Narrator: Daniel K. | Ontario, Canada
I rented a basement room my first winter out of college. The landlord kept his spare boots outside my door. Huge rubber things, always damp, always in the way.
One morning there were wet tracks leading from them to my bed. The tracks stopped beside my pillow. I followed them back, thinking he’d been in to check a pipe or something. The last two prints were inside the boots.
He said the boots weren’t his. A previous tenant had left them. I asked him to throw them out and he did, while I watched.
That night I woke to the squelch of wet soles outside my room. I turned on the lamp. A line of water was spreading under the door, stopping and starting with the footsteps.
I stayed awake until the buses started running. The landlord later sent a picture of the boots beside my door, asking why I’d brought them back in.
I had taken a taxi to my sister’s with my work clothes in a grocery bag. He can keep the boots and the security deposit.
