Layla

The tape ends, so the man ejects it, flips it over, and presses record again.

I wonder if he knows how much easier using his cell phone would be.

He’s probably a conspiracy theorist who questions the government to the point that he refuses to even carry a phone.

“I want to see the stove,” the man says. He picks up the tape recorder and walks with it back to the kitchen. I stay seated on the couch for a moment—wondering if asking him to come here was a mistake. Most sane people would call me crazy after hearing my story. And here I am trusting that this man won’t leak my story straight into the hands of all those sane people.

Honestly? I don’t even give a shit. My potential career, my meager following, the image Layla has been trying to build for me—none of it matters anymore. It all seems so insignificant now that I’ve seen what this world is capable of.

It’s like I’ve lived my entire life in shallow waters, but in the last few weeks, I’ve sunk all the way to the Challenger Deep.

The man is staring at the stove when I walk into the kitchen—his head tilted. He presses the knob in, turns it, and waits for the gas flame to ignite.

When it does, he watches it burn for a moment. Then he turns it off.

He waves his hand at the stove. “You have to press it in to get it into the off position. How’d you explain that to yourself?”

I shrug. “I couldn’t.”

He laughs a little. It’s the first iota of expression I get from him. He takes a seat back at the table and places the recorder between us.

“Did Layla seem bothered by it?”

“Not really,” I say. “I took the blame, and she didn’t question me. We cleaned the kitchen together, and I ended up making plain pasta instead.”

“Did anything else strike you as strange that first night?”

“Not like what happened with the stove.”

“But something out of the ordinary did happen?”

“Several things happened over the course of the next couple of days that left me questioning whether or not I was going crazy.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things that would have sent anyone else out the front door without a second thought.”