3 - Haven
HAVEN
There comes a point in your life when ‘new beginning’ stopped sounding hopeful, and started sounding like a rebrand your brain came up with so you didn’t have to admit things had gone… sideways.
It wasn’t one big, life-altering moment, either. It was a series of fuck-ups. Small fuck-ups. Manageable ones. The kind you told yourself you could recover from.
And then suddenly you were standing at the bottom of a staircase in a house that looked like it charged rent in tetanus.
Shifting my grip on my bag, I started up. The stairs creaked under my weight, loud enough to make it feel personal. Like the house was judging me. Which, if it was, it needed to get in line.
I counted the steps without thinking. Old habit. Measure the space, know the structure. Figure out what might give way before it did, because hey, analyst. That was my thing.
Come to think of it, it had always been my thing.
I was eternally looking for patterns, and trying to stay ahead of them. Which made it especially impressive that I’d end up here, taking a live-in job with a team that openly resented my existence, in a building that might collapse if someone sneezed too close to the foundation.
I exhaled, watching my breath fog faintly as the air got colder the higher I climbed.
Just fucking amazing.
There came a point too, when you had to decide whether you were going to keep trying to prove yourself to people who’d already decided you were wrong—
— or accept that you were right, and let them be wrong somewhere else. Without you.
Preferably though, not somewhere that required thermal layering just to survive a Tuesday night.
I passed the second landing, and the third floor landing finally came into view.
The narrow hallway was sloped on both sides.
There were doors to the left and right, a bathroom straight ahead, and a level of silence that felt suspiciously lonely after the chaos downstairs.
No laughter. No voices. Just the low hum of pipes and the wind pressing against the walls, like it was trying to get in.
In some places, it even succeeded.
“Love it,” I muttered.
An invisible hand urged me forward, attached to several fingers. Student loans. A checking account, running on empty. After what happened, this wasn’t just a job — it was proof I was still in the game. My last real shot.
All I had to do was take it.
I rolled my bag forward, toward the door on the left. It was already open for me. One of the last doors I had left.
Whatever this was, I’d chosen it. Or just maybe, it had chosen me. Either way, there was one thing I was absolutely sure of:
If I was going to make a terrible decision, I was at least going to commit to it.