Plants of The Estate - Part 1 of 4

Woke up this morning covered in damp bits of plaster, it ground between my teeth unpleasantly, and yellowed specks of paint were itching in my ears. It had come from the ceiling during the night, where layers had crumbled and fallen away, one directly above my bed. In my apartment there are only two rooms, and an inspection did not take long; I found several sodden patches of ceiling, ready to crumble, one patch in the bathroom, and one in the closet. I wasn’t completely surprised.

The Estate comprised several similar buildings, tall L shaped columns rising up twenty five stories, built only thirty years ago, but looking much older now. There were nine units to each floor, but need must as the landlord drives, so many of unit were cut in two to make room for the growing number of single factory employees moving into the area during the industrial boom. Mine was one of these spit units. It was a cheaply done job too, sound travelled between apartments, so much so that I may as well have been living with the next door neighbour. If anyone but Alice had been living next to me I might not have been able to stay.

From the outside looking up the north face of the building it appeared as if each unit was a coloured children's building block, stacked up by a giant child, the colours salmon pink, ocean green and sky blue repeated, but what was once flush and symmetrical had now fallen to the same butchery to which the interior had succumb. Due to the cost of running all that new plumbing through the building the owners began to run drains and guttering down the outside of the building, and since there were multiple owner, they did this without a grand design. So at a distance the face of the building appeared to be draped in a thick net of vines. The adhoc system dripped water constantly, and sometimes sewerage. Then there were the cooling units, which didn’t cool so well, but were run to filter out the pollution from the nearby factories, and take out some of the moisture in the air, which if left too long would promote fungi and mould to grow. The conditioners were installed in window bays, looking like apartment acne, each unit dripping water that it had sucked out of air. Long runs of guttering were installed to ease the heavy flow areas, because water courses were doing what natural water courses do, usually over thousands of year, carving out valleys. Even still, the walls always ran with water, and thick moulds, fungi, and moss grew rampant. The building was not in good shape, but I had never noticed any problems with the ceilings before.

I lived on the 20^th floor, well above the mould line, but well into the lichen belt. I kind of liked the flora, I used to a florist, before immigrating and teaching English to middle management. I took care of a pretty patch of lichen that grew on the window sill above the kitchen sink. That might been a little lonely to some; it might even appear that I was isolated, but I had my job, and some friends around the building. It was enough for me. 

Alice was one of students and happened to live in the next unit over. I had developed feelings for her, but I am a terrible coward in that regard. I knocked on Alice’s door, three good firm knocks, and I waited. The air was thick and warm. There is very little natural light. Half the lightbulbs are always dead. The carpets are a sleepy dark red, and the wallpaper used to be cream, but had yellowed, or worse.

The door opened to the length of the security chain. ‘Hello?’ she asked.

‘It’s just me, Alice, I wondered if anything strange had happened. I have these holes in my ceiling, I wondered if you had them too?’ The door closed and the chain was removed. Alice was in a frail thirty something woman, stick thin, dressed in a faded floral sun dress and apron. She was pretty, in her sickly way, particularly her facial structure, which had sharp features softened by large eyes and full red lips, lips that stood in stark contrast to her pallid skin. She tried to smile, it was quick, but enough to catch a glimpse at her teeth.

‘It embarrassing me’ she said, carefully forming the english words, ‘I thought it was just me. Come in please.’

I could see it even before I walked in, something was terribly wrong with the ceiling in Alice’s apartment. She lived in the next apartment over, more accurately, both our apartment had originally been one and the owners had split the unit into two self-contained units, installing a kitchen for one unit and a bathroom for the other, running all the piping down the exterior of the building. Her side had gotten the better deal, I felt, she had retained the original bathroom, with enough space for a bath tub, and her kitchen was separated from the rest of the living space by a waste high wall that acted as a table, mantle, and bar. But like my unit, something was coming through the ceiling, and in her case the ceiling was visibly sagging in the centre.  Some fluid was gathering there, staining the area with dark concentric rings of muck.

‘Alice, this looks dangerous, how long has it been like this?’ I asked.

‘Dangerous? There is been problem with damp here on ceiling, I think, one pipes up there has leak, Xu Lu say he fix it… but it come back. It never bad like that. You think I will say this?’

‘Yes, I think we should both say something. Yours is a lot worse than mine. It looks like the only thing holding the roof up is a few extra layers of paint, and, what is that awful smell, like rotting eggs?’

‘What you doing?’

I picked up a knife from the nearby kitchen counter, ‘I just want to see something…’ Standing on the arm of a faded sofa, I tentatively poked the tip of a knife through the layer of glossy paint. The tip of the blade pieced easily, and when withdrawn, a small drop of a thick liquid began to emerge.

‘We should leave it alone. My mother said, “it no good to go picking at thing you do not understand.”’

‘Alice, I think we need to step back.’

The ceiling paint work began to split, fracturing along fault lines. I jumped off the couch and took Alice by the arm, but it was too late, the sagging ceiling collapsed under the weight of the yellow slime, which disgorged down upon us in slurries and globs, followed by chunks of plaster.