here with your mummy?”
The girl looks past me, then runs after her mother in silence. I follow through the door to find the girl tugging her mother’s elbow and whispering loudly, “I don’t like it here, Mummy, I don’t like it.”
Behind them, in the bathroom, I see an oil-thick shadow vanish through the doorway, catch a glimpse of a baleful red eye blinking closed in the cabinet mirror.
The landlord never comes to the property until it’s ready. For it to show itself now means . . .
I walk over to them and start to lead the pair of them out of the house. The mother tries to shrug off the arm I extend over her shoulder, then grunts in pain and shock as I shove her into a wall. “Sorry, but actually I can’t have you here. I’d lose my job if they thought I was doing things off the books.” At the door to the hallway the mother starts to push back out of some instinct for resistance, punching me weakly with a courage she is clearly still new to. The girl is retreating down the hallway, turning to the front door to open it.
There is a loud thump, as if a wardrobe fell to the ground upstairs, followed by the sound of something heavy dragging across the floor, just once. Chilly tendrils reach for my back, scraping at my skin with a slick, viscous quality. My skull tightens, as if claws are squeezing me, and the tips are chiselling into my temples and in the centre of the fractured seam at the top, my fontanelle, where once a throbbing membrane of skin was the frailest of partitions between my mind and that which is.
I grip the doorframe around me tightly, feeling my nails digging into the wood, splinters shooting up into the nail beds. The pain—the physical pain of my body—gives me focus, pulls me back into myself. I keep clawing at the wood, dragging the flesh and bones of myself over the threshold, reclaiming myself from the landlord one traumatised nerve at a time.
From the garden path, the mother stares at me in anger and confusion at her eviction.
I tell her quickly, while I still can, “We’ll get you signed up tonight, not a problem. Come with me to the office so we can do all the paperwork.”
The mother breaks and she starts sobbing openly with relief, a lightness in her voice as she starts thanking me over and over. I barely hear it, just usher her out of the garden, telling her to wait there while I lock up, how we’ll go to the agency straightaway, this endless gabbling sales patter coming out of my mouth while I’m focusing all my will on pulling the door shut behind us.
The pain in my guts expands to fill my entire torso, bubbles of agony bursting in my lungs. I feel like a constellation of flesh. I burn with an acidic compulsion to go back into the house, my feet dissolving with every step I take further away. The tendrils have thickened to tentacles, wrapping themselves around me, ripping away my skin then immediately coiling around me once more like an insatiable polyp.
Somehow, I stop myself from screaming.
Her.
The child.
Now.
Misha looks up in a panic as we walk into the office, scraping the line on his desk into the bin. The mother and girl wait nervously by the entrance as I walk to the back to talk to him. He bats his nostrils back and forth, sniffing repeatedly and says, “What you doing here, Frankie? Past business hours, I’m closing up in a minute.”
“Big night planned, is it?” Of course it is, always is for his type.
“Just wrapping today’s sales. Rafe did Tiverton Street. Two hundred over asking, drinks to celebrate, you know how it is?”
“Thanks Misha. I didn’t, but I do now.”
“I’m not doing new clients. Lionel’s got the morning, saddle him with it. Come spend some time with the lads.”
It’s said out of good form as much as anything—there’s no expectation that I’ll actually go, or that they’d be happy if I come. I can’t afford their lifestyle, and they don’t understand mine. It’s just how it’s done. I don’t give a shit though, I need him gone. “I’ll do it, got a good feeling about this one, you know? Leave the sales, I can do those as well.”
Misha doesn’t hesitate for a second, breaking out a Harley Street smile and saying, “Brick. You’re a total brick, Frankie. I owe you one.” He swirls his coat up off his chair and shoots out the door to whatever basement cocktail bar Rafe found on TikTok this week.
The landlord’s grip on me weakened as soon as I made it out of the house. It knows I must bring it what it wants through official channels, that it can’t risk close investigations of the flat, so it had to let me go. Even so, I feel weaker than ever.
I slump into my chair as the mother and girl settle into theirs on the opposite side of the desk. The mother keeps her coat buttoned tight, sitting ramrod straight on the edge of the seat. The girl frets the cuffs of her coat, tugging at a loose thread in silence.
I search our list of active properties, hoping it’s still available, relieved to find it is. None of the guys care about filling it, the owner being a human. Worst of all, a human who has given us explicit instructions to hold the rent below market rates. One Mrs. Whetherell, owner of the two-up terrace next door to hers, her mum’s old place, empty since she bought the neighbouring property and moved into that. This lady has lived either side of one wall her entire life. It’s small but clean, in good school catchments, but is too far from the station to attract commuters. The photos show ’70s textured wallpaper, swirly brown carpet, and commemoration plates on the wall for every royal wedding—at least until Charles and Camilla. And there’s a vast wealth of shortbread available for anyone savvy enough to compliment her baking.
I take down their names—Maisie is the mother, Alba the girl—and just a few more details, trying to avoid it coming across as interrogation. She’s been through enough. The bruises on her neck are like ink stains from a glove.
Maisie breaks down when I eventually show her the property and she hears the price. Maisie needs a place to live, not a manifestation of ambition in brick and designer furniture. She needs a door she can lock. She needs to be able to take a breath and know that the next will happen just as easily. Mrs Whetherell just wants nice people to live next to her. Mrs Whetherell just wants some company.
Maisie hugs her daughter tightly and says, “We’ll be okay, honey. We can make this work. New school, new friends, new start.”
Alba whispers back, “I don’t want new friends, I already have friends. I don’t want to move, mummy.”
“I know, darling, but we have to live somewhere new. Now that daddy is sick.” She looks up at me, pleading with me silently to condone her deception. Begging me for mercy, as if I am master of her destiny. All I do is let flats, and lie to people.
Alba asks her mother, “Is this going to be like the other house? I didn’t like the other house. The bathroom troll was scary.”
“What bathroom troll, darling? You didn’t even see the bathroom.”
The girl clams up and glares at me with the fury her mother should be letting out. She knows, fuck knows how, but she does. I wish it was a troll, something contained within arms and legs and teeth. Something that could be killed. If she knew what that splintered orb in the mirror belonged to, the swollen protuberances of its limbs, the endless twitching tentacles, the tiny biting mouths that open up at random across its body.
I don’t even know how many of them there are, how many companies exist to serve them. What if they’re everywhere, hiding under factories and warehouses as well? What if my one is the runt of the litter, a bullied god of hate punching down. I checked the agency records once but they’re encrypted, so I only know the entity that uses me as its tool. I hope that they only exist in this country, that there are places free of their infestation. I pray, though I know it isn’t true, that I’m the only slave they control. I don’t even have a name for them, despite how intimately they violate me. It’s different for Rafe and Misha; his kind are employees, inheriting that fig leaf of freedom. Rafe told me that I’m the only person they’ve told the truth, that no one else outside their families even knows they exist. I’ve been fucked ever since they got me high and opened their box of secrets to me. Flushed with serotonin, my saucer eyes gazing into the abyss, they told me we were brothers, joined by something greater than us, and, fool that I was, I believed them. All I know is that without them our agency would shrivel and die, shutters pulled on shiny offices across the city, maybe the country. Inheritances would evaporate. Misha would need to pick a cheaper drug habit, or find another host company to burrow into. Rafe would float on into another fortune, impervious to it all. The other junior agents—the ones who believe all we do is let flats—would need to get actual jobs, and I, well, I pray for it every day.
I’ve seen the glistening flesh of a boneless snake running through the pipes, drinking down the effluence, every drop of piss and blood, every scummy-watered bath. I’ve coddled nervous tenants, telling them that the noises from the roof are anything but ravenous creepers, a multitude of them hunting with one mind, each little more than claws and scales and hate. I’ve tutted and sighed about sound insulation when I know the bricks whisper and scream and fight and smash and howl in their dreams every night. I’ve prattled on about architectural oddities causing feelings of claustrophobia, as the very space around us is being chewed upon like cud, and the room sucks the life from its inhabitants in a desperate act of self-preservation. I’ve watched people twitch and fidget, their hindbrain knowing something isn’t right even as they tell me they love the place, not feeling everything reflecting back on themselves, their thoughts gulped down and spat out half chewed, their hopes and souls flayed in layers so fine they never notice how they are diminished, how every sudden draft passing over them is another piece of their essence consumed by the landlord.
I realised, after a few weeks working at the agency, just how many I have lived with in my life. All the shitty house shares I’ve tolerated. The years my asthma flared up, my eyelids erupting into hives with allergies, the smothering weight of depression trapping me in my bed. The country has been infested with them for centuries, but only now I know they are there can I see them. Now I’m like Rafe’s lot—profiting by helping the parasites. The obscene cost of renting a home is the final insult—the banality of hiding darkness under the naked cruelties of money.
I used to think that I was responsible, that my choices had some kind of effect. But there is no choice, not while the landlords are still here. Not while a few people can get rich.
That’s what I think as I look at Maisie hugging her daughter tightly, lest the wind rip her from her arms. Nothing I’ve done can be changed. I’m complicit, just like we all are. All I can change is what I do next. Maisie has escaped, and Alba has never known anything else.
I can’t give them to the landlord.
It’s past 10 p.m. when I unlock the door of my one-bed flat on the edge of the industrial estate near where the bypass spews endless traffic into the city every hour of every day. It was sold as a new-build years ago, morphing into something uncategorised and undesired now that the newness has worn off. It’s a shell at best, full of draughts, leaking seals, and cracked housings on the appliances.
But that’s it.
With my parents, content with their middle-class careers in the town hall but all their wealth tied up in equity, a mortgage is an impossible dream for me. The Bank of Mum and Dad is already in hock. So I am slaved to the indenture of my home, paying rent on credit and paying off the credit with my salary. If I pay to have the mattress steam-cleaned I can’t pay for a dehumidifier to stop the mould. Do I fix a leaking washing machine or the dripping cistern that stops me sleeping? The lock on the front door or the bedroom window? Why bother at all when the frames of both are warped?
I kick the clothes strewn across my bedroom floor into a pile and straighten the bedding, as Maisie follows to lay a barely conscious Alba down to sleep. I head for the kitchen as she settles her daughter, looking through the cupboards for anything I can make dinner from. Tomato puree, a huge bag of paprika I’m sure was here before I moved in, and one tin of red kidney beans. The fridge is empty except for a can of Red Bull.
I close it and turn around to see Maisie standing in the doorway, studying me. She’s taken her coat off at last, tucked her hair behind her shoulder to reveal the extent of the bruises. She fronts well, not showing me any weakness. I take my keys from my pocket and slide them across the tiny kitchen table towards her.
“That’s the only set. No bolt on the bedroom door, but there’s a few weeks’ worth of laundry you can block it up with. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
She picks up the keys in silence, coils a fist around them so the stick out between the fingers. “What do you want from me? What’s the price?”
“Nothing.” Penance. Salvation.
She sniffs, looks back over her shoulder to the bedroom, hearing the twist of duvet or some tiny whimper from Alba perhaps. “You try a single fucking thing and I will kill you in your sleep.”
I nod, not really sure what to say.
She takes a moment longer to think, then says, “Do you want some dinner?”
I am a hollow ghoul, thinner than I have ever been. I’d chew my own fingers to the bone if I thought I could keep it down. Christ knows what I look like to her, taut and shivering with nerves, hunched over the vacuum of my stomach. “Can’t really cook much,” I confess.
“I can cook.”
“There’s nothing in the house anyway.”
“You look hungry, you know. Like . . . I mean, not well.”
She makes me laugh, despite it all. Not well. As if there’s a cure for what I have. But people do eat, normal people at least. That’s what I should be doing, and maybe that’s what she needs. A normal night doing normal things.
I grab my coat, check my wallet is in there, and say, “I’ll go buy some bits. Buzz me back in, yeah?”
She nods, something in her relaxing as she realises I’m leaving her in my home. That I’m offering my secrets up to her, without asking her any questions. That she can lock me out.
I squint against the bright lights of the corner shop as I fill a basket with vegetables and chicken, trying to remember what a meal looks like. The tightly stacked rows of boxes and tins, with their glossy images of meat, fruit and vegetables look like the building blocks of something I no longer understand.
Back at the flat I find Maisie drying my pans, the kitchen newly cleaned. She takes the bag and waves me to sit down with a soapy hand. She works in silence, and I am too tired to ask any questions. My life is an endless, meaningless chatter, and I already know everything I need to know about her. The next half hour is filled with scents as she prepares a meal. Simple, homely, rich herby smells that fill my house and my head.
When she puts the plate in front of me I am surprised to find myself hungry, my stomach gurgling in anticipation. I take a fork and lift a tiny amount to my mouth, blowing gently to cool it. Maisie watches me keenly, and there is little trust in her silence. She stands leaning against the counter, my chef’s knife next to her. She’ll barricade herself in with her daughter until morning, I know.
But first, I eat.
The Four-Thirties are holding hands and harmonious when they arrive for the second viewing. Rehearsals went well then. They are dressed for a party—Mr. in chinos and a pastel shirt, a jumper most unironically over his shoulders, Mrs. in a flowing cotton Laura Ashley dress and bright green wedges—their chat all reminders that Alex is a stickler for punctuality, not like Alex, haha, oh Alex, at least Alex buys Sabra hummus, none of that wallpaper paste they sell at Sainsbury’s, haha. Mrs. runs delicate fingers capped with immaculate nails—and a sticking plaster—over the furniture as she chatters, a mantra of privilege I’ve seen a hundred times.
This time, they play their parts perfectly. Mr. goes out into the garden, treading down the brambles, and maybe he doesn’t hear the chitters and rustling of vermin in the undergrowth, because he comes back tutting and wiping his hands like a mechanic hoping to fleece some old dear out of their pension. “It really would be such a lot of work, almost worth a reduction in the rent, haha.”
Mrs. is waiting for him in the kitchen, peering at the boiler with feigned comprehension. She turns back to me slowly, leading with her head, her finger lingering on the fitting with a languid ease. “When was this last serviced? Really, we were expecting a heat-exchange system at this price.” Behind her, the shower curtain flicks out of the bath like a snake’s tongue. “It’s draughty too. When did you say the windows were installed?” They are full of their parents’ standards, hoping to shape the world the only way they’ve been shown how.
The shadows in the bathroom strengthen, pulling in more light, as claws scratch at my temples. The Four-Thirties have misread the power dynamic, and failed to account for all factors. They think they’re up against me and my cheap suit. Misha has told me how none of the landlords like negotiating, and that this is one of the worst—it despises anything other than total acceptance of its terms. Wheedling and bargaining hastens its hunger, shortening the eventual tenancy. Talk of rights and duties sparks cacophonous outpourings. The sacrifice must be willing.
I usher Mr. and Mrs. away from the bathroom and back to the front bedroom, where weak sunlight barely pierces the growing gloom. We file into the room, the couple settling into the angles of the bay window, and convene around the bed under the sodden pottery colour of the accent wall. They share a quick glance, Mrs. giving a barely perceptible nod, revealing which of their parentage carries more weight. Mr. beams back at her, stuffing his hands in his pockets to hide his excited fidgeting. Mrs. is more restrained, offering a tiny smile as she says, “We’d like to make an offer. How many other viewings do you have?”
“Just a couple more this weekend,” I say, swallowing a retch. It would make no sense to them, how little their money changes things here. I long to scream, “Yes, take the fucking flat! I hope you both die in this bed,” except long, hateful fingers are squeezing my chest and pushing me into the carpet. My body doesn’t feel my own as I say, “I have to finish this round of viewings. Give me a call at the office tomorrow, and we can talk it over then.”
They are clearly at a loss as I usher them to the front door. Now, finally, they have noticed something that isn’t right. A sacred covenant has been broken, that of wealth’s command. They carry the petulant faces of children first encountering the banal horror of the world, their toys no use out here. Mrs. looks back into the bedroom one last time, her gaze on the pillows so fat and welcoming. She is dreaming of mornings they would spend here, stories to tell their future children. Except her father didn’t warn her about mattresses. Fathers only ever think about boilers. They don’t like to think about their daughters all sweating and drooling and fucking on the same mess of fabric and coiled metal; they forget about legions of mites and worms and parasites that colonise the spaces closest to our skin; they cannot imagine inhuman intelligence permeating our flesh and coiling around our inner beings with every slumbering breath.
I follow them, keeping my gaze on the couple, out to the street as I lock the door. The landlord has to let me go, but it still tears at me as I deadlock the door, my skin feeling so tight it might rip, my fingers splaying against the dank paintwork of the door.
Feeling like I am pulling a tooth from a jaw, I tug the key free.
All my power pushed into so little flesh. So weak, incapable of mastering even yourself. How dare you be so tiny, so undeserving. What use are you? What function have your kind? What indignity that we even converse, you protoplasm, you molecule, you prion.
Civilisations have waded through mud in my honour. I have bathed in the souls of creatures who barely knew my name as a whisper in the darkness. I was adored, enduring their outpourings of love like the filth it was.
Yet you, mote, feel me within your skin. You, atom, defy me.
You will bring me the mother. I will have her child.
Then I will sear every particle of your being from this plane. I will sunder your essence into a multitude of sufferings and cast them across the fields of home.
Eternity will be yours.
Mrs. Whetherell slides a plate (Elizabeth II and Philip, original judging by the aging of the gloss) of chocolate chip shortbread towards Alba. The girl has opened up in her presence, a willing victim to Mrs. Whetherell’s ancient magics.
Mrs. Whetherell then offers a shortbread to Maisie, and lastly me. “Come on, lad, you look a bit peaky. I’m not one to brag, but these shortbreads were good enough for a Lord in 1987.”
“They look fresher than that,” I say with a wink.
Mrs. Whetherell laughs and says, “You wicked boy. Asda’s garibaldi’s for you, then! Only good boys and girls get my shortbread.”
I laugh for the audience, but the early morning sun cuts through me like a knife. Or maybe it’s easier to blame the light for how the darkness is slicing me up. It’s all I can do to sip water.
The landlord is weaker here, on the other side of town. But it still wants my attention every second, and I can feel it scratching across the roofs, up and down the streets, searching for me.
I leave them to bond, barely able to concentrate on talk of schools, homework, and favourite animals. I’m not needed any more. I’m nothing more than a glorified administrator now that I’ve arranged the introduction. But when Mrs. Whetherell says, “What made you decide to move with the little one?” I jump into Maisie’s moment of hesitation. I can see how the question drags her back in an instant to the violence she’s desperate to escape. Violence that is still happening for her, right now. I can see her trying to condense everything that led her here, with just Alba’s ragged unicorn, a rucksack of clothes, and her bruises, into the words that will convince this kindly old lady to take her in. But she can’t speak without ripping her heart out of her chest and dropping it onto collector’s china, to drip blood between biscuits and royal paramours. Maisie has lived by will alone for who knows how long. It’s clear to me she’s not even sure she made a decision, or if she just ran. So I speak for her, I take that choice away from her. I manipulate people, no doubt about it, but sometimes I can do it for the right reasons.
I lean over to Mrs. Whetherell, giving a conspirator’s wink, and tell her, “They’ve been looking for somewhere quiet, away from the noise. They’re knocking down some ex-local flats next door—the solid ones from the 1950s, they don’t make them like that any more do they, Mrs. W? You know those new apartment buildings, no sound insulation at all. It’s diggers and cranes all day. Add in one bad neighbour and . . . They get so much homework, from such a young age these days.”
Exactly on cue the granny I wish I’d had tips her head and says, “Aww, poor pet. It must be so hard bringing up the little one like that. Have you a garden? No outside space? That won’t do, the little ones need to be outside.”
“I know you’ve been looking for some nice, trustworthy tenants, and I’ve known Maisie and Alba here for years.” Maisie shoots me a glance, surprised at the ease of my lies. “To tell you the truth, I got them that last flat. I didn’t know about the new developments, and we had no idea what the neighbours were like, I swear. I’ve felt awful ever since. But then I realised, I could make it up to them both . . .”
She swallows it all, of course, and Maisie keeps her lips clamped shut. Mrs. Whetherell lives in a world where dishonesty is a thing for television and the newspapers. People don’t really lie to each other, not real people. No one could ever look a mother in the eye as they’re gouging her for every penny she’s got. No one would hit a child.
She pats me on the hand and says, “It’s not making mistakes that matters, but what you do after. Bless you, my boy. Now, you two young ladies, would you like to come see the garden? I hope you like strawberries, I can never eat the whole crop.”
They head into the kitchen, following the lingering smells of baking out into the sunny garden. They are already meshing into a new family, both Maisie and Mrs. Whetherell smiling as little Alba dashes out the back door, turning back to beam a smile at us all before skipping onto the lawn.
I can’t watch them for long. Something about the purity of the scene makes my scalp itch. It’s like happiness can’t find a home in me and instead is crawling the inside of my skull in search of an escape route.
I retreat to my car, planning to confirm bookings with more young couples, more new builds, more prefabricated units, more tributes. But as I settle into my seat my phone rings, an unknown number.
“Is that Francis?”
“Speaking, who’s calling?”
“It’s about the flat. I’ve been looking over a few numbers and, well, I would like to make the landlord an offer.”
Mr. Three. Lionel probably gave him my number, the conniving little shit. And Misha put him up to it, I’m sure. “I’m not in a position to negotiate. You should speak to Lionel in the office.”
“He told me to call you. It’s a good offer, fifteen percent over. It’s a good price. You won’t get more that far from the station.”
The tone of his delivery is quite incredible. In his mind the conversation is already complete, and we’re just going through the motions. “Really, I can’t—”
“How about I mail it over? I’ll do that now. Okay?”
It’s the way he says “Okay?” that triggers me. The exactitude that would flatten my agency, render me just a tool at his disposal. People shouldn’t be used. People shouldn’t conform to tiny expectations. People should be wild and unpredictable and fierce.
I hold the phone before me, surface to the sky like a prayer as I respond: “I said no, so fuck off.”
I hang up.
The coat hangers scrape at my skull the moment I get out of my car, dragging me towards the door of the flat. I brace against the vehicle, dry-heaving a wisp of tar, when my phone pings loudly. Misha has sent me the tenancy agreement for the Four-Thirties, agency boilerplate locking them in to twenty-four months, with rent reviews at months twelve and eighteen, and no right to appeal. He included one of his usual inspirational notes as well: Fuck-de-doodle me, golden-nips. You suddenly grown a pair? You might just last in this gig after all. That or two hundred carnations for mumsie next week. I’ve got £100 with Clarence you don’t sign it, so chin up, my proley baby. M xoxo
The truth is I’ve never heard of anyone attempting to force a tenant on a landlord. Rafe has joked about it once or twice, in a fit of coked-up bravado late on a Friday night, but it’s just one of a multitude of empty brags that he spouts. He struts like a cock when it’s just us in front of him, but I saw how he looked the night he came back from Beulah Road after the tenants vanished. Ten days they’d lived there, not even a fortnight. He never said what happened, but he was as white as ash, and he shredded the invoice from the cleaning agency before any of us could see it. Something broke inside him that night; an essential part of his inhumanity collapsed. I think all the stories came true, all at once, and he didn’t like the feel of blood on his hands. I’m sure Misha thinks Rafe lost his nerve, but I think maybe he finally found a little bit of it. He called his dad and started handing over clients shortly after.
But something has to change, we can’t all be slaves to so few masters. The landlords don’t eat us all, so maybe they can’t, maybe that’s the great lie they hide with violence. There has to be hope.
For now I wait, leaning on the garden wall so the landlord can take reassuring nips, and know I’m in its grip. I watch pigeons peck discarded fried chicken at the bus stop opposite. A butterfly strays into the road, buffeted into oblivion by a passing SUV. Overhead, an endless sequence of planes jettison carbon dioxide into the upper atmosphere. Life continues.
Eventually, the Four-Thirties arrive, proceeding down the footpath hand in hand, strutting like they’ve just arrived from a photoshoot. Mrs. has an improbable curl in her hair, while Mr. has a box-fresh fade, the curly thatch on top preserved with all its manufactured misdemeanour. Their gloss and makeup don’t quite hide the bags under their eyes, but otherwise it’s a perfect performance. They look like the affluent boomers their parents are, that they’re one inheritance away from becoming.
I run them through the contract in the garden, trusting in momentum and a confident delivery to stop them asking to go inside. Not yet, I need one more thing. “If you could just sign here and here.” They extend long, elfin fingers to complete their covenants on the tablet. Mrs. signs first, the sacred acts reduced to tutting and clumsy thumbs. Mr. may as well be at nursery making finger paintings. No matter, the deeds are binding however crude their assent. I tap Submit, sending the landlord its notice of the new tenants.
I know it’s coming. I know this pain. I hiss through my teeth anyway, as the landlord’s fury takes hold.
Mr. and Mrs. exchange a worried glance as they take the keys from my shaking fingers. I don’t hear anything else. Maybe I waved them goodbye. Maybe I wished them well in their new home. Maybe I slipped through the cracks in the paving. Maybe I was sucked into the bowels of the earth by a ravenous claw, to suffer my punishment. Maybe the landlord tossed me away like a bird’s carcass. I know I next feel myself slumping against the car door. I open it and curl up on the back seat wrapped around the nimbus of my stomach the acidic knot the pain is like nothing else a vast wall shutting out the heavens shutting out the heavens shutting out us all a whipping lash of hot wire coiled through my arteries I am become rage—
The wall flashes by at unimaginable speed, scales the size of cities shatter the clouds this world is dark and pungent and not mine this inconceivable edifice hurtles into space the scales the scales so many scales this behemoth has swallowed god and it turns now I see I see too late I am not my own I belong to this and it opens an eye the size of eternity and gazes down on me alone mote nothing in all this creation other than—
You own nothing.
You are mine.
That moving house is stressful is well-known these days, but Anna and Michael are proud of how they deal with the job together. They save money by doing it all themselves, rather than booking a removals service. Instead Anna borrows a van from a local branch of Daddy’s company, and they graciously accept Alex’s offer of help with the boxes.
Moving in summer means open windows with the radio tuned to Magic FM. Bill Withers reminds them it’s going to be a lovely day as Anna unpacks the Wedgwood dinner service, the Le Creuset dishes and the carbon steel pans. Michael sorts the books by colour (something Anna saw on Instagram and loved the idea of) on their mahogany shelves, those a wedding present from Auntie Moll.
They end the first day with pizza from their new local wood-fired oven takeaway, sipping one of their Viogniers they normally save for Alex and Alex, but the rest of the wine hasn’t chilled yet, and they’re celebrating, just such a shame the nice wineglasses are at the bottom of the pile of boxes in the kitchen right now. They won’t get to them for another two days, distracted as they are by making the bed and sorting the wardrobes out and taking a break to walk in their new local park before sharing their first shower in their new home, slippery hands running across each other’s bodies with giggles as the spores drift in the air, catch in the water, and are massaged into their skin lovingly.
Feeling naughty, they dash naked through the flat to the bed, toss the duvet off, and exhaust their lust in a tangle of limbs and water. They doze after, at once sated and filled with cupidity.
Gently, Michael is the first to cough.
“Agency” copyright © 2026 by George Sandison
Art copyright © 2026 by Jamie Keenan
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Agency
