the neighbor of 6C

 On the seven floor of the tall apartment building lives a person no one seems to remember. Their name is unknown, their face uncertain. The neighbors, if asked, furrow their brows: "Who? In 6C? No, I think no one lives there..."

Their routine is invisible: they leave and return at dawn, when others are asleep and the hallways are empty. Bills arrive in their mailbox but are never seen in their hands. Sometimes, at night, someone might swear they heard a noise from 6C, but when they listen closely, there’s nothing.
The building carries on with its normal life: laughter, arguments, footsteps on the stairs echo through its walls. But 6C is like a blank space in the collective bustle.

The most unsettling thing isn’t the absence of the neighbor in 6C, but the fact that at some point, everyone has passed by their door and felt that no one was inside.

The resident of 6C died on a Saturday morning without anyone noticing—silently, just as they had lived, unknown. Their death was only noticed days later when a thick, sickly-sweet smell seeped through the cracks of the door, creeping down the sixth-floor hallway until the neighbors could no longer ignore it: something rotten had invaded their lives. The woman from the apartment next door, Doña Marta, was the first to knock—hesitantly at first, then urgently. When there was no answer, she called the superintendent.

Together, they forced the door open. Stale air hit them instantly, a mix of death and neglect that made them cover their noses. Doña Marta pressed her handkerchief—always kept in her pocket—to her mouth, while the superintendent, more hardened, stepped forward cautiously, as if afraid of being scolded for intruding.
There, on the worn-out living room sofa by the half-open window, lay the neighbor from 6C. Their stiff, purple-tinged body stared blankly at the ceiling through half-open eyes. On the coffee table, a dried-up coffee cup bore the dark stain of their last sip. Beside it, an open book—its corner folded—marked the pages they had read.

Minutes later, the distant wail of a siren broke the tense silence of the neighborhood. Blue and red lights reflected off the lobby windows as a patrol car stopped at the entrance. Two officers stepped out firmly and entered the building.
The superintendent met them on the sixth-floor landing, pale, his hands still trembling. He pointed wordlessly at the half-open door of 6C. The younger officer stepped forward and carefully pushed the creaking door, as if it protested. The older one radioed for backup and a forensics unit. The scene left them silent for a moment. The victim seemed to have been caught by death with no chance to resist. Their glassy, fixed gaze pointed at the ceiling, as if they had tried to escape upward.

From the threshold, Doña Marta muttered, unheard:
—"I never saw him come in. I never saw him leave."

Gradually, other neighbors arrived, drawn by the police presence, the murmurs drifting down the stairs, and that almost unavoidable instinct to peek into others' tragedies. Some spoke in hushed tones; others barely dared to approach. Señora Julia from 5B swore she had heard noises from 6C—but that was over a year ago. Don Ernesto from 7A said he always thought that apartment had been empty since the pandemic. Even the superintendent, who should have had some record of entries or deliveries, admitted he had never handed over mail or seen anyone enter with keys.

She, like the other neighbors who came to see what was happening and gave statements to the police, all agreed: they had always believed apartment 6C was vacant. Some claimed they had never seen the door open; others said they had never heard a sound from inside. To all of them, 6C had been empty.

The problem began when, after his death, none of his relatives wanted to take responsibility for the burial.

—"He never cared about us, so why should we care now? Let the city bury him!" said his eldest daughter, Clara, from across the country.

—"I don’t have money for that," argued his younger brother, Mario, despite having bragged about buying a new car just two weeks earlier.

—"He never helped us in life, why should we spend on his funeral?" said his youngest daughter before hanging up.

—"Bury him like a beggar," snapped his ex-wife, furious at losing her alimony.

And so, the body of the neighbor from 6C awaited a dignified fate.

One night, when his family gathered in 6C to sort through his few belongings, the lights flickered. The wind slammed the windows shut, and suddenly, he appeared—pale, smelling of damp earth.

His daughter screamed. His brother fainted. His ex-wife, the only one who tried to flee, found all the doors locked, trapping her inside.

—"If none of you will pay for my burial, I’ll do it myself," he said in a voice like rattling bones, floating in the air.

The ghost pulled out a bag of old coins and bills from inside his pillow (his "emergency fund"). With stiff fingers, after showing them to his family, he muttered, satisfied: —"Just enough for a second-class coffin… and a bouquet of fake flowers." Then he vanished.

On a Thursday in October, a hearse picked up the body from the morgue: a simple coffin, a short mass in the cemetery chapel, and a niche in the municipal graveyard. None of his family attended—except for a distant lover no one expected, who arrived late and disoriented, leaving before the priest finished.

When the coffin was placed in the niche, the silence spoke louder than any eulogy.

As the gravedigger sealed the edges of the tombstone with cement, his eyes fell on the name carved into the cold stone: "Avelino Rojas, 1968–2024." The freshly chiseled letters still bore the white dust of the marble. He couldn’t help but reflect on the lonely death of the deceased.

—"It’s not fair," he muttered, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "No one should leave this world… so alone."

Then, he heard a soft voice behind him:
—"Thank you."

He turned—but there was no one there.

 

mvf