Chapter One – The Ugly Duckling

One of the stories he’d enjoyed the most as a kid – and grandma always obliged him by reading it to him on the days when he felt sick and missed school – was that of the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan. The ardent question on his mind had always been if such things happened in real life. Could an ugly duckling turn into a beautiful swan? Grandma never really answered that question. She just caressed his hair and kissed his forehead, to check if his fever had finally gone down, her kind smile never leaving her face.

Well, as an adult, he knew the answer to that one. Things rarely changed, and, if they did, they took a significant amount of work. Otis stared into the mirror and painstakingly arranged the long bangs of his hair so they fell over his left eye, to obscure the fact that it was smaller than the right one. Plastic surgery could do a lot of things today, wondrous things, but fixing that kind of defect wasn’t on the list, or at least his research had led nowhere on that particular topic. Not that he had the money necessary for such complex procedures anyway, but it felt good to dream that fixing his face was a possibility.

He sighed as he finally managed to make his straight hair settle into some kind of draping over his smaller eye. The color of his hair didn’t help the overall effect of his face on people, either. It always looked like a hair-dyeing appointment at the salon was long overdue. Otis had never set foot in one of those, but that didn’t make it less worrisome that the roots of his mane always remained dark, while the rest of it was an unnatural – that was what people called it – dirty ash blond. After reading dozens of magazines abounding in beauty advice, he had ended up more dumbfounded than before. Maybe all that advice didn’t apply to men.

And his strange light blue irises were surrounded by such dark limbal rings that whenever he stared too long at someone – or just looked at them with no particular interest – people just averted their eyes as if he intended to curse them or something. That staring habit of his had gotten him into plenty of trouble in school, and teachers had warned him that people would start calling him weird if he didn’t cut it out. Apparently, he didn’t need to blink as much as normal people. He tried to remember that himself and blink intentionally, as often as possible.

He shrugged and pulled his shoulders back, but good posture didn’t fix the fact that he had almost no meat on his bones. Any clothes he wore ended up looking like they were hanging on a hanger. People complained about body fat percentage and whatnot, but was there such a thing as a meat percentage? He would have to look that up online, but later. Now, he needed to bring out the last of his grandma’s things from the old place that had been in storage since forever.

***

The delivery man was already waiting outside and gave him a short, annoyed look while mumbling something under his breath. He handed Otis the tablet to sign for receiving the items, threw another look around, this time a disgusted one, and got back into his vehicle, leaving him on the sidewalk with a white credenza, a large mirror, and a handbag full of personal items. Otis considered his predicament for a little bit, but then, as always, came up with a solution. He wrapped the rope he had come equipped with through the spaces in the ornate frame of the mirror, the one his grandma had loved so much, and created a harness. Stepping into it carefully, he finally hiked the mirror up on his back, and then grabbed the handbag. That left him with only one hand for the credenza. He could just drag it along. As long as he got everything into the elevator, he would be fine.

Getting back into the building seemed like a real adventure, though. On more than one occasion, he feared that he might turn the beautiful mirror into many useless pieces, and while breaking pots and plates was a sign of good luck in some cultures, it appeared that breaking a mirror was in the exactly opposite category for most people.

He noticed that there was someone already waiting in front of the elevator. A man, at least six foot three tall, and his body obviously possessing an optimal meat percentage. And the meat was well shaped and, as far as one could tell from a distance, covered with tattoos. On both arms. He wore a tight white t-shirt and regular cut jeans that hung on his hips just right. Otis looked at him from behind and then noticed the earbuds. The man was probably listening to music or podcasts. He was probably bettering himself right now by listening to self-improvement advice. His hair was cut short and close to the head, and Otis admired the shape of the back of his head, too. He shivered just imagining how it would feel to move his hand over that short dark hair. Would it be like petting a shorthair cat?

The elevator arrived at the ground floor and the doors opened. The man stepped inside, absorbed in his self-improvement book, and turned, allowing Otis an unimpeded view of his front, too. The tight white t-shirt stretched over a chiseled chest – words like chiseled made Otis’s tongue feel funny, slightly ticklish – and his abdomen looked flat, not skinny. What was that expression? Washboard abs? Otis didn’t like it much. He didn’t see himself rubbing soapy laundry over that man’s abdomen. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.

The man’s was frowning in thought, but he had a very admirable face. His jawline was square, as it should be, and he had a straight nose and thick, dark eyebrows. Everything on that face was intense, strong, remarkable.

Otis continued to watch as the man reached for the control panel without looking at what he was doing. That had to be a very interesting podcast or book. Just as the doors began to close, the man looked up and saw Otis standing there. His brows unfurrowed into an expression of surprise, and now they were visible his eyes were revealed to be almost as dark as the hair on his head. He quickly shot one arm forward and stopped the doors from closing. Then, he touched one of his earbuds. “Hello there. Are you coming?” he asked in a deep rough voice.

That was another thing Otis found ticklish – voices like that. They were mesmerizing voices, indeed.

The man waved his free hand. “Hello?” he called out loudly.

Otis shook his head. The man was talking to him, obviously. “Yes, thank you,” he shouted back, just as loudly.

One of the dark thick eyebrows quirked in question. “Just moving in?”

Otis began his march while dragging the credenza after him, as the man half-stepped outside to hold the door and make room for him to get inside. “No. I just had some beautiful things I needed to bring in.”

“Let me help you,” the stranger offered, and when he moved, Otis caught a glimpse of his neck.

He touched his self-consciously. In that respect, he was something of a crane, and a crane was a far shot from a beautiful swan, while this man… well, this man had the strong neck of a beautiful mammal, like a horse or something similar.

The man quickly moved the credenza inside first and took the handbag from Otis, placing it on top. He then stopped and threw Otis an odd look. It had to be because of the mirror and the way it hung on his back, but, at this point, he couldn’t help it. He slipped inside, brushing unwittingly against the stranger. Now that he was in, it appeared that there wasn’t any room left, but the stranger didn’t seem to care and pushed Otis gently but firmly against the credenza until the doors closed behind him.

“What floor?”

Grandma always said that being polite opened doors, so Otis decided to show that he knew how to do that. “I’m imposing,” he said. “Please, let’s go to your floor first.”

It was difficult to carry on a conversation like that because he was staring directly at the man’s throat. To look him in the eye wasn’t exactly an option because he would have to tip his head back a lot.

“No,” the stranger said shortly. “Your floor?”

“Fifth,” Otis said, deciding not to insist since every moment spent like this, cramped and inadvertently touching each other, was a moment that was not good for his overall state of mind.

“What a coincidence. That’s also my floor. Also, you’ll need help getting that out.”

What a nice young man, his grandma would say. “Thank you. You are a nice young man,” he said.

Hot air blew over the crown of his head, disturbing the bangs covering his smaller eye. The man had sighed, and it was not clear what he could mean by that. Was he annoyed by having to go up to his floor, cramped like that? Otis looked down by reflex.

“And what are you? Eighty?” the man asked in his gruff pleasant voice.

“I am twenty-two,” Otis replied.

“Then, you’re the young man here,” the man commented. “We’re here.”

The elevator doors opened. Otis allowed the stranger to handle his belongings while he held the doors open.

“What’s the number of your apartment?” the stranger asked.

Otis felt himself stiffen. Grandma was also adamant about not giving out personal information to strangers, mainly because there were so many scammers in this world. However, she also said that there were also plenty of nice people, and this tattooed man seemed to belong to the latter group. “508,” he said, as soon as his deliberations regarding the stranger’s intentions were over.

Without being asked, the man took it upon himself to take the credenza in his arms and carry it to Otis’s door. He placed it down carefully and then gestured for the mirror, too. “Should I take that from you?”

“No, it’s okay,” Otis said. “You’ve done enough already for a stranger, which I am to you.” He couldn’t quite get over the fact that he had annoyed the other somehow, the way he had made him sigh while they were riding the elevator. That meant he couldn’t expect any more favors or else he’d be in trouble soon. People always got annoyed when asked for too much, and Otis had to be especially careful about such things.

The man surprised him by offering his hand. “Then how about we stop being strangers? I’m Hudson. And I just moved into 505 two days ago.”

“Hudson, like the river,” Otis said. He realized a little too late that Hudson was still holding out his hand and shook it awkwardly. He began with a limp hand and was very much aware of how damp it was, too, and then he remembered that people appreciated a firm handshake. Therefore, he squeezed his neighbor’s hand tightly.

Hudson laughed. “Ouch. Now that’s a strong grip. Do you have a name?”

“Otis. Like the elevator.” Hudson hadn’t given him his last name, so he wouldn’t either. Imitating others in social situations was a good strategy to make sure that he didn’t do something that wasn’t sanctioned by the general population.

“Okay, Otis, have a nice day.” Hudson gave him another smile, the kind that made a dimple appear in his right cheek and made Otis stare a lot more than necessary, just because it was asymmetric, and there was no dimple in the left cheek too.

He took out his key quickly, feeling a bit hot and needing to get inside, away from those dark and, at least as they seemed to him, inquisitive eyes.

***