Layla

I walk to the top of the stairs and see a dark cloud of smoke drifting out of the entryway to the kitchen.

As soon as I start to descend the stairs, I hear a crash come from the kitchen.

It’s so loud; I feel it in my chest.

I rush down the rest of the stairs, and when I get to the kitchen, soup is everywhere. I scan the stove, the floor, the walls. I wave the smoke out of my face and try to figure out what needs saving first.

There’s no fire, though. Just a bunch of smoke and a huge-ass mess.

I’m staring at it all in shock when Layla runs down the stairs.

She pauses in the entryway to the kitchen and takes in the mess. “What happened?”

I walk to the stove to turn off the burner, but when I reach for the knob, the burner isn’t even on. It’s been switched to the off position.

My arm falls down to my side. I look at the burner, then look at the pan on the other side of the kitchen.

“Why is the sink on?” Layla asks.

There’s a stream of water running from the faucet. I don’t remember leaving the water on. I walk over to it to turn it off and notice something in the bottom of the sink.

A burnt rag.

The same rag I wiped my hands on right before running upstairs.

The rag obviously caught fire, because it’s burnt to a crisp, but how did it end up in the sink? How is the water on? Who turned off the stove?

Who knocked over the pan of soup?

I immediately walk to the front door, but it’s locked from the inside. Layla follows me. “What are you doing?”

I know there’s a back door, but if someone knocked the pan off the stove as I was descending the stairs, I would have seen them heading toward the back door. There’s no other exit to the kitchen.

I walk back to the kitchen and look at the window. It’s also locked from the inside.

“Leeds, you’re scaring me.”

I shake my head. “It’s fine, Layla,” I say reassuringly. I don’t want to worry her. If I act like I can’t explain this, it’ll cause unnecessary concern. “I caught the rag on fire. Accidentally knocked the soup off the stove trying to put it out.” I rub my hands up her arms. “I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

“I’ll help you,” she says.

I let her. I’d rather her be in the same room because I’m not sure what the fuck just happened.THE INTERVIEW

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.”CHAPTER SEVEN

Layla is picking at her pasta, moving it around with her fork more than she’s eating it. She looks bored.