The Tenant In 4B
Mr. Greene
They called him Mr. Greene. No one knew his first name, and no one cared to ask.
He moved into apartment 4B at Parkview Gardens on the first of the month, carrying nothing but a duffel bag and a toolbox.
The housing project had seen its share of strange residents, but something about Mr. Greene made even the baddest of the bad look uneasy. He was tall and built, with a face that seemed perpetually set in a distant stare. His age—somewhere in his early fifties—was betrayed only by the silver streaks in his neatly trimmed hair and the deep creases that formed around his eyes when he offered his thin, practiced smile.
Dante, the property manager, had shown him the apartment with the usual story: unreliable heating, don't flush anything weird down the toilet, and keep the noise down after ten. Mr. Greene had merely nodded, running his fingers along the doorframes and checking the window locks with unusual intensity.
Mr. Greene: "I'll need to make some modifications. "Security reasons."
Dante had shrugged. Management didn't care what tenants did as long as the damage was fixable when they moved out.
Three days later, Tyrell from 4A complained about drilling noises at odd hours of the day and night. A week after that, the building's elderly gossip, Ms. Perkins, reported seeing Mr. Greene carrying in industrial-sized jugs of bleach at 3 or 4 in the morning.
"Bleach," she'd whispered to anyone who would listen. "Fifty bottles of it. And heavy black bags and stacks of newspapers with something metal that clanked."
Most ignored her stories. But then people noticed other oddities: the three different locks on his door, the black garbage bags taped over his windows, the fact that he only left his apartment between twelve and four AM.
Jamal, a teenager who lived on the fifth floor, swore he'd delivered food to Mr. Greene's apartment once when working for the local Chinese place.
Jamal: "Man wouldn't open the door all the way,"Just cracked it and slid the money through. But I saw something weird hanging from his ceiling. Like a metal weight or something. And there was this smell... like an old smell, but worse."
The rumors grew. Some said Mr. Greene was an ex-con. Others thought he was running a meth lab. A few suggested he was in witness protection.
Then Shanice from 3B went missing.
She was a quiet nineteen-year-old who worked the night shift at the convenience store. Her mother reported her disappearance after she didn't come home for two days. The police came, took statements, but didn't seem particularly motivated to look for another missing girl from the projects.
Three nights after Shanice disappeared, Dante was making his rounds when he heard a faint thumping coming from Mr. Greene's apartment. It was rhythmic at first. Then silent.
Dante wasn't paid enough to investigate strange noises, but something about the sudden silence bothered him. He knocked on Mr. Greene's door. No answer. He used his master key, hesitantly turning the lock.
The door opened just an inch before hitting resistance. Through the crack, Dante saw what looked like a bucket balanced precariously on the door's edge. The loud smell of chemicals burning his nostrils.
Dante: "Mr. Greene?"
Pushing the door a bit further.
That's when he heard it—a metallic squeaking from above. Looking up through the narrow opening, he saw a dumbbell suspended from the ceiling, swaying slightly, attached to a wire that connected to the door.
Dante quickly backed away, letting the door close. His heart pounded as he pulled out his phone to call the police.
When they finally broke down the door hours later, they were prepared for the bucket of battery acid that would have drenched anyone who entered carelessly, and for the iron weight that would have swung down at head level. What they weren't prepared for was what they found inside.
In the bedroom stood a wooden chair bolted to the floor, with leather straps attached to the arms and legs. The bathroom contained exactly fifty bottles of bleach, all arranged by size. And in the kitchen, when they opened the refrigerator, they discovered a lot of the red stains spattered from top to bottom—evidence of Mr. Greene's previous "tenants."
But Mr. Greene himself was nowhere to be found.
To be continued……