Work Text:
I didn’t want to move, but you knew that.
The house at the end of that long driveway was the only one I could ever hope to afford, and it looked the part.
A front lawn choked by weeds, falling shingles and broken banisters framed the front porch like teeth. I didn’t see you then, but you were there too. Peering out from the shuttered windows and the gaps in the siding.
I should have listened to my gut and gone home then.
Instead I walked in.
The wind slammed the door shut behind me, or maybe it was you. The floorboards groaned as I made my way through the house, twisted and warped from years of neglect. Each room twisted and bent around the others, spiraling into the depths of the house. Spots of mold damage appeared in the corners of some of the rooms, water damage in others. I’d have to get vinegar to clean that up sometime.
I didn’t have much to unpack, just a few boxes and some miscellaneous furniture. The bedroom was my first priority. I had arrived late, and darkness was closing in rapidly.
The boxes could wait. The layout of the house was confusing and trying to navigate had exhausted me. I was tired and wanted to sleep, so I set up the meager bedroom with what I had, took a shower, and sunk into a fitful sleep.
More than once I woke with a start.
I had terrible nightmares the whole night, but not one stuck in my memory, just the bone-deep feeling of terror that gripped me each time I woke in a puddle of my own sweat.
The last time I went to sleep that night, just as my mind was beginning to drift, I spotted another spot of mold on the ceiling. It was the size of my fist, red and skimming the surface of the drywall like a bruise bubbling underneath skin.
It was directly above my head, and I stared at it until I fell asleep.
I woke up again that night. My chest seized as I gasped for air. The blankets twisted around me like a vice. I clawed wildly at the fabric, tearing them from my legs. The room spun rapidly as I stumbled onto the floor of the bedroom. My stomach cramped and saliva started filling my mouth as I was hit with an overwhelming sense of nausea.
The bathroom was right outside of the bedroom, and I crawled towards it with all the strength of a leper. The sink was closest when my stomach decided to empty itself out. The acid burned in my throat and I was hit with the stink of my half-digested fast food dinner.
My stomach twisted once more as I vomited a second time. It splashed into the sink, thick and acrid. Flecks of it went over the sides and fell onto my hands where they held on for dear life.
I looked into the mirror, my eyes were rimmed red and sunken into my sockets. Deep, dark circles framed underneath them.
My knuckles were white against the porcelain as they gripped the sides of the sink, forearms tensed to show the shifting of tendons under the skin.
Sinew and ligaments popped as my shoulders heaved, breath rasping in my throat like sandpaper. My mouth was dry and tasted like vomit. The t-shirt I was wearing stuck to my back, soaked in sweat.
My lips pulled back painfully, the skin cracking and breaking as they stretched over my teeth while my stomach cramped and I doubled over, retching even though there was nothing left in my stomach. I spat yellow bile out into the sink.
The haggard form of my own self looked back at me from the dirty mirror. Spit dripped from my lips as I panted over the porcelain bowl.
Under the mirror was another one of those spots. Mold like a lesion in the drywall. The spot dripped down the wall, marring the dingy white paint job. The spots lead, one into the other, like a trail across the floor.
They weren’t there before, were they?
The hardwood of the floors sunk in around the mold spots, the wetness of whatever was causing it rotting the wood into splinters.
I followed the trail, each spot growing in size as they led me closer and closer to the cellar door, closer to you. The mold more and more resembled blood stains as I went.
The steps down into the cellar were old and rotted, like everything else in the house. I walked down them carefully.
I slipped on the fifth step. The loose board wrenched out from underneath my foot as I stepped down. I nearly fell down the rest of the way towards the cement floor of the cellar, but I caught myself on the railing.
Down here, what I had thought was mold took up every inch of the walls, wet and dripping. It was here that I saw the first string, white like sinew holding the foundation of the house together. Like a fool I followed it, I should have turned tail and run out of that house, run from you.
Instead I looked closer, and followed it until I laid eyes upon you. You sat there in the corner of the cellar, shining wetly in the darkness. A red mass of twisted muscle and nerve and vein thrumming with something resembling a heartbeat.
Your heartbeat sunk into my bones until the muscle in my chest matched its rhythm and I swear you sang to me. You slotted yourself inside my rib cage next to my heart and there was nothing I could do.
Of course, once you were inside, you ripped me from myself like you were peeling the skin off of an orange.
It hurt. Oh my god, it hurt .
It was like I had been set on fire.
It was like I was drowning.
It was you.
I fell to the cold concrete of the cellar and writhed in agony. I wanted to tear my skin off and dig my nails into my own soft flesh so long as it would get you out of it, but you had already dug yourself into my limbs like maggots chewing their way through a fetid corpse.
I screamed and screamed until my voice was raw and until you wrapped yourself around my throat like fingers and squeezed. It was a miracle no one heard me.
We sat there together, you and me, on the floor of that cellar for what felt like an eternity. I was supposed to die there. I was supposed to die while you wrapped yourself around my brain like cling-film and suffocated what was left of me.
didn’t.
I sat there with you.
Then you got up. You got up and climbed the cellar stairs, skipping the fifth stair, the loose one. You went to my bathroom and you brushed my hair. It was caked with sweat and dirt from the cellar floor. You looked at me from my own eyes.
You smiled.
There were tear stains running down my cheeks. I had been crying?
My teeth were stained with blood as it bubbled from my gums and spilled from my mouth into the sink below.
You brushed my hair, still caked in grime and sweat, and you looked at me through my own eyes and you smiled at me with my own bloodied teeth.
And then you tucked yourself into my bed, and you went to sleep.
I didn’t.
I am still awake.