When I was able to return to my apartment, I didn’t even give myself a moment to sit down or anything, I instantly just…went to cleaning. Getting some water going to heat up as I got a bucket and large, heavy brush out from under the cabinet alongside a pair of well used rubber gloves which I sat on the counter as I poured a heavy few hits of bleach into the bucket as I got the glass-cleaner and various other products out, getting so many out that they covered more space on the counter than I’m confident my apartment even possessed. I pulled a mask up over my nose and mouth after I twisted my hair back and got the hot water into the bucket as I walked to the front door and knelt down…and started scrubbing. The water not so hot that it could burn me…at least, not badly.

The sound of rough brush against the apartment’s linoleum floor was the only sound aside from my own muttering about needing to get everything properly cleaned. The entire apartment is floored in the same featureless, seamless, flat grayish-cream linoleum, almost more of a poured flooring or something with how featureless it was, the bathroom had the same floor and sense my apartment is for the most part one room, it was everywhere. It was easy to clean, but even then…I had a good handful or so of hours to work. In the pooling water, I could have sworn I saw hands rising up from within it…disappearing the moment they would have met the surface tension of the puddle.

The hospital wrapped my hands and forearms in bandages before I was released, they had replaced them before I had met Ander, but the bandages they had recently wrapped my arms in were softer, looser and more for protecting my skin from myself more so than protecting my skin from furthering an injury. It did offer my tender hands some cushion from the heat or effort that I was scrubbing the floor with.

I shifted forward on my hands and knees as I dunked the brush in the water that was just as clear as when I poured it into the bucket, not even a mote of gray visible from a suspected layer of dust…I had only been gone for…two days. So I knew that there was very little dust that could be built up or how dirty my apartment could have gotten, but I just…couldn’t stop myself from scrubbing the floor till it was a mirrored finish. The water never changed in its opacity, never tinted gray from picked up dust or dirt or anything else, it just stayed that clear tone produced by hot water, bleach and a bit of some various oils I use to both cover the smell of the bleach and to also help anoint my apartment to ward away the nightmares…or ghosts now, but I knew now that it wasn’t going to keep the ghosts away from me.

I slid forward again as I grabbed the brush with both hands and scrubbed intensely, getting all the way up the baseboards and cleaning them till they were spotless. After cleaning the entryway and the start of the hallway, I poured the still hot water down the drain before refilling the hot water and other products I had put in it as I went to scrubbing the floor and appliances of my kitchen. The scent of bleach, lemongrass oil and magnolia flowers wafting up from the steaming bucket that as I cleaned, each refresh of the mixture only seemed to steam more. My panic and worry about the state of my apartment making that part of my brain that tells me that that water was verging on too hot wasn’t working anymore by the time I refilled the bucket as I started scrubbing the floor of where my living room/bedroom was, the levels of steam lifting off the surface was hot enough that I could feel the rubber gloves I had on almost tighten to my skin with each dip.

I liked this place not only because it faced east, but the neighbors to either side were a bit further away than other apartment building should be, so the only times I ever got a complaint about the smell of the cleaning products was by my neighbors up a floor and due to the frequent rain and unclear weather, they were very…very few and far between. The fact the entire place has linoleum for flooring was a bonus, the relator mentioned that they had yet to replace it with a better flooring, but I insisted that I wanted it because of the ease of cleaning and that I didn’t want to have to postpone moving for too long, so…they let me take the apartment as it was.

“We…need…you…”

As I was waiting for the last water to heat up, I quickly got all of my bedding off my mattress and shoved it into the washer as I usually would and set it going, hitting the proper buttons on the panel so that the electronic timer of it had a six in it. I grabbed a few other bottles off the counter as I walked over to my now bare bead as I heavily sprayed my mattress down and wiped everywhere on it I could, yes…I even clean my mattress. Everything must be clean. With those same products, I also scrubbed down my chair and loveseat and any other fabric furniture I had, all the stuff that’s not fabric got cleaned off with multiple heavy sprays of lemon scented wood cleaner/polish, I’m not even sure if reflective could describe how shiny and mirrored all the surfaces of wood in my apartment was.

I even washed my curtains when I shifted my bedding to the dryer and went back to the last final pass over all of the flooring of my apartment with water so hot that I actually winced when a drop of it went above the edge of my glove, but I was a man on a mission and something like that was not going to stop me as I dipped the brush in over…and over and over as I gave my apartment a last scrub down with that near boiling water which I dumped down the bathtub.

Out of the furthest reaches of my mind, all that suddenly filled my mind was someone screaming as if right in front of my face which made my grip onto my head over my temples as I winced in pain.

As everything was done, I went through various other motions I do on a more frequent frequency: adjusting my paintings and pictures, purposefully adjusting them too far in each direction so they were leveled out on the sixth…lighting a bundle of dried holy basil as I walked about, holding the bundle of smoldering herbs between my clasped hands as I did six quick laps of my apartment then snuffed the end by grinding it out on a small glass dish I used for incense and washed that dish and went back to putting my apartment back together like I do on a  maybe triweekly basis. Even after I was done with all the cleaning, when I took my gloves off, my hands stung and were a little numb from the ambient heat of the water that I had been using to scrub the floors down and the air was even a little warmer than usual because of how much heat was put off by the constantly heating water I was using to clean. I flexed my hands as I looked around my cleaned apartment, a bit…back to normal by the way everything looked to me.