Many of Shirley Jackson’s stories would fit just as well in horror anthologies as literary collections. Even in a novel called The Haunting of Hill House it’s hard to say for sure that anything supernatural has really happened.
James Harris, a recurring character in several short stories, might be the devil – or perhaps we just need to accept that ordinary men can also be controlling – and gleefully, pettily wicked.
In this story, David, a pernickety young man, has his neighbour Marcia over for dinner in his neat little apartment. He doesn’t earn much but what he does have goes on silver cutlery and other small things that make bedsit life tolerable. Then Marcia’s colleague, Mr Harris, shows up. Without explanation, Marcia begins to act as if David’s flat is hers, and as if she has cooked the gourmet dinner on the table. David, trapped in a game of manners, plays along:
Eventually, he leaves his own flat, defeated:
“He went down the hall and let himself into Marcia’s apartment, the piano was still awry, the papers were still on the floor, the laundry scattered, the bed unmade. David sat down on the bed and looked around. It was cold, it was dirty, and as he thought miserably of his own warm home he heard faintly down the hall the sound of laughter and the scrape of a chair being moved. Then, still faintly, the sound of his radio. Wearily, David leaned over and picked up a paper from the floor, and then he began to gather them up one by one.”
First published in The Lottery and Other Stories, 1949
A Personal Anthology 