The wood around the hollow shell was weak against the light. Beams of yellow and orange slipped through cracks in the walls. Girl studied their journey from morning until night; she memorized their pattern as they warmed different bits of the floor. She buried her treasures according to the map they created. She hid Hector’s knife and the spoon under a large beam of morning. Then she buried the remaining food under an afternoon glow. Where no light lingered she dug a whole to catch water that fell on dull days.
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| pexels-bulat-khamitov |
Girl found many things while digging. She found shoes, and bottles, and buckets and tin cans. She found blankets. She found dolls made of grass with button eyes and hair of black yarn. Once she found a smiling face with hollow eyes and bright white teeth. In this way she learned that Hector was afraid of faces; anything she found with a face would make him run away. So she’d bury them again in the hopes he would return with food.
Now the ground was soft and uneven. She’d dug up everything so there was nothing new to find. The great gray hollow of her home was warming more and more each day, and each day she grew more restless. She found herself pressed against the cracks in the wall looking for the source of the air and the light - looking for the source of the sounds beyond the walls, and wondering where Hector flew too when Hector flew away.
She decided to make her nest bigger, and pulled the sheets and pillows away. The thin metal flake dropped to her feet. It glistened now where it had been licked clean.
“Key.” She said. The shadows did not speak but she felt its awareness warming. She smiled and studied her treasure. There was a symbol on it. She knew this pattern. She’d seen it somewhere before. She sat and pondered. Her eyes fell on the back door, on the block that kept the door from opening, and then she remembered.
“Is this food for you, Block?” She asked the padlock on the door. As she approached the block with the key the corners vibrated. Block had a crooked smile near its belly. Girl adjusted the flake against the jagged opening to see if it would fit. The walls hummed, the shadows swarmed. She withdrew. Everything fell still and quiet once more.
She hid the key in her palm. She walked circles around the shack looking for angles were the darkness could not see her. It became a game - how to make the wild wall wonder what she was up to?
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| pexels-harison-nkhoma |
How could she get to the door without being seen by the unseen? But before long she felt faint, and the walls won. She rested and dreamed of things crawling over her, and through her hair. They tested her fingers; they tasted her skin. When she awoke there was nothing there.
Nine days passed. All the cans were empty, and the knife was dull. Girl’s stomach became an animal growling and clawing. Her toes were boring now; the holes in the floor were useless. The shack was becoming hotter; the beams began to sting and their pattern had changed. Girl found the shadows more comfortable but with each day there was less shadow and more light creeping into her hollow. She considered digging out a new nest, one that was away from the beams all together.
Before she could start something captured her attention; it was the smell of something sweet. It was coming from outside, beyond the door in the back of the shack. She pressed her body against the walls, poked her nose through the crack and closed her eyes. “Peaches.” She detected. The padlock pressed into her arm.
“You must be hungry.” She said to the lock on the door. “Poor thing. I forgot to feed you.” She found Key, and without hesitation fed Block the metal flake she’d been hiding. It fell from its hook. The door opened, and the beam-maker’s light pushed through. Scales of darkness retreated into the cracks hissing “Sun!”.
Girl could see clearly for the first time. The air moved quickly here. Tall bristly grasses grew like vibrant green hair from the ground. Some of the hairs were bolder, thicker and grew as tall as her shack. They swayed in the fast moving air and sang for her to join them. Here there was no ceiling; the beam-maker itself hung in a vast bright blue with no string to keep it from falling.
She backed up to retreat into the familiar darkness of her shack. The aroma of sweetness came riding a quick moving breeze. It caught her just as she was closing the door; it beckoned her back into the light. She took a step beyond the threshold. Her feet sank into warm dark mud and soft green grass. Suddenly she was crying, everything in her was crying.
Watching the fluttering thing, Girl felt lighter than she ever had before. She felt small – a captive of the wind. She closed her eyes and glided over the sea of green. She danced in an invisible current at once apart of all these things. From above, the shack looked so small, and so flimsy. She swam in the wind and attempted to climb higher and higher.
Her gaze fell down towards her feet still rooted in the rich black soil. Her skin matched the dry dust of the ground. It baked in the beam maker’s light. She looked up and into the honey gold eyes of a boy. A rich brown boy her same age, with black mossy curls and eyes as gold as morning. Bright orange wings like those of the fluttering thing grew from his back. He leaned in and tasted her tears with a long thin tongue. He smelt of sweet things, of spoiling fruit or honey left in the heat. She drew away. He rested his hands upon her shoulders. He kissed her nose. Her body thrilled against his touch.
She mimicked his motion, kissing his lips as he found hers. It was like biting into a packet of syrup. She closed her eyes trying to place the flavor. Peaches! He tasted just like peaches. He was sweeter than the air smelled. She longed for more. When she opened her eyes he was gone. She stood alone in the yard. The hairs of her arms were raised and waving like the grass.
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| pexels-nishant-aneja |
There was a thump at the front of the shack. The building itself groaned against the sudden furious assault. The door at the front of the shack was bolted. It rattled and it shook. It barked and it growled. The walls hissed like vinegar in white powder. Girl returned to the shack, closing the door behind her. She sought to hide where she’d been by placing Block back on its hook and taking Key away.
“Girl!” Hector moaned from the other side. “You stupid . . . FUCK!” He roared. “Where is my fucking key!” Girl looked at the metal flake in her palm. Without it Hector could not get in. The darkness bubbled. The man roared. Without Hector girl could not get food. Without Key she was trapped inside. Now that she knew what outside was she wanted more.
Hector beat the door twice more, then shouted. “Fine! Fuck you! I hope you fucking rot in there!” Girl passed the key under the door. A few moments later Hector stumbled in. He looked as though he were melting. He was crooked, and decaying. One of his eyes had lost its color; it was a bleak obsidian orb. Through it Girl saw herself for the first time. Through it she saw the horror in Hector’s face a moment before he fell into the mattress near the door and passed out.
He lost skin when he slept, and once a tooth when he coughed. When he woke his crankiness towards her made her relish the hours he’d spent away. He wouldn’t let her near him, choosing instead to throw food at her from across the room. She began breaking things, or asking questions to drive him off. She even dug up the smiling face and placed it near him while he slept. He woke up screaming. Then he pitched her prize treasure out of the front door. It was clear he wanted to retreat. But still he lingered.
Despite the desire to be left alone, Girl gradually developed a keen feeling of gentleness towards the poor bastard. He was after all very sick, clearly he was dying, and yet had no place else to go. Had he not been protective towards her – locking her away here so that she would be safe? Thinking these thoughts as he slept on the third night, she could see the humanity in him. Girl scooped up the cleanest bit of mud she could find to dress his wounds. She hoped that the cool moist soil would bring some comfort to the red, oozing sores that blistered his skin.
Hector breathed deep the smell of peaches and honey. He breathed deep the cooling of his skin from the itch and burn he’d grown accustomed to. When his eyes opened his mind was his own. It flitted to the corners of shame left during the past two weeks. The faces of factory men and of bartenders all pity and hatred. The foreman, the cops, the nurses – all of them spewing venom from their eyeballs.
“No one’ll listen to me.” Hector groaned. “I tried to warn ‘em but . . . they ain’t seeing what I can see.”
“What do you see?” a woman’s voice asked - her voice – both familiar and humbling.
“Colors!” Hector sighed. “I see ‘em all as colors! Colors that ain’t got no names. Ain’t got no . . .” His mouth was so dry. His blood was dry too. “The drink is the only thing that keeps ‘em away. Without work . . . I can’t shut them up.” Finally, some relief came to his eyes in the form of tears. He blinked until he could see again. He tried to wipe the tears away only to find that he couldn’t lift his arms. He looked to find his body cocooned in mud. The child was kneeling next to him, her eyes fervent with hunger.
“Just going to bury me alive, huh? You little shit!” Hector snapped. He forced himself into a sitting position. The mud crumbled away except in places where it plugged holes in his flesh. Girl crawled away before standing up in a defensive posture. He’d never hurt her in the past, but he was changing. And so was she. She was almost his height now - her curls rose wild and thorny around her ears. She was lean but not frail. She was even developing some fat around her chest and legs.
“Where the hell your clothes at?” Hector demanded averting his eyes.
She pointed to the place where she’d been sitting during his nap. The shirt she’d been wearing was balled up into a cushion.
“May I have another?” Girl asked. She picked it up so he could get a better look at it. “This one is all dirty now.” It was soaked through in deep red. Bits of red now dusted her thighs. A small crimson pool had started where she’d been kneeling beside him.
The darkness quivered in the corners.
Hector hid his face with a trembling hand as he backed away from her. His throat was too raw to scream, his lungs too weak to shout the curses that rose in his mind. He charged to his truck, more in control now than he’d been in months. On the tail bed was an ax. He could finish this now! He could end it forever. He had control again!
He crept back into the shack. Girl stood with her back to him, peering at him over cowering shoulders. He raised the ax ready to end this once and for all. He growled at the sight of her pitiable face,
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| pexels-anthony- |
the tears cutting a current through the grime of her nose down to her chin. How dare she! How dare she have this weapon! She fell away from him as he brought the ax down. The steel head sliced into the soft dirt just inches from Girl’s unguarded ankle, and held fast. Hector’s arms sang in pain. His spine locked up tight. He fell over into a pool of his own vomit; all he could do was curse as he lay waiting for control over his limbs again.
When he could stand he staggered back to his truck. “Fuck you.” He chanted. “Fuck this! If you want it, you can have it!” He returned to the shack with a bag of oily rags.
“Sit on these til you’re done!” He threw the sack at her.
“Done with what?” Girl cried. The question was met with a roar that caused Hector’s throat to bleed. He pulled the ax out of the ground. It brought with it a doll whose wooden head was stuck to the ax’s blade. Hector hissed at the mouth-less face coming after him through the mud. He kicked off the doll and ran as though it were attacking him. Girl heard the lock clicking on the other side of the door. She listen as the truck spit fire and rumbled away.
The man was gone; this time it felt as though he were never coming back. He’d taken the key with him.
. . . . to be continued
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| pexels-ray-bilcliff |
By P. B. Yeary
Published by: Death's Head Press
In the Breaking Bizarro Anthology 2019
Approximately: 8000 words.
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