I enter the basement. I wanted to take a look at the thing I found behind the neighbors’ furniture in the corner. It seems to show signs of life, though it doesn’t resemble any organism known to me. It stands in the corner of our basement; from a distance, it looks like an old coat. I suspect my parents won’t notice it anyway—besides, they rarely come down here now.

I spent the whole day at school on pins and needles, just counting down until the end of classes. I was immensely tempted to skip the last two, but I’ve played truant so much lately that I have to sit through it. Otherwise, come May, I’ll be stuck sitting from morning till night. And yet, I know well enough that it won’t happen that way.

So, I rush down the stairs at breakneck speed, not even eating dinner. I burst into the basement, open the door, and? There he is! Standing in the corner exactly where I left him. I approach cautiously. Maybe he’s dead? I watch him, motionless. The creature shows no reaction to my presence. I move a bit closer, reach out my hand. I touch his skin. It’s strange. A bit like an old man’s skin—dark with moles, yet pale. Cool, but not entirely cold. A shiver seems to pass through the creature’s skin, but he doesn’t flinch as a whole. His skin ripples in waves. As if he could only shudder in one narrow section of his body. Part of the skin ripples down, part ripples up. He is fascinating. And a bit disgusting, too.

I feel the greatest loathing for those stumps on the sides of his body. In a way, he resembles a giant, clean-shaven penguin. With the one detail that he has no head. I don’t know if it’s possible that it’s somewhere in the back? Or maybe it collapses inward? In any case, it’s not visible where one normally expects to see a head—on the torso.

I sit in the corner of the basement opposite the creature and lean my head against the wall. I don’t know, I think I don’t suffer from schizophrenia. But who knows. Watching how my parents have been losing it lately, one could probably expect some kind of mental illness from me as well. I close my eyes. Only now do I feel how tired I am.

A prolonged shuffling of feet in sagging pants and the clinking of bottles wake me from my lethargy. I look at my watch. I drifted off for a good forty minutes. I glance at the creature—he’s standing just as he was. Zero change in appearance. Zero change in position. Meanwhile, the shuffling in the corridor is getting louder. I hold my breath. The shuffling moves along and at some point, right level with our storage room door, it stops. I prudently locked the door behind me, but what if someone just decided to break in and steal some of our worthless junk? I don’t dare move. My ears are ringing with fear. I stand and stare at the door. Right in front of me, less than two meters away, someone is there. I don’t know what they are doing, or what their intentions are. In the silence, I only hear the rushing of my own blood.

Suddenly, the tension is broken by the sound of pouring water and mumbling. An unintelligible stream of words interspersed with curses. A wet patch begins to grow on the floor from under the door. The patch expands. No way! I feel my fear turn into fury. Apparently, some local drunk took the opportunity—after all, I didn’t lock the main basement door. A thin thread of reason tells me to be glad he didn’t come for a more specific purpose, though nothing is fully known yet. Without thinking much, riding a rush of rage, I burst out of the basement straight into the two-meter-tall Suchy.

Suchy has the height, but not much mass. Clearly, drinking doesn’t do much for one’s physique. Unlike his brother, who was a fat pig and has long since been in a psychiatric ward, Suchy only visits prisons occasionally. He lives two blocks away, with his parents. What is it like, looking at such a child? I feel no sympathy, though—clearly his parents are one of those cases that works well for Durex marketing. I burst out right at him, and as much as I wanted to scold him, I feel all my arguments shrink in my pocket. He hurriedly hides the “murder weapon,” also in shock at seeing me. He knows me by sight, though we never actually greet each other. I take a step back, thinking: “Now what, Miss Braveheart?”

He is dead drunk. I’m glad he didn’t puke. Still, he blocks the entire entrance, and my hesitation has given him courage. “Hello, Little One,” he mumbles. God, I’m the one who’s about to throw up now. Subconsciously, I keep backing into the basement. I say something, I tell him to get out. He looks like he’s about to fall over, but he manages to take a few steps forward. I instinctively hide in the corner. I suppose if I were watching my behavior on screen as a horror movie, I’d laugh at the main character’s actions. Nevertheless, in reality, I act like a total loser. For one, I brought this misfortune on myself, and two—I don’t know how to stand up to him. I turn my face away and nuzzle into my father’s hanging work clothes. Suchy, encouraged by my behavior, presses on.

It all happened so fast. Hidden behind the coats, I didn’t see everything, but I guess that walking with a staggering gait, the drunkard leaned his hand against the creature. After all, I had hidden right next to him. And then… what happened next exceeds my capacity for understanding. The drunkard vanished essentially without a trace inside the thing I considered a creature. At his touch, the creature seemed to split open from the top. An abyss bounded by flesh.

I realized the creature isn’t headless. He simply is a head. Equipped with stunted feet and naked wings instead of hands. He is like a cross between a trash can, a penguin, and a hairless Vietnamese pig. A living trash can, draped in skin.

I took a deep breath and sat in the corner, recovering. I didn’t look toward the creature, from whose interior muffled sounds began to emerge. They weren’t screams. More like the peristaltic movement of giant intestines. I didn’t check, but I was certain that Suchy had met the only rightful fate. On the floor stood only his bag of bottles. Stinking just like he did.

I steal a glance at the creature. He has begun to terrify me, and yet fascinate me at the same time. Interestingly, he hasn’t actually changed shape, despite accommodating a two-meter guy inside. I decided that applying common sense wouldn’t lead me anywhere sensible. I got up, brushed the basement dust off my tracksuit, and headed for the exit. I wondered for a moment if I should thank the creature for the rescue. But when I turned toward him, he stood as before. As if nothing had happened. So, I only bowed slightly and, reaching for the bag—the only grim souvenir—I went out into the corridor, stepping over the puddle of urine. Tomorrow I’ll bring a five-liter bottle of water and rinse this place—I promised myself. I don’t know if it will help, but nothing better comes to mind. Closing the door behind me, I hear a pleasant gurgling from within the mysterious tenant’s belly.

I go out into the courtyard. Nearby, on the wall, sits a group of neighborhood drunks. These are likely the ones Suchy was drinking with. I wonder, since they’re sitting in the bushes anyway, why couldn’t he have pissed there? Regardless, at this moment, I consider it a wonderful coincidence. I throw the bottles into the glass recycling container. The poor souls probably spent all day collecting them to exchange at the store. And Suchy fell on the mission. Oh, you’ll be waiting for your buddy a long time…

The Möbius Strip of Human Residue: Frame Two, 20cm, Mixed Media, 2026