The wishing room

The Restlessness It Leaves

We took the house because the price was low and the gravel lane stayed empty after dark. Sravya walked the rooms the first afternoon with her coat still buttoned and said the place felt larger once you stepped inside. I said it felt quiet. We slept that night on an air mattress in the living room. In the dark I listened to the pipes and thought about the job I had left.

The room was on the second floor, past the bathroom with the cracked tile. The door stuck until I put my shoulder into it. Inside was nothing—bare boards, one high window, walls the color of old paper. On the wall beside the window someone had written in faint pencil: Do not ask. It will give what you already want and then take the rest. Sravya read it over my shoulder and said it was just an old warning. I closed the door.

The next morning I went back alone. I stood in the middle of the empty space and said, quietly, that we needed a table and chairs. Nothing happened while I watched. I went downstairs. In the kitchen a plain wooden table sat with four matching chairs. Sravya touched the back of one and looked at me. I said I had tried the room. She said the warning was already true. When I tried to carry a chair onto the porch the leg came loose in my hand and the seat cracked. Inside the doorway it was whole again. We left the furniture where it had appeared.

That afternoon I tried again. I stood in the room and said we needed money. An envelope appeared on the table while I was still upstairs. It was thick with bills. We counted them by the window. Sravya went quiet. We drove into town to see if the cash would stay. At the first stoplight the bills in my pocket felt thinner. By the store most of them had become blank paper that crumbled when I touched it. We turned around. Back inside the house the envelope was full again. Sravya sat in one of the chairs and said the room had shown us we had no money problems so long as we never tried to carry the proof outside. I had asked. It had given. The part that would let us leave was already gone. We left the envelope on the table after that. We paid what could be paid from inside the walls. Outside the driveway the money stopped existing.

I tried the room for food next. I said we needed meals that would last. The refrigerator filled overnight—vegetables still carrying dirt, meat sealed tight, eggs, milk, bread that steamed when we broke it. We cooked at the table and ate until we were full. The flavors were sharper than anything we had bought before. When Sravya tried to take a container of leftovers to the end of the drive the food had already spoiled by the time she returned. She set the empty container down and said the house would keep what it gave. We stopped testing the edges with the food. The pantry stayed stocked. We ate what appeared. After we finished I found myself thinking about the next meal before the plates were clear. I went upstairs again that night and asked for better wine to go with it. Bottles appeared on the counter. I drank one with dinner and felt the hunger for the next bottle start before the first was empty.

Clothes came the same way. I stood in the room and said we needed warmer things, then, later, that Sravya needed something that made her feel the way she used to feel. Jackets and sweaters appeared first. Then thinner pieces—soft fabrics that clung, colors she liked, cuts that left little to the imagination once she put them on. She tried a short dress. It stayed perfect on her body while she walked the hallway. The moment she stepped onto the porch the hem frayed and the straps slipped. Inside again it was intact. She wore the clothes only in the house after that. I watched her move in them and felt the pull I had felt the first night we met, only stronger now, and unfinished even after I looked away. I went back to the room and asked for more of them, cut closer. They appeared.

The nights changed after the dresses appeared. We ate the food the room had given us and the energy stayed with us longer than it should have. In the bedroom the clothes came off slowly. Sravya’s skin was warm under my hands. I pushed her back onto the bed and kissed down her stomach until she opened her thighs. When I put my mouth on her she gasped and gripped my hair. I licked her until she was wet and shaking, then slid two fingers inside her and kept my tongue on her clit until she came hard against my mouth, hips jerking. I moved up and pushed inside her in one long thrust. She was tight and hot and already clenching around me. We moved together longer than we usually did. My body did not tire. I fucked her through her second orgasm, then her third, her nails digging into my back, her voice breaking on my name every time she came. When I finally finished inside her she stayed wrapped around me, breathing hard, and said she did not know why she had needed it that badly. I did not tell her I had asked the room, earlier that day, for the nights to last longer. When it ended the restlessness was already there—my hands still moving on her skin, my mind already reaching for the next time before this one had finished.

It happened again the next night, and the night after. The meals left us full but not heavy. The sexy clothes stayed in the closet and on her body when she wanted them. My stamina held. Hers matched it and sometimes exceeded it. She would ride me until her thighs shook, grinding down hard, then pull me over her and beg for more, her voice hoarse and pleased. Once she stayed in the short dress while I bent her over the kitchen table; I pushed the fabric up, slid into her from behind, and fucked her until the table rocked and she came twice, loud and shaking, her hands gripping the wood. Inside the house everything the room gave us worked. Outside the door it failed. And after each time, the satisfaction lasted only until the next morning. By then the wanting had already started again—for richer food, for another dress cut closer to the skin, for her mouth on me longer, for her legs around me tighter, for the next orgasm before the last one had faded. Even while I was still inside her the restlessness would rise, a low itch under the skin that the room seemed to feed. I kept going upstairs. I kept trying the room. Each time it gave what I named, and each time the hunger for the next thing arrived faster.

Sravya began to notice. She watched the envelope stay full. She watched the refrigerator refill itself overnight. She watched the new clothes appear. One afternoon she stood in the doorway of the empty room and read the pencil warning again. She said the things were coming from somewhere that was not the house. She said she did not like the way the air felt when the door was open. She said she wanted us to stop using it. I told her I had only tried it a few times. She looked at me for a long time and then said the room was still giving, and the giving was making both of us want more. That night she locked the bedroom door after we finished and asked me, quietly, not to go upstairs again. Her hands shook when she said it. She was already scared.

I stayed downstairs for two days. We ate the food that was already there. We wore the clothes that were already in the closet. We had sex that was still longer and sharper than it used to be—me on my knees between her legs until she came on my tongue, then her on top of me, riding hard until we both finished shaking—but even then the restlessness stayed with me, a constant low pull that made me move harder, faster, wanting more before we had finished. Sravya kept her eyes on the ceiling afterward and did not laugh. On the third night I woke to the sound of the door at the end of the hall shifting in its frame. I lay still and listened. The sound came again, soft, like someone testing the latch from the other side. I got up without turning on the light. Sravya’s breathing stayed even. I walked the hallway in the dark. The door was closed. When I put my hand on the wood I felt a low vibration, almost a pulse. I opened it. I stood inside and said I wanted more of everything we already had. In the morning the envelope was thicker. New bottles stood on the counter. A dress I had not seen before hung over the back of one of the chairs—black, thin, cut so the fabric would barely cover her.

Sravya saw the dress and stopped in the kitchen doorway. She looked at the envelope, then at me. She said she had not asked for any of it. I said I had tried the room again. She picked up the dress, carried it upstairs, and put it in the closet without trying it on. That evening she told me again not to use the room. Her voice was steady. Her hands were not. She was scared of the room and of the things that kept appearing from it. I nodded. We ate. We went to bed. In the dark, after she fell asleep, I heard the door again. This time the sound was clearer, almost a word shaped out of the settling of the house. I lay with one hand on her hip and the other on the sheet and did not get up. The vibration traveled through the floorboards and into the mattress. It stayed under my palm until morning. The restlessness did not leave. Even lying still beside her I wanted more—more of her, more of the food, more of the money that could not leave, more of whatever the room would give if I named it.

The room kept giving what I named when I tried it, and the greed kept growing even when I stayed downstairs. Each night the latch shifted. Each morning something new waited—more money, richer food, another piece of clothing cut closer to the skin. The dissatisfaction arrived with them. After we ate I wanted the next meal sooner. After we finished I wanted her again before the sweat had dried, wanted her mouth, her hands, her body longer and harder than the night before, the restlessness sharp enough that I could not stay still inside her. Sravya stopped wearing the thinner dresses. She stopped reaching for me first. When we had sex she still came, hard and shaking, but afterward she turned onto her side and faced the wall. She said the wanting felt borrowed. She said she could feel the room listening even when the door was closed. She made me promise, again, that I would not go upstairs. I promised. The door still moved in the dark. The offers still appeared. And the part of me the room had started to corrupt kept listening to the low sound behind the wood, counting the things we already had and the things I had not yet named, the hunger and the restlessness growing in the same measure as everything it left for us to find in the morning, the warning on the wall already true and still coming true.