Edward slid the eviction notices under the door of every apartment. Then he stuck poster-sized copies in the stairwell on each floor, where the tenants couldn’t fail to see them. Not that he thought it would do much good. Nor was tenants the right term—perhaps squatters was better, since at some point they stopped paying rent, yet refused to move out. Edward’s own neglect was largely responsible for the building’s decay, but he didn’t feel that he deserved the vexation they caused him. He never wanted or expected to become a landlord.

It had got to the stage where he dreaded setting foot in the place. On the top story, Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman gazed at him with disappointment whenever he called. Then there was the bitter lady in 2B, who shrieked insults from behind her locked door. Lily, the wraith-like girl on the middle floor, seemed to flit from room to room, always out of reach. Every time he glimpsed her tortured figure disappearing round a corner, his chest ached with sorrow. And that scary bastard in the basement, he had no idea who that was.

He’d tried being firm, explaining to them in a calm, rational manner why they couldn’t stay. The Zimmermans heard him out with expressions of polite disgust, but said nothing. The furious woman barely let him open his mouth before drowning him out—and her words, needles inserted with the precision of an evil acupuncturist, were barbed at the end for maximum pain. He hadn’t been able to pin down the elusive floater for long enough to hold a conversation. And as for that scary guy, he wasn’t going anywhere near him.

He was tempted to contact the police, but he knew what they’d say—civil matter, not our jurisdiction. When he examined his legal options, he was dismayed to discover how few rights he had. Possession, it seemed, was nine-tenths of the law. There was a tribunal, to be sure, but it would be a long, drawn-out process, and for the sake of his mental health, he couldn’t afford to wait.

In a fit of madness, he cut off the power supply. He knew this was foolish, because he had no choice but to live in the same building. It was also futile, since they didn’t budge. After a month of cold showers and eating takeout by candlelight, he gave up.

He decided to, in common parlance, send the boys round. An acquaintance at the packing plant introduced him to some hard lads who were not above a little gentle persuasion. Their leader regarded breaking bones as a perk rather than a necessity. Edward was not a violent person, he told himself, but the tenants had forced his hand. They had brought this upon themselves.

At the last moment, however, he got cold feet. He couldn’t do that to his parents. Though they occupied more of his head-space than he would have liked, they were still flesh and blood. And he admitted, reluctantly, that their disapproval was entirely merited. His ex-wife, too, who lurked in the pit of his stomach, she was also entitled to some sympathy.  He could scarcely believe that the doe-eyed bliss of their courtship had warped into this misbegotten creature, but there were faults on both sides. And his sister Lily was definitely innocent. Even though he could only vaguely recall her face, the sense of loss of his eight-year-old self remained vivid.

And Nightmare Man? He suspected it would take more than half a dozen untrained bruisers to deal with him.

Edward was at his wit’s end. One of his friends swore by group counselling, but she’d been doing it forever, and as far as he could see it hadn’t helped a bit. Besides, his wasn’t a talk-it-through kind of clan. Divorcing his family—skipping his dad’s birthday, ignoring his mother’s calls—hadn’t worked either.  All it achieved was to give him a bad dose of the guilts. And that horrible confrontation during Christmas dinner last year, he wished he could erase that from his memory. Everyone had said things that were best left unspoken.

One morning in spring, the fire alarm jangled him from sleep. He and his relatives shivered outside in the grey light of dawn, an uneasy group of reluctant strangers. From his self-imposed distance, Edward studied the misery etched on their faces, doubtless mirroring his own. Deliberate, the firemen said, a candle placed beneath a smoke detector, though who or why remained a mystery.

Some renovations were in order. He hired a glazier to replace the cracked windows, slipped a neighbour five hundred bucks under the table to fix the furnace. Over several weekends, he painted the corridors a cheerful yellow. Then he got a haircut, eliminated junk food from his diet, and started jogging for thirty minutes every evening. It was time for a new beginning.

– Stephen Coates