It`s a gray day, not that I can really tell from inside my cave of boarded up windows, but it is unusually dark- a darkness that requires me to squint as I plow through a routine of scrubbing every surface in a given space with soapy, bleachy water to try seemingly futilely to remove the multitude of stains and molds and sins from the wood of the house. My eyes water from the mixture of fumes- the scalding chemicals and stenches they are combating battling for dominance in the air in front of me. The smell is rank. Even bleach requires multiple applications to restore a livable level of sanitation. How have I lived in this all this time?

　　Jay came by and judged the support beams to be sound. A recent evening was spent watching him replace many of the studs in the timber frames of the walls, surgically cutting the old, crumbling bones out of the failing skeleton and transplanting in new ones. Jay gave me some pointers on how to go about chipping out old bricks from the fireplaces that need help. He didn`t think it was necessary to completely rip out and replace any of them, but he agreed that a few of them needed to have a few bricks and mantels replaced.

　　He`s planning to come back to start the floors. Replacing the floors is easier to do before the walls go in, or so he says. I`ll have to take his word for it. After I scrub this mold off the back of the exterior walls and out of the timber frames, I will start tearing out the old floor boards.

　　A blank canvas is what Jay called the "goal". A clean space, a structurally sound space, a space of unlimited potential&. I am motivated to get to that point as soon as possible. I need function to return to the house before it drives me completely insane.

　　Since the break-in&. Time continues to feel warped and arbitrary. My headaches are becoming unbearable. I don`t even care to read in the evenings for how badly my skull throbs each night. Perhaps they are migraines? When the headaches are at the worst, I& hear things. People get "auras" when they have migraines, or so I was led to believe. Auras are basically sensory disturbances? I`ve never had migraines before, so I don`t know for sure what`s going on. All I can say is that sometimes, when my headaches get bad enough, I hear things. Disturbing things. The sorts of unexplained noises that make me think someone might be in the house with me. Creaking floor boards. A thumping noise as though something fell or was dropped. A sigh.

　　The house seems to sigh a lot. She`s obviously seen a great many things worthy of her disdain. Drug runners and ladies of the night. Maids and their abusive lords and ladies. The homeless, the sick, the bankrupt, the vandals, the thieves, the corrupt. She has seen it all in her century and a half of existence.

　　My phone calendar informs me that I have an appointment with the roofing company in about ten minutes. Perfect. I could stand to step away from these fumes now making me a little lightheaded. There isn`t much for helping my appearance these days. The bathrooms have all been gutted except a single bathtub, thankfully with running water despite the plumbing needing an overhaul. No mirrors, no sinks, no electricity. These days my hair is only brushed out sometimes, my post-menopausal hair eternally tangled in a low bun at the nape of my neck. I do my laundry in that bath tub, hanging my clothes on a makeshift line tied between two wooden studs of the would-be bathroom walls. I listen to the steady drip, drip, dripping of the drying laundry every night as I soak the day`s sweat and grime off of my body, sometimes requiring a change of water or two before I am satisfactorily clean.

　　A strange thing to think about before receiving a random roofing guy into my house. The company is Magleby and Sons Roofing. I actually knew the original Magleby and one of his sons back when the roofing company was a less specified contracting company. Mr. Magleby and his oldest son, a then young man named Jonathan, were your average handymen. They grew their company, now a roofing company, via word of mouth. Their business model was to provide excellence in everything that they did: getting back to customers in a timely manner, keeping commitments as best they could, responding to emergency repairs, not settling for shoddy workmanship. In short, they did what other contractors notoriously do not. Adding sons, son-in-laws, grandsons, and great-grandsons to the company has provided a stable workforce expansion as the demand for their services increased. Narrowing what services they offered until settling on roofing helped make the workload manageable. Now the company is based out of Hestinia with branches all over the greater metropolitan area. But the original location remains in Raesport where Jonathan`s son now runs the office.

　　The knock at the door is prompt, and a thirty-something year old man in khaki pants and a navy blue polo shirt stands at the door. "Good afternoon, ma`am. My name is David from Magleby`s Roofing." He looks me over, something almost skeptical but determinedly professional in his eyes. "You called about a leaky roof?"

　　"Yes, come in."Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

　　"It looks like you are doing more projects than just getting the roof looked at," he observes once through the door.

　　"That`s right." My voice sounds bored even to myself, but truth be told, I sort of am bored of this same conversation with every contractor that walks through here.

　　"It looks like you are basically starting from scratch. Are you changing the floor plan?"

　　"Minimally, if at all."

　　"Hm." He goes quiet as we hike the three flights of stairs to the attic, whistling once the exposed rafters come into view. "Well, that doesn`t look great," he immediately points out a pair of beams with obvious signs of decay eating away at their integrity. "I`d be willing to bet that your leak is somewhere above or between those two beams." Walking around with his eyes fixed upwards, taking a few pictures on his phone, David follows the lines of the space to the walls. "If I were to guess, these walls here were the ones you found had the most water damage?"

　　"That`s right. There was a wall over here that was pretty nasty too," I add, pointing out the adjacent wall, and David follows the lines of the room back up to the rafters from his new angle.

　　"Oh, yep. There`s another beam up there that`s looking sad. I`m going to need to take a look from the outside to locate the damage to the roof, but at least those three beams are going to need replacing here on the inside. With that much rot, you don`t want them holding up your roof. I wouldn`t trust them not to buckle." He walks around the room slowly, scanning each of the rafters, taking more pictures. "Yup. I think it`s just those three. That`s the good news. I`m going to go get my drone and take a peek at your roof. Do you want to watch?"

　　"Uh& sure?"

　　I lead the way back down the stairs, and David runs out to his van, coming back with a fancy remote control connected to his phone, a buzzing sound thrumming to life somewhere in the driveway when he flips a switch, the screen of his phone suddenly showing live footage as the drone takes off. David takes a moment to fly the drone in front of the porch so I can see it, and then guides the drone upward until his phone shows a clear view of the roof. He points out a few things: missing shingles, areas that show- shocker- wood rot, dings and damage. The drone returns to the ground, and David informs me of the standard next steps.

　　"So, ma`am, I`m going to take my pictures and the drone footage back to the office where I`ll have a couple of the guys help me analyze it, and we`ll give you a call in a day or two with our recommendations and a quote."

　　"That seems reasonable."

　　"Alright! Have a good day!" he says, returning to his truck with a wave goodbye.

　　And I return to my mold extermination.

　　And I scrub, the many gallon-sized jugs of bleach being slowly consumed by this interminable process lined up in rows on the floor behind me. It feels futile. Perhaps it really is. I wear gloves to protect myself from the caustic cleansing, but unnoticed tears inevitably expose my skin. Prolonged exposure can result in chemical burns. I can`t distinguish the blistering caused by the friction of scrubbing from those caused by burning, so I change my gloves every half hour on principle, washing my hands thoroughly in between. And it seems strangely fitting that the weapon of mass destruction being used against the colonies of mold would return some measure of that damage to the wielder. War is messy, and there will always be casualties for those who choose to engage in it.

　　Creak&.

　　I freeze.

　　Sigh&.

　　Oh, this blasted headache!!

　　"Really?"

　　"Thomas?!" I wheel around, not certain what to expect, and find nothing. Nothing and no one. And my head protests the sudden movement. But I could have sworn&. Never mind. I must be hearing things. Man, those migraine auras are really something! And yet&.

　　Turning back around to scrub some more leaves a prickling sensation on the back of my neck. I know that I am alone in this house. I know that what I`m hearing is some figment of misfiring synapses in my brain. But I can`t shake the feeling that there is someone there. That I am being watched. And as I glance at the puddle of moldy soap water near my toes, I see one of those mangled faces- face pareidolia- elongated, grotesque, pinched in agony. My victims are screaming at me in the silent aftermath of their destruction.

　　I shudder.

　　Maybe I`ve inhaled enough fumes for one day? I do my best to shrug the tortured image out of my mind`s eye on my brisk walk to the front door. And suddenly I am gasping for oxygen, that creepy-crawly sensation dissipating marginally with the arrival of a more visceral panic attack to contend with while my head continues to throb. I can`t wait for the windows to be fixed so I can open them easily and let fresh air push out the stale and toxic air. Perhaps I need to make it a habit to open a couple of windows anyway and then board them up again before dinner. Yes. I think I`ll try that tomorrow.