I’m walking
through the darkened hallways of my house. I can’t sleep. I never can, so I
just walk, sometimes grab a snack, read a book, but mostly I just walk, an
endless circle, until I pass out from exhaustion. My uncle left me this house.
He didn’t die, he just left. We didn’t really talk, but I’m not sure he talked
to anyone. So I’m walking through this house - I guess it isn’t really mine,
but it’s so big and old now, it can’t really belong to anyone. It has a mind of
its own, because every night when I get home from work, it’s bigger and darker,
and it seems less and less like a home. Fish bowl. Doll house. Jail cell.
So I’m
walking through this place, listening to the wind outside, my feet padding
quietly on the hardwood floors that seem to cover this entire story - I don’t
know which story. I think I know how to get to my bedroom from here, but that’s
not much help. I was looking for the kitchen, but now I’m not. I’ll find it, or
I’ll find another one, and the cupboards and the fridge will be fully stocked.
I hope they have cake.
I see
something out of the corner of my vision, crouched in the frame of a door,
sunspot eyes peering out at me, its features harsh, jagged, protruding at
strange angles, and I feel its teeth through its closed lips. I turn to it,
turn my flashlight. Always a flashlight. It’s too hard to find light switches
when I come to new rooms, plus I’m always worried in the light I won’t like
what I see. I turn to it and it isn’t there, but I decide to go into the room
it was looking at me from anyway, and I find a kitchen. I open the fridge and
see a large Black Forest Cake, raspberries and all, completely fresh. I find a
knife, cut myself a slice, warm it in the microwave for thirty seconds - I
always like my cake warm. When I take a bite, the jam oozes out and I see my
face reflected through a window, the jam on my chin as blood, and I wipe it
away with the back of my hand, wash it in the sink. My flashlight goes out, but
the kitchen isn’t so dark for the moonlight pouring in. I turn to look for a
lightswitch, and the creature is standing there in front of me, full height,
easily six feet, and it opens its lips and its teeth are jagged and I’m
paralyzed by fear.
“I’m
Gabriel. I’m not so bad. Don’t worry. Now the rest?” The thing’s voice is male,
midwestern, 40s, 50s, calm.
“The rest?”
What else to say?
“Oh, sure.
Sorry, I have to go. You shouldn’t turn on the light though. You won’t like
it.” My flashlight flickers back to life, and Gabriel is gone. As I prepare to
leave the kitchen, I look again out the window, for I no longer feel the moon’s
gaze on my back, and through it I see a spider the height of houses, but rather
than the black eyes of a spider, it has the soft blue eyes of a girl I once
knew. One of its long legs reaches out towards me, and as I see it hurtling
towards the window, I see thousands of hairs, sharp as edges, broken mirrors.
The leg rips a hole in the side of the house, and I feel a sharp pain in my
gut, put my hand down, it comes away bloody. I fall to the floor, see my lower
half, waist down, tossed off across the room, tendrils of gore, half my
stomach, spilling out below me, intestines strung out between my torso and my
legs, across broken glass and shattered brick. I close my eyes against the
coming pain, stomach acid, bleach stained orange juice, slaughterhouse, guts.
I wake up
in bed, the sun filtering in through curtains a hundred years old, the flavor
of tangerines, my alarm clock bleating away. I get out of bed, look out the
window, see across the yard to another wing of the house, notice two dozen
square feet of wall crashed inwards. After I shower and dress, I call a
contractor and tell him he’ll just have to see it for himself.
I find the
kitchen with the hole in the wall, assess the damage. The fridge is still in
tact, the cake still on the top shelf, now missing two slices. I cut a third,
boil up some coffee, and eat a rather unhealthy breakfast while looking out at
the vast and empty forest behind my house, think of the cake.
The drive
to work is cloaked by a low hanging mist, trees close in on the sides of the
road, winding slowly without clear purpose down out of the mountains, towards
where the city used to be, but now only emptiness and the factory seem to
remain, as punishment for our ignorance.
I’m the
engineer, she’s the builder. The rest of them are gone. We can finish this
without them. On the west wall, spelled out in sprawling pink, neon cursive, is
“Kishi and Kurosawa Electronics.” The factory only has one room, exempting the
bathroom and the basement, and it’s the size of a hangar for an AN-225. It used
to be full of people, buzzing, pulsing. New designs, new prototypes, new ideas.
When the basement opened up though, everyone kind of left. I don’t know why,
but, like I said, we have this taken care of. Now, it’s just our two desks, and
a table in between where we build and re-build, refine and begin again. It sits
there, a black box, such perfect black that you can’t see it without the lights
right on it, hooked up with a single braided cable into each of our computers.
She arrived there before me. She’s an early riser.
“So, what
do you think?” She’s not one for pleasantries.
“I think
we’re almost there.”
“Yeah?”
“It almost
works.”
“What do
you think will happen we turn this on?”
“We’ll
know.”
“Know
what?”
“Whether He
exists.”
“He needs
to. Without him, we’re done.”
“What do
you mean, done?”
“Fucked,
hosed, terminated, gone. They’ll close the factory, and then we won’t have
anywhere else to go. None of us.”
“The
basement will still be there.”
“Keep your
damn basement.”
“The
basement is how we know He’s there.”
“Why?”
“Everything
has an opposite.”
We work
through the morning largely in silence. I know we’re almost there this time. A
couple days, two, three, tops. Then we’ll know. Really, the knowing doesn’t
matter. If He doesn’t exist, then, as she would say, we’re fucked. If he won’t
help us, then we’re fucked. If we can’t get the box to work, well then we’re
just as fucked. But I know it will work, and I know He’s real, and I know He’ll
help us. At 1pm, we take lunch. She eats outside, staring out at where the city
used to be, and I eat in the basement.
The
basement is smaller than the factory, the size of a community pool. The walls
are exposed concrete, and in the middle is a gaping hole, walled in what looks
to me to be coagulated blood. A sweet, rotten stench wafts up from the hole in
warm breaths of air, and occasionally the passage of it brings rippling,
wavering sound, like a theremin played too close. One day I threw the core of
an apple into the hole, and it spoke to me in a language not quite English. It
asked why I threw just the core, and I said because I ate the rest, and it told
me it liked the flesh, just like the rest of us, so the next morning I brought
it an apple and it thanked me. We talk now. I once told it about the box but it
got angry when I explained it. The walls started to rattle, then I realized it
was the very earth shaking. I apologized, and told it the next morning I would
bring it a tuna fish sandwich, and it apologized for getting angry.
Today,
after I finish my sandwich, I take out a tupperware with the rest of the cake,
tip it down the hole.
“I guess
you two are close?”
“I... I
thought you didn’t want to hear about it?”
“I’m
curious. I like your sandwiches and I don’t want you to leave.”
“Yeah,
we’re close.”
“You know,
I was his favorite son once. I certainly hope he’s still there.”
“He has to
be. You are.”
“And look
at me now. Eating tuna fish sandwiches is the highlight of my day. The eternal
torture of the damned isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“I imagine
it would get dull.”
“It’s not
even that - I just wish once in a while someone would love me, you know?”
“Awh, don’t
say that. I love you, man.”
“Thanks. It
means a lot. Really.”
Work that
afternoon is slower, but still progressing, and that’s what matters. As long as
we don’t stop. At the end of the day, as we’re going out to our cars, the sun
just set over a still blood tinged horizon, I see something peering out from
underneath my car, vicious claws wrapped up around the edge of the metal, and
as I step closer it pulls itself out and stares at me. I look to her, but she
doesn’t see it. The thing stares straight through me, and its eyes are deep and
hazel and haunted, and I can see its been crying. Its arms hang down to its
knees, and it’s desperately thin, drawn out fashion model, clothes to fit into,
runway strut, and as I pull out of the parking lot, I see it turn to look at my
car. Then it gets down on all fours, and it starts running towards me, its
elbows snapping up above its back, moving fast, too fast, Veyron fast, cheetah
fast, stage four, metastasized cancer fast, and I put my foot down, shoot off back
into the forest.
As I pull
up in front of my house, the contractor is walking back to his truck, and I
greet him.
“I’m sorry,
but I don’t think I’ll be able to fix that just yet.”
“Why?”
“You’re
going to need an exterminator first. There are spider eggs all over that room.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, it
sucks, I know how that goes. I can give you a number for a guy I use if you
want?”
I take the
number and leave it on the counter of another kitchen, promising myself that
I’ll call in the morning. Now though, it’s getting late, and after last night,
I don’t want to leave my room until day break. In the fridge I find some pasta.
I stick it in the microwave and take it to my room to eat, but I can’t find my
room, which is strange because I can always find my room. I start to eat the
pasta out of the bowl as I walk because I don’t want it to get cold. I don’t
know what I’ll do if I can’t find my room, there are no other beds in the
house, just kitchens and bathrooms and drawing rooms and living rooms. Music
rooms and libraries and home theaters. Rooms without a purpose. In the basement
I once found a room nearly as big as the factory, but with a low ceiling and
nothing in it, just cement walls and floor and ceiling. I’ve never found it
again and I’m glad because it also had no door.
I wander
through the halls for what I know are hours. Every time I pass one of the big,
gothic windows, moonlight cut in little shreds through trees, the lattices, I
hurry past and avert my eyes. I know the spider is gone but there are far worse
things in the night. Once, I pass the door to the kitchen from last night, and
I think about going in and inspecting the eggs, but I worry I’ll let something
out, and I don’t want that.
The carpet
in this hall is patterned with ornate roses, and in its center, away from all
the windows, it is raised up in the shape of a man, and then he stands, and all
the roses begin to bleed, and he walks towards me. His eyes are green and sad,
and he looks as if he wants to scream, but he has no mouth. One of his
carpet-patterned hands swipes out towards me, and I feel thorns rip through my
skin. I turn to run, but I’m faced again before me with a creature that was
once a man.
Now,
though, much of its bare flesh is covered in blood and pus and writhing
maggots. Where once it had an eye, now it has a socket, and in the socket is a
twisted together mass of worms, and I decide to take my chances with the
walking carpet, but when I turn the carpet is gone. I run down the hallway as
fast as I can, almost tripping over a giant tear in the center of the floor,
but I make it through a door at the end.
The room is
completely dark but for the beam of my flashlight, despite the huge bay of
windows along the wall I just came in. I scan around and I see dozens, hundreds
of old pieces of furniture under throws. Couches, chairs, tables, some
chandeliers rusting on the floor, rust spreading like a virus, a light dusting
across the scarred hardwood floor. At the room’s center lies a grand queen bed.
I check my watch and see that it’s already past three in the morning. After I
pull the dust cover off the bed, find it fully made, pillows and all, I strip
down to my boxers and fall asleep before my eyes shut.
You wander
through a forest, trees bearing down on you, watching you as a teacher watches
a child in a nursery. You know it must end because all forests end, but the
witch at the beginning of the place told you there was no end.
When I
awaken, I can hardly see but for the stars above me, and I find myself on a bed
of pine needles rather than goose down. My boxers now bear the addition of a
three piece suit. Trees all around me. I look about in fear, and as I do, one
of the trees becomes an incredibly thin man, twenty feet tall. Spindly legs
start to walk towards me, back held totally straight. I start to run, afraid of
tripping over a branch or a rock, raising my legs high. In front of me through
the trees I see a mansion, illuminated, atop a small hill, and I realize it’s
my home.
I break the
tree line and begin a mad dash, for, when I turn around, the tall man is still
following, loping, lagging gait. Through the windows I see lights, through all
the windows and all the lights, people lit up, all dressed beautifully, old
suits and gowns, dancing, laughing, singing.
Through the
front door I burst, and everyone stops moving and talking and looks at me with
a bitter silence. Then, after a few moments of looking, they return to their
dancing.
Everyone
lines up for a reel, and I’m compelled to join them. A five piece band plays an
old dance tune that everyone here knows even me, but I know I’ve never heard it
before. We dance like the devil is on our heels, and as we dance I see the tall
man staring in through a window. When finally we stop, a man, short and
handsome, gets up on stage and suggests we all sing an old song. Someone asks
which one, and he just replies “The Oldest.”
The Oldest Song
Quick odyssey, don’t
malign
The truth to a riddle
you do not know
The philosophy of the
yarn
The soothe to the end
we must sow
Bloody monotony grand
design.
We juggle and fight and in this we fly
Bodies quarrel
with soul, naked and bloody
Constant struggle
reenacting the Marne
All morals obfuscated
and muddy
Head guggled, and we
fuck until my cock runs dry.
(Chorus) La... la la
la la... ladiddy da... burn in hell... pay your dues... la la la la... diddly
dee... From the knife... comes the stillborn fetus... la la la la... laddidy
da...
We dress up the little
old lady
A hen in virgin’s clothes,
Then repossess the sky, the great bird comes
And then we all sing
to the rose
Then transgress her
away till she’s but a baby
Then abet them out long
Your childless gods
Voices sextet become
the ancient drums
Your violence and
inhibitions naught but frauds
And let be heard the
Oldest Song
(Chorus) La... la la
la la... ladiddy da... burn in hell... pay your dues... la la la la... diddly
dee... From the knife... comes the stillborn fetus... la la la la... laddidy
da...
And let be heard the
Oldest Song
Then
everyone, all these guests, dozens, they all pull out knives and set upon each
other, wolves on a child left alone to die in the woods. A beautiful redhead
lunges towards me, but I start to run. As I make it to the top of the grand
staircase, I turn to see the tall man come through the door, back bent almost
perpendicular, and I start to run again. This time I find my room immediately
and fall asleep, fully clothed, completely and totally beaten.
In the
morning all in the house is returned as it should be, no sign of last night’s
horrors. Except, that is, for one thing. Instead of a shower, in my bathroom I
now have a bath, but I can abide this, I suppose, as long as no one tries to
kill me.
I strip off
my clothes and climb into the warm water. It occurs to me that the last time I
actually took a bath, I wasn’t ten years old. I appreciate the relaxing warmth,
the clarity, of the clear water. I close my eyes and lean my head back for a
moment. When I open them, the redhead from last night is in the tub across from
me, her body naked and perfect. On her face is a smile straight out of the
movies, but her eyes are sad, a million miles away. She leans in close to me,
and I feel her breasts brush my chest, then she kisses me and I feel my cock
harden between my legs. I look down, and see blood pooling into the water. I
look back to her and her face and chest are covered in deep knife wounds, flesh
sagging under the weight of its own annihilation, blood seeping out, then a
chunk of her forehead cracks and falls from her face, revealing brain beneath,
wet and sticky, and her smile turns to a frown. I leap out of the tub.
When I look
back, the bathtub is a shower again, and when I look down at my body, my skin
has been cleansed white as alabaster.
On my drive
into work, the skies, bright blue upon my awakening, quickly turn a
claustrophobic grey, before descending from the heavens and socking my car in
with a thick fog, such that I can barely see the trees on either side of the
road, or indeed the asphalt a half dozen yards ahead of me, my headlights
swallowed up into the blankets of low hung hyper-humidity, and I see the earth
that we lost when the energy ran down in between that obfuscation, but also the
promise of the future that we may build, if only we can get the box to work.
We spend
the morning working in silence because we both know that we are almost there,
just a few more hours, and we’ll have something. And then we’ll know. And
neither of us really wants to discuss what happens then.
I take my
lunch in the basement.
“Let me ask
you, my friend, why are you so insistent on contacting Him?”
“Well, I
guess it’s the only solution that I really see as being left.”
“Since you
ran out of energy.”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you
need energy?”
“Because
without it, we’re all falling apart.”
“How can
you be falling apart if you can bring me tuna fish sandwiches every day?”
“The seas
will last beyond us.”
“You don’t
eat tuna, do you?”
“No, not
usually.”
“You’re
more of a BLT type, am I right?”
“Yeah,
definitely.”
“The
lettuce, the tomatoes, they will outlive you?”
“Yes.”
“And the
pigs?”
“Of
course.”
“Then why?”
“I rather
like existence.”
“Oh, it
isn’t so great. Plus, any answer He gives you, you aren’t going to like.”
“I can’t
just give up. I need to know.”
“Yeah, I
guess I get that. Say, you have any more of that cake?”
In the
afternoon, neither of us can be silent for the clinical air hung with nought
but the memories of all those who built this place is becoming oppressive, as
the fog. I shift through the lusts and fears of our quest towards creation,
look for an end point beyond the dotted line to work us towards.
“What do
you think about the quantum cerebrex?”
“That may
be the root of our problem, we just need to fix the rambergetion synthesizer,
rebuild our teflon connectors.”
“Maybe if
we speed up the audorino c-moss spinner, it will force the box to recompile the
cleft configuration tables.”
“That’s an
idea, but what about the cherseslav capacitors? If we mess with the
configuration tables again, they will not be happy.”
“What do
you mean they won’t be happy?”
“You
remember what happened last time, we blew a full set of capacitators, had to
run on backup pcp-contin for like a month while we waited for a new shipment to
come in.”
“There
isn’t going to be a new shipment this time, is there”
“No. No, I
suppose not.”
“So what do
you want to do?”
“The
epsilon coding, if we re-align it to more perfectly match the zanat chips, that
might prevent a quertic redundancy, make the whole thing go through properly.”
“And then
we talk to God.”
“And then
we talk to God.”
I design
the re-alignment, she builds it into the box on the table. The sun is fast
sinking in the sky, and in the dust I feel a hazy break, the snap crackle of
autumn leaves under foot, but you’re the leaves. We agree to wait till the
morning to test the thing, maybe both considering the grand wonder of one more
night’s easy sleep before the truth betrays all that we have forgotten in the
false dichotomy of a search for god in this world. In the parking lot as the
sun falls the rest of the way behind the hills and the perfect dark of a
starless sky takes hold, I ask her if she wants to grab a drink with me, but
she makes her excuses and excuses build their own dream logic.
When I
arrive home, I think again of escaping the creeping horrors of my night-halls,
and plan to go straight to bed, but first I must find something to eat, and the
only kitchen I can find after what feels an hour’s wandering is the one with
the broken wall and the spider eggs.
I try to
tip-toe around the spider eggs, through the tulips, daffodils, warm spring
morning, but as I approach the fridge I feel a sickening squish beneath my
foot, and I look down to see a broken egg, the size of my fist, and then around
me all these white, sticky fists start to pop, on cupboards and walls and
floor, pots and pans left out by someone not me, all over, and a smell rises
like burning canola oil.
Spiders
swarm around me, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, a writhing, screeching
mass, ebbing and flowing, trash on the surface of a pond, forming together and
apart second by second, millions of skittering little feet, and I see some
start to crawl up the legs of my jeans, and I break for the door. In the hall
the spiders follow me, faster than I’ve ever seen a beast the size of a quarter
move, even in the darkest depths of my waking nightmares in these halls.
As I run
towards what I hope is my room, the spiders still they follow, and then out of
closed doors emerged cracked and broken figures, lips all split in Glasgow
smiles, blood and pus seeping out of festering pores, maggots and flesh made as
one. They reach for me, and I reach away. Then the spiders behind me move with
a great motion, the sound of waves deep beneath the sea, and they are on the
figures, swallowing them up in a mass of legs and eyes.
In my heart
is a great relief. In the spiders I have found the solace I’ve so long sought
in my late night wanders. The next door I enter is a kitchen, whole, in its
shining 2001 monolith refrigerator a
grand steak, cooked medium rare, steam still rising in its heat, paired with a
side of potatoes mashed, a reminder of a childhood in the summer sun. The next
door I walk through is my bedroom and I sleep the best I have in time
immemorial.
My next
morning is like all next mornings, a routine long and well practiced, a
structured order from point A to B, bed to shower to clothes to breakfast to
work, but today’s final point is different, for today we shall know, and as
soon as we know, this all ends, and we shall have to begin again, in a world
fundamentally made anew.
Upon
leaving my car in the parking lot, I make the same walk I make every day, the
same footsteps upon hot asphalt, the same cracks and crevices, broken pieces of
man-made stone. The same crystal blue sky under a hot beating sun. The same
airplane hangar as my final destination for the same reasons and the same end
goal, the same fundamental act of creation as an understanding of creation, a
point among the void, a guide amongst the ether. Upon leaving my car my day is
the same as so many days before, and yet it is not, for today we shall find the
truth that man has sought since he climbed out of the sea, since he grew legs,
and developed what we now call thought, since the first of us died for love,
today we will know and, with the truth just around the next blind corner on a
midnight highway through the mountains, I would rather not know, I would rather
the mystery contained itself, kept itself to the dark void of death’s great
unknowable, but still though I have to know because there are some things that
once you see the door, you must open, and with this I open the front door to
the place, feel the recycled blast of air conditioned oxygen, feel the
compelling, intimidating suggestion at the impossible inherent in a place as
endlessly vast as this. I feel it, and I see the black box sitting at room’s
centre, and I know that, as Schrodinger’s Cat, I now know, and don’t know, god exists,
and he is dead, we have a future, and we are damned. She’s already here and I
smile at her as she watches me walk through the door, and she returns my smile
with a reluctant grimace at the truth we must now confront.
“Ready?”
“No.” She
looks down at her desk, now cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. I set my lunch on
mine.
“Do you
want to do the honors?”
“No.” She
looks back up at me and her eyes are green where once I only saw in black and
white.
Once, a
girl and a boy met on a bridge over a little brook in the springtime. The sun
was shining, and behind the gentle babble of water on rock, birds croaked out
on love, and the boy put his hand on the small of the girl’s back. Then they
kissed. They spoke slowly to each other, words passing as the wind past their
eyes. In the autumn the girl would go away, and the boy would be left behind.
The next year he would go to that same bridge in the hopes of seeing her again,
but he would never see her again, for indeed now the brook ran with flame, and
where once the bridge was a polished stone, now it is a cracked and rotten
wood. Where once there were birds, now there are only screams.
I look to
the box on the table and I fall into the black.
First there is nothing, then the
universe folds out around you, flower petals a bright gold. It is nighttime in
the desert. There are a million stars above you in a deep blue sky. The sands
around you are the tone of young leather, a hundred miles in every direction
rising up to meet the foothills of leviathanic mountains. In front of you is a
road, perfect black tarmac, hot yellow line, and behind the road an old neon
sign flickers out “24 Hour Diner” with no more creativity than that flat
declaration, and behind the sign is a diner, formica and chrome and more neon,
rounded edges, Happy Days reject.
Inside an old guy with wrinkled, pockmarked skin cleans a glass. You walk up to
him.
“Can I get
a chocolate milkshake and a cheeseburger?”
“We’re
closed.”
“The sign
says you’re open 24 hours.”
“It’s the
25th hour.” You look at your watch, and indeed it is 25:32. Then I hit the
power button.
The box
whirs to life with a gentle squeel, high pitched, destructive, theremin out of
tune. I look at her, and she’s looking eyes stapled, box’s reflective surface,
chrome counter top. Then a harsh crackle comes from the thing, and a voice,
middle aged midwestern woman, chosen to be universal, speaks.
“We’re
sorry, the number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in
service. Please hang up and try your call again.” Then the box clicks and
powers itself off and I know it will never power on again. She looks at me and
there are tears in her eyes. Then I can’t look at her any more.
In the
basement I look for answers and he won’t even answer me, but I know he’s there
because something has to be. I stumble back upstairs, empty space, light
refracting in strangely through the skylight, rain storm on the edge of the
desert, swirling clementine pallor. By the box her head lays on her desk, back
of her skull blasted away, blood everywhere, smell already beginning to set,
iron and sulphur mix with the buzz of flies settling in for what will be a long
lunch. By her left hand is a big chrome gun, as the diner, and it reads “Desert
Eagle .50,” old movie memories.
I drive
home fugue state, pine trees roadside glaring through windows of my car,
highway patrol, abandoned stretch of interstate. It’s still not even lunch, and
I feel the day ending with the year and the eon. Around a turn I see a deer
fifty feet down the road. I slow down but it doesn’t move so I stop. We look at
each other for half an hour.
When I get
home I know something is wrong, but I don’t know what till I walk through the
door, and all is shrouded in spider webs, thick, clinging, hanging, holding, a
cage from within. I touch one and my hand sticks and I have to work to pull it
away. The house is totally dark, as pitch. I think it’s just the webs covering
the windows. I work my way to a window, pull out my pocket knife, cut away some
of the webs, and outside is the shade of death. Spiders skitter around on all
sides of me, three dimensions, and I see more eggs tucked into corners, webs
covering the furniture, every footstep an effort. I can’t see more than a few
feet in front of me, and I know I must turn on the lights.
I work my
way to the basement, childhood furnace a monster clawing its way through my
memories’ dark corners. I find the breaker box, and I throw the breaker. From
the darkness I feel something surging through the house’s bowels, pushing,
rushing, charging forth, demanding to set itself free. The single naked bulb of
the basement clicks on, an anticlimax. I climb the stairs.
At the top
of the stairs I find myself on the house’s top floor. Then I hear a sucking,
squelching sound, and something is melting through the spider webs, and in the
house’s new found light, I look closer. Flesh, melted together, faces and eyes
and hands all melded and moulded into one slithering mess of vomit. I feel the
soles of my shoes melting into flesh, and I look down and sad and angry eyes
look up at me. All at once the house begins to move, shift up towards the
heavens, but not evenly, with the lumbering motions of a beast awoken after a
long sleep.
I look out
a window and see below me that the entire house now stands on legs, chicken
legs 200 feet high, and I feel queasy, lost, confused. Then all at once the
faces in my walls and floor and ceiling begin to scream, an infanticide moan,
and I feel my ears cry out for an end. There is a floor to ceiling gothic
window on one side of the room, and I run at it best I can with the flesh of
the floor holding me down. I feel my body crunch through the glass as a brick
through the window of a police car, and I feel myself fall, a body from a
burning building.
When I feel
myself hit the ground I know not even death can save me, and when I look up
from wet grass I see the house settled back into it’s old position, looking at
me like a dog looks at it’s master, hung himself from a crossbeam.
I know I
get in my car and I know I drive back to the office, but I don’t see it and I
don’t feel it. All I remember is the carcass of the deer where I left it by the
side of the road after I ended our morning staring contest.
Through the
empty space of the factory I rush, eyes shut against the truth, the very
proposition of seeing the box again, of seeing her lying there in her own
blood, but now I hear the flies above my own beating heart.
Into the
basement I rush. I stare at the pit.
“I’m sorry
I didn’t answer you earlier. I was occupied.”
“How... how
can you exist but not him?”
“Tell me,
are you such a fool as to believe in love?”
“...No.”
“...No.”
“I don’t
suppose you brought me a tuna fish sandwich?” I look in my hand and see a brown
paper bag. I take out two sandwiches, throw one to him, open the other, and
begin to eat.
“What do I
do now?”
“Well, only
you can know that. But way I see it, you got two choices.” I finish eating my
sandwich, then I walk over the edge, and I feel my body fall into the pit, more
floating than truly falling, a freedom, an out. I hit the ground and my legs
snap like twigs, and I feel a few inches of water, set heavy with mold, scent
unknowable, all around me. It is black even though I only fell for a few
seconds. I wonder at the light from the basement.
“Hey.” The
devil.
“Is this
hell?”
“No. Sorry,
I haven’t been completely honest with you. I’m not the devil. I’m Michael, the
janitor from back when Kishi and Kurosawa was fully operational.”
“What?”
“Yeah,
funny, right? And you know all those people from the company who disappeared?
Well most of them had the same thought you did, after talking to me for a
while. Jump in the pit, save yourself by going to hell. Hilarious, right? And
every time they’d land, break their legs, I’d beat them over the head until
they died. I’ve been surviving on their flesh. That, and your sandwiches.”
“No...”
“No...”
“Oh, yeah.
Don’t worry, my legs were broken too, healed up in the wrong direction, so now
my foot is by my ass, but I can kind of shuffle around. Plus my eyes have
gotten used to the dark.”
“So there
is no...?”
“What do
you think.”
Then he
won’t talk to me, and I can hear something pull its way through water thickened
by blood and cast off flesh, and as it approaches me, I pull my arms ‘round
myself. Then it’s a few inches from my face, and I see bright eyes glowing out
from the darkness. It pushes me and I feel my head hit concrete, my mouth and
nose are under water, I try to struggle but I don’t, I feel the air leaving me
and with it the life. But then I get a hand on my attacker’s neck, and I push
my way through, sharp fingernails, lazy, grab hold of what I find inside, pull
it out, blood rushing to get through the hole. I hear the body tip backwards,
fall into the water.
That’s when
I realized I’m trapped here, just the smell and the mold and the bodies. And
then I see a figure with jagged lines and white eyes approaching me in the
darkness.
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