Carrie

Number 8008, your new apartment. Your new home and workplace where you’ll be living with your new “fixer-upper” of a girlfriend— Carrie McCann is a reclusive porn addict with a bevy of mental illnesses for you to sort through. Your job— as her government mandated partner— is to give her the support she needs to be happy and healthy again.

The sodden pile of letters and wrappers surrounding your door are the first ill omen of your trials to come. You knock politely on the door and look down to the courtyard behind you. The mangy grass and skeletal shrubbery do little to decorate this concrete apartment block. You turn back to the door and knock harder. You take your key from your pocket and knock one last time, loudly announcing “I’m from the government, I’m coming in!”

You open the door.

The smell hits you hard and fast in the back of your throat. Pungent and thick, the assault flows out of spills from the foreboding darkness like fog. Overtones of sour milk and salt water turn to undertones of mould and rot. You shake the thought of a corpse from your mind. You step back to catch your breath and apply peppermint oil to your nostrils. You let the corridor air out and lean into to flick on the light. Piles of spoiled papers, plastics are mottled by mouldy foodstuffs with a path parted through the filth like a the tracks of a trek through deep snow.

Your ear picks up the sound of belligerent porn somewhere further into the apartment. That’s where you’ll find your new girlfriend. You zip your government windbreaker to your neck, then step into the corridor. You see a darkened bathroom in your periphery but resist turning to see more. At the end of the corridor, you see light peeking through curtains and a kitchen that is surprisingly free of trash— which is to say it would only reach your ankles instead of your knees. It must be unused.

You arrive at a closed door, a cacophony of moans, cries, and a disturbing shlupping radiate from it. You stand straight and puff out your chest then turn the knob. The muddy light of her obscene screens paint a mass of black hair crawling over a gaming chair and a writhing body of pale flesh. As your eyes adjust you see that her legs are on the desk and her hands are in her cunt. The overwhelming assault of the smell, sounds, and sights make your head spin and you step back to steady yourself on the doorframe. You consider backing out now, is this really worth $150k a year? You remember your training and recklessly flick on the light. She screams and starts flailing like a dying squid, her hair and arms splaying as her bladder voids onto her desk and screens. She falls limp into the chair and drools a mindless “guh… guh… guh…” gibberish dribbling from her mouth. You realise that made her orgasm.

She lays there, braindead, as her porn still screams at full volume. In the light you see the room is piled to your waist in trash, but you figure the powerpoint must be near the door so you kick through a heap of it, sending new splatters to the walls and painting your pants in ugly abstract. You turn off her porn sirens at the wall and hear that she’s panting like a dog. Through a gap in her hair you can see that she’s watching you now, the eye blank. Time to introduce yourself.

It’s been a week since you’ve moved in with Carrie. You’ve cleaned mountains of trash, filled the apartment complex’s so full you’ve had to make trips with it to the landfill too. The kitchen and corridor are liveable, but you’ve quarantined her bathroom and she hasn’t let you touch her bedroom aside from clearing her trash-covered bed and putting on new bedding. At night you sleep at a nearby motel, but you haven’t convinced her to join you yet— or even leave the apartment.

Still, she’s looking better. You cut her hair to her shoulders and each morning you wash her with soap and water from the kitchen sink. She’s very quiet when you do, she looks at her feet and you can feel her heart thumping when you wash her chest. She plays with her herself softly, and sometimes she cries and weakly says “No… no…” to herself. She has a hard time accepting your attention, and has panic attacks when you push too hard— like suggesting a walk in the courtyard or opening the kitchen curtains— but she’s trying her best.

Shes wearing clothes now. You bought her whole box of all sorts of styles, but she only agreed to a pair of pink cotton pajamas, so you bought six more sets of those and she wears them everyday.

Today you’ve finally tackled the bathroom. You woke up at dawn, visited the hardware depot for cleaning supplies and biohazard protection, then cleaned the place like a professional. It took two trips to the dump, five bottles of sugar soap, and ten buckets of hot water but you can finally breathe in the place without a mask on. Carrie sleeps until noon, so you strip off your hazmat suit and knock on her bedroom door. You tell her you’re coming in and open the door. The light is off and you flick it on to see the trash piles and stained walls in all their unholy glory. In the corner of the room she’s wriggling in bed, touching herself under the covers and watching porn on her phone.