“We're on the thirteenth floor – nobody could be looking through the window.” He tried to reassure her, patting her sweating head, but Melanie wouldn't hear of it. “I saw them!” she whimpered. “Three of them. In the window.” Russell looked at the window. It was streaked with rain, silver bullets from the machine-gun battle-ship-grey clouds. They struck the window so it shook the whole room, reverberating round the plain white wallpaper and sparse arrangement.
Melanie brought the quilt up around her like a shield from the window. Russell sighed. This happened near enough every night. He heaved her up and brought her to the window, so he could see her face reflected in the moonlight-streaked glass. Sure enough, nobody was looking through the window, save for the wind, who threw himself against the window with a renewed passion. It felt like there was a pressure outside the window, like the rainstorm was trying to crack the glass and get into the warm of the house. She peered through the window. She saw that nobody was there. Her brow furrowed, she wriggled out of her dad's grasp and landed back on the bed.
He tucked her in, and made sure she was warm and asleep before heading back downstairs.
The stairs were narrow and they were full of her, the daughter and mother staring at him from the walls. You could see the living room, small and ringed with Ikea, from over the banister. He sat in it, and it was the most uncomfortable living room in the world, because it felt pressurised, like someone had squeezed his three-seater sofa into a two-seater and his 32” plasma was a 24” and his dinner table was a coffee table. This room used to be bigger. He turned on his 24” plasma television and picked up his tea. It was cold. A film lay on the top. He idly played with it and made interesting shapes with it over the-
The moon shone like a spotlight across the ocean, its light playing with the waves, dancing and diffusing and the waves writhed and leapt across their feet as the lovers gambolled in the most overwrought and cliched of ways across the sand. Seashells sang and the moon, hung as it was, illuminated their every misstep along that endless, wonderful beach. In the distance there was a house. Even from here they could see the way the light shone through it, showing clearly holes gaping through its wooden chest. As they moved closer they saw beams branch out like ribs, broken, silhouetted in the moonlight. They laughed and headed towards it, for nothing could stop them now, those lovers of everything and nothing in the moonlight.
Russells eyes flickered open a second and the televisions artificial slap slithered across his face, the RGB bathing his sofa in suffused light. Empty pizza boxes had risen around the sofa like greasy cardboard trees, though he swore he was learning to cook, and the light split like-
-like the cavity in that fabled abandoned house. She giggled and egged him on, helping him through the hole. Splinters clung to him as he wriggled through, as the only thing which moved through here save for the tide. Seaweed lingered on the walls and rust climbed up the utensils in the kitchen, nailed to the wall as they were. The stench wrapped around them, and forced them together, such was its strength. There were faded photographs on the walls of a life led a generation ago, before the tide began to bite away at this fading relic. The ocean lapped up and down the corridors, filling up all the cracks and corners as it went, leaving no floorboard uncleansed as it dribbled down into the foetid foundations. The carpet crumbled at the touch of their boots.
“Stop, or I'll shoot!” screamed the television, before firing off several rounds, jolting Russell out of his stupor a moment. The crack of the bullets whipping past the camera reminded him of-
-the cracking of the floorboards underfoot as they trembled through the upstairs of the house. The entire house felt like it was on a tilt, like it was falling into the ocean.
The world creaked. It felt like the clay underneath crumbled ever more steadily into the waiting tide with every bounding step the two took. She looked left and saw what was left of a bed, like a decorated marshmallow melting in the sun. It sunk into itself, and it looked like it would swallow you if you tried to use it. She decided that she wanted to be swallowed and completely enveloped by this house, so she took to it. It folded over her and he walked slowly, carefully, to join her, as if walking too fast could trip the house into collapsing in on itself.
Juliet.
“Juliet...” he whispered into her ear, laying on the bed next to her, his hand resting on her thigh and nothing else mattering.
Ju. Juliet.
“Juliet..” as he snaked his restless fingers up her legs to find bliss and eternity as he enveloped himself in her as they were enveloped by the house, by the restless world.
And he was awake and it was far too late and the shadows danced on the walls. The television had long since realised he paid it no attention so was showing reruns. His tea had fallen to the floor and the cream carpet was stained. The mug was cracked, but that was alright because it was another thing of hers he has an excuse to throw away. “Juliet.” he whispered, echoing himself as he traced his mistake up the crack in the cut, and feeling nothing much of anything as the blood dribbled down his finger and stained the carpet some more. She was dead now, and that was that. There was nothing much he could do about it. The life she showed just made it all the less surprising that it was gone now – you couldn't be that exuberant and expect to get away with it, everyone got caught out eventually. Everyone sold out or died out.
He turned himself over and considered for a moment retiring to his bedroom, but he knew he couldn't do that. He'd considered the same thing every night for the past two months and nothing had happened.
He'd only even looked in there once, and seen the hole where she used to be. He walked forward and instantly felt tortured by the walls, and the world writhed about him like something it shouldn't. He fell to his knees. He felt sick. The carpet was still warm from this morning.. or was that his imagination? All the light had gone from the room. The window let in only shadows. The tide lapped around his knees-
He closed his eyes tight and slowly relaxed. Right now he needed sleep; this always happened when he deprived himself; he spent all his time reliving the worst moments of his life in his mind. But now he didn't need to do that. Right now he needed to sleep.
To sleep.
Sleep.
A scream cracked him in half. A piercing scream, from upstairs.
“I saw them!” she said.
No way. Theres no way that could happen. They were thirteen stories up, it was just a nightmar-
“Three of them. In the window.”
He flung himself backwards over the sofa, as cushions crumpled underhand, and kicked off towards the stairs. Above him, glass broke. A chill ran through him. At the apex of the stairs, Russell turned left. The door to his daughters bedroom creaked, like a popsicle stick in a wind tunnel and as he stared at it in disbelief the door splintered to reveal a sight unlike any he had seen. The curtains were torn and the windows clacked helplessly against the wall as a man stood before his daughter, who was curled defenceless before the titan. Russell saw nothing and knew nothing as he tore towards the stranger, barrelling his shoulder into the strangers chest. The man staggered backwards, obviously surprised, and cracked into the window, smashing it. “Run, Melanie!” Russell hollered, running at the hulk again – but this time the man was ready for him, elbowing Russell square in the ribs. Russell was slammed to the side, crumpling through a cupboard.
“This is a dream.” he thought madly. “This must be a dream!”
He saw Melanie screaming and running for the door. Saw her scooped up in the titans sweating, sterile embrace. Heard her bang her tiny fists against the massive strangers heaving chest. Felt himself rise up, trance-like, as his daughter was thrust through the window and manhandled into another pair of hands. As the tall man pushed himself through the window, Russell started after them. He kicked aside toys and ran forwards, heaved himself through the window and stared up. The man, his daughter and another, leaner stranger were balanced on the roof in front of something, like a cavity in the sky, a rotten hole in the universe. “Stop!” he screamed helplessly as roof-tiles fluttered in the breeze, caught up in the strange winds the cavity was making. His face was bathed in blue light as the lean stranger passed Melanie back to the first hulk, who made towards the hole. He could see their lank hair and dirty garments whip through the air, torn about by the wind. He clambered up the roof as chunks of it actually lifted up, and the aerial screeched a bend towards the portal. The man with his daughter, his baby Melanie, stepped through the hole and disappeared. The hole where he had been fell back in on itself with a crack like a thunderbolt. The lean stranger winced as the light scorched his face, then went to enter. He thought a moment, then turned to Russell.
“For your sake, man!” he yelled down the roof to Russell, losing his grip on the attic as he tried desperately to reach the portal. “You don't want to follow me! Bad things are going on in here! Think yourself lucky you're alive!”. He gave a wistful look at the air around him, then turned sadly and headed inside. He was licked up by the vortex like a drop into the ocean.
“Don't take my daughter!” Russell cried into the sky. “Melanie! Melanie!” He reached forwards one last time and touched the portal. It felt completely solid, yet his finger slipped through it like hot solder through ice. It was as though the portal parted its lips for him and opened itself up. Russell felt a great lurching in his stomach as he thrust forwards into the light.
No comments:
Post a Comment