The Man in the Corner Room

By Asi Hart

A university student discovers a soul eating demon in the building where he is renting a room, and feeds it his girlfriend by accident.

He ends up having to cover his tracks, while trying to get some use out of the demon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asi Hart
• Release date: Jan 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9798201543808

Asi Hart

Asi Hart is the best Sci-Fi author south of the North Pole.

Book preview

1.

The white room.

A HEART ATTACK?  JUST like that? Peter asked surprised, and rather annoyed.

Yes, answered Paul, I found him this morning.  He just lay there on the floor in his room, stone-dead, staring into the air.  He pointed up the stairwell for emphasis.  Peter looked.  There was just a door, as usual.

Paul continued: I knew he was dead, but I called the paramedics, and they took him away.

How did you know?

He was already stiff.  And cold.

Damn, said Peter.  He shuffled his feet on the mat.  He was thinking.  With this new development, the rent had gone up considerably. 

Have you found someone else to rent with us? he asked Paul.

No... the guy just croaked today.

You don't say croaked, it's rude.

Says the guy who thinks I just found a new tenant.

Well... I can't be bothered.  You figure this out, I have to study, I have things to prepare.  I'm busy.

Peter took off his shoes and went up the stairs to the upper floor where he lived.  There were three rooms on the upper floor, with a common bathroom and a kitchen.  There was also an apartment, or more literally a room in the basement that had access to a bathroom and a laundry room.  It came with some free pet silverfish.  The landlord lived on the ground floor in a fairly lavish apartment.  Peter had seen it once, when he had leased the room.  It was cozy.  He could see how the building had been intended, with a proper living-room, and bedrooms.  Not shared with three other guys with different agendas.  The entire neighborhood was full of these modernist Bauhaus-looking houses, all set up similarly: two floors with a tall basement, mirrored to create four apartments with a common laundry room and storage.  These days most of them had made at least one room to let in the basement, and a few had converted a storey into apartments.  Like the one that Peter was renting.  He counted himself lucky.  He knew people who were renting in refitted garages.  Those tended to be a bit musty and cold.  Not to mention the two people he knew lived in the basement with the silverfish, of course.

The door to the corner room where their co-tenant had lived was open, presumably to let out whatever bad air his death had generated.  Peter had a peek inside.  He was curious.  He had never see this apartment, or room.  The tenant had been more of a night person, so they had seldom met.  The room was white.  Peter had not expected that.  The thick shag carpet, the bed, the simple rococo chairs, the IKEA dresser.  All white.  If not for the pictures on the walls and a few items on the dresser and nightstand, it would have been overwhelming.  Peter stepped inside and looked around.  The air was a bit thick.  Peter saw the window was closed, and wondered if he should open it to help air out the apartment.  This room was the weirdest thing he had seen for a while.  He wondered how the guy had kept it so meticulously clean.  On the bed lay an old book, open, and on the wall above the dresser someone had scrawled some symbol that reminded him a bit of a snowflake, and a bit of a circuit board.

Peter stared at the symbol for a moment and made a face.  There had been a mirror there.  He could just tell by the slight discoloration on the paint where it had been.  The nail was hidden in the top part of the symbol. Now the mirror was propped up against a wall beside the dresser.  It was rectangular, in a simple white frame.  Peter picked it up and put it where it had been, so it completely covered the symbol.  Peter stepped back and admired his handy work.  That was better.

Greetings, what can I do for you? a strangely androgynous voice came from behind him.

Peter startled, and when he turned around, he was even more startled.

Satan! he exclaimed.

No, said a formless white man standing in the corner by the wardrobe.  He was shaped like a man the same way a gingerbread man is shaped like a man, and all white as marble.

Peter stared at the man, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish, not making a sound, waving his hands like an Italian making a speech.  He wanted to say something, but knew not what, and his brain refused to work right at the moment.

Do you take over from your companion? asked the white man after a while, I mean, I have to eat before I can get to work.  I can't make something from nothing.  That is not how things work.

Peter stopped moving his arms, but continued to stare at the being in wonder.

Perhaps I should explain, said the white man in his velvety soft voice.

Maybe you should, Peter said slowly, giving the odd man a sideways look.

I was summoned here by your comrade.  He fell down dead when he saw me – it was almost as if he hadn't expected me.  Which is weird, since he did everything right.  Everything according to the book.  There's just one thing left to do, and I can get to work.

Work on what?  Who are you?  What do you do?  Where are you from?  How?  What?

"All quite natural questions.  In order: I reform reality if wished, I am called Mulia, I've already answered that question, I come