The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 30
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

Hostile Architecture

The first time I saw him he was sleeping under a bench, wrapped in a pink blanket. Why not on the bench, I thought? Then I saw that it had been designed with an armrest in the middle so that you couldn’t sleep on it. From that point I started seeing examples of that everywhere: blunt spikes installed on concrete ledges, fences closing off patches of unused green space, public areas with sprinklers and sound systems designed to annoy and drive people away.
          So this guy, one of many, I knew, was sleeping wherever he could. I saw him in doorways, and among a pile of trash at the corner of a parking lot. I’d give him a couple of bucks now and then. I called the church outreach people and left messages on their voicemail. I was worried about the guy. His trash pile was full of pizza boxes and empty plastic bottles and rain-soaked clothes.
          Eventually he started sleeping in my backyard, on a little patch of grass stuck between the cement patio and the chain-link fence by the alley. I called the church people but no one came. I didn’t want to call the cops. It was getting warm out. I imagined I could smell him, even from my second-floor apartment. I invited him in to use my shower. He ignored me. Come to think of it, I never did hear him speak.
          Mushrooms started growing on his skin, thin mops of traily things like enoki, and big fat turd-like things that hung from his armpits like dangling yams. Now I could definitely smell him, from practically anywhere on the block, but my neighbors never commented, and still nobody from the church answered my call. I called 911 for a wellness check but nobody showed up then either. I bought an air filter. I didn’t have enough money saved to move, not in this housing market.
          Eventually he took root, or rhizome, or whatever you call it. He got planted anyway, I could see his feet and one hand extending out from under the pink blanket, and they were thoroughly threaded into the ground. They grew a little more blurry, shapewise, every day, until you couldn’t tell that there was a human form under there at all. When I finally got up the courage to remove the blanket, it separated with a tearing sound and took a lot of stuff with it. Underneath there were just a few soft bones left. I threw away the blanket.
          I won’t deny that I was a little relieved, but now we have mushrooms growing in the laundry room and I still don’t have money to move.
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