Purple Vanilla World

Your home has been invaded.
It’s time to move to a new one.

A listing: 2 bed, 2 bath, big kitchen, neutral walls begging to be sinned on.

Aster and Camille come to help.
Help means deciding for you with a smile.

The city is alive,
shifting like the Capitol Arena—
Honolulu wearing New York’s bones and San Francisco’s skin.
Bridges stitched to mossy alleyways,
held together by pixelated sheets.

You arrive at the Open House.

The living room stretches like a long throat.
Bedrooms blink off to the side like exits to nowhere.
The bathroom is a ballroom with a tub.
You’re already hanging mirrors in your head.

But something hangs above the sink.
You can’t focus. It blurs.
You shake your head and the room glitches like static.

You step back and the “apartment” unfolds into a train-station lobby.
Industrial kitchen breathing, metal lungs.
Tall, needle-thin staircases tilt to the right, hungry but camouflaged.

A dirt-smeared child sprints down one blade of stairs,
stares like she knows your middle name,
steals from the fridge, bolts back up.
She belongs to the house, which means she belongs to you.

“Are these flats connected?” you ask.
No one hears the question’s teeth.

The Broker shows you Flat 1.

A narrow hall.
Two empty bedrooms.
Sterile as a morgue without closure.
A tub sunk into the floor like a grave that gave up.
“Weird,” you say.
“Cute!” they screech.

Another room tiled like a public shower.
A tub raised like a witness stand.
“Bathroom?” you ask.
They laugh like wind chimes in a storm.

Flat 2. Hall thinner than the first.

A bald raver girl stands on her head,
spine like a matchstick, patchouli and acid in the air.
Her roommate steps out—beautiful the way knives are.
She apologizes for the mess and smiles without warmth.

You are ushered sideways into a large room that is furniture by rumor:
a bed, a desk, a computer with eyes.
“Look around,” she says.
You do.

Rooms keep opening inside rooms inside rooms.
A nesting doll of spaces, each layer smaller than before.
You map a life: this for sleep, this for work, this for the person you pretend to be.
The rooms breed until a normal one appears—patio, light—
a living room you’d have to earn by passing through every version of yourself to get there.

Aster and Camille beam.
Ready to sign the lease.

To sign your name with blood.

You try to pull them aside, but they slip through your fingers like sand on a grate.

Back in the lobby, a crowd swells.
Stairs fill with neighbors who use your future kitchen with inherited entitlement.
Your wall is already decorated with things you didn’t place.
Your plant lies on the floor, spines torn from its macramé.

“My plant,” you cry.
You cradle it back into the hammock.
It leans. You water it to weigh down the soil.
It hemorrhages from the bottom, a waterfall you didn’t pour.
You pretend it’s on purpose.
“It’s to save the water,” you lie to the face that pities you.
The face turns back to the party you weren’t invited to.

You leave.

Hallway residents watch you pass: a has-been skater, an old man with a walker made of rain, an Italian family from playing cards.

Oak doors open like a verdict.
Street noise climbs into your ear and stays.
“Parking’s fine,” Camille points to a lot lined with dumpsters.
Every space is numbered with someone else’s name.

The listing photos lied.
This is a set built by someone who hates quiet women.

You think about thieves.
About keeping dogs alive in a city that respects no boundaries.
About Ethan, whose answer is already no, echoing down the thin staircase before you ask.

The street becomes a cobblestone bridge.
The city becomes Your City again.
The ocean blinks awake.

---

Your old best friend, Katia, appears.

The girl who once knew every secret about you.
She comments on your sandals, then points to her checkered Vans.
“They’re good for running from shooters,” she says, kindly, like she’s recommending a café.

Gunfire turns on like a sprinkler.
Everyone runs, dodging bullets, giggling like it’s raining.
You are the only one afraid.
They are exhilarated, like a rollercoaster drop.
Souvenir photos of near-death sold two for twenty.

You spill into a dark downtown.
Neon that smells of mildew and regret.
Cyberpunk if the budget was grief.

A man fifty feet tall smiles down.
Everyone else is bored with the chaos.

You lose Aster and Camille.
Pushing through the damp crowd, you run into your college roommate, Carley.
She hugs you hard enough to ring a bell in your bones.

“We’re getting food,” she says.
She leads you up a rusty spiral staircase to a mesh-floor café.
High-school ghosts sit in their old seats wearing yesterday’s clothes.
You are all the same age you were when nothing made sense and everything was permanent.

A caprese salad arrives.
You pop a piece of mozzarella into your mouth.
Pesto peers back with an evil grin.
“Fuck. I’m allergic,” you whisper—
and say nothing more.

You pay the bill for the entire group,

No one even blinks a thank you.

The herd of ghosts make their way back to the alleyways.

You follow.

You don’t announce your death. You simply choose to attend it privately.

---

Your throat begins to grow spuds.
Dry, scratchy, stubborn as unspoken words.
You cough them into your hand,

Drop them like crumbs, mapping the way back.

“Use a trash can,” someone says.
“It’s compostable,” you whisper.
They wrinkle their noses.

A water fountain shimmers like a mirage.
You gargle until hope appears.
But the water is from the sea.
Salt climbs your throat.
Steel wool pours out like foam.

The ghosts watch in pity.

They watch you choke on yourself.

You wipe the embarrassment from your mouth.
And turn to find you’re at the beach.
But the beach looks like a set.
The ghosts lounge in fabricated sunlight.

You sit and peer out at the ocean.

Toy soldiers perform drills on the water.
Jet skis knife through the plastic surf.
Men crash into toy cliffs and bleed action-figure red.

It is obviously fake and sickeningly real.
No one looks up.

Nausea and mustard gas hang in your throat.

Fiberglass scratches inside you like a secret illness.

---

You walk up the beach in search of fresh water.

Your childhood friends wait by the car.

“Hey! It’s time to go, c’mon!” they wave with a smile.
“Guinevere is going to drive us to Maui!” Zola and Dan exclaim.

Jungle roads ribbon the coast. Bridges stack like vertebrae.

The car swerves in the road, a carnival ride of near-misses.

You arrive at your house because, of course, you do.
Movement without distance, relocation without relief.
The same house that was invaded.

Inside, Aster and Camille beam.
“The lease is signed. Moving truck is on the way!”

“I don’t think this works. There’s no privacy,” you say.
Your words drag their claws down your esophagus.

You drink from a bottle of water.
It is seawater.
It gets saltier as you swallow.
You keep going because stopping would mean admitting you’re drowning.

You try to speak.
Only salt comes out.

The house shakes its head.
Thin staircases multiply.
Every doorway is a mouth.

---

Bridge shooters are just weather.
Industrial kitchens are just logic.
Apartments are just capitalism with cuter tile.

You wake on the couch at 4 a.m.
Mouth cottoned. Water bottle empty.
The room pretends to be your room.
Phone ringing—your brother’s name.

A rope back to the clean version of morning.

On the other side of the call, your plant still leaks.
Camille is still approving your future.
Friends still wear outfits that accuse you of time travel.
Plastic men still dying as they crash into toy islands.
The house is still open.
You are still open.

Privacy is a rumor.
The throat chokes and sprouts lies.
You are a garden no one asked permission to plant.
You are compostable.
You are also carnivorous.

You say nothing.

You water the silence until it floods the floor.

Good morning.
Another home has claimed you.

by Thalia Graves

Purple Vanilla World, 2025