Thursday
Maybe it's Thursday out there too, where things were normal. (From Tales from the Valley: Phantasmagory Shorts)
CW: blood, horror themes, mentions of violence
Seven died on a Thursday.
I can just see the calendar from where I'm cowering under the desk, rows of little red x’s that lead to a big smiley-face. That's really what does it, a bright red smile like the blood on the curtains, the walls, the crevices between my fingers.
Thursday, Thursday. It was always fucking Thursday.
Maybe it's Thursday out there too, where things were normal. That’s a morbid thought. Thursday at my empty desk in the dingy office park behind the gas station. Thursday in the apartment on the hill, the bathroom door busted off its hinges and a forest of grocery store plants dead on the windowsills. Briefly, I wonder if someone else lives in that apartment now, or if the rest of the world went ahead and ended too.
But hey, it's not like these are even my memories. It's not like this has anything at all to do with me.
So fine, whatever, it's Thursday, as if that's supposed to mean anything, and there's a big red smiley face to mark the occasion. Seven probably knew what was coming then, of course she did. I feel a twinge of rage at that, bubbling up through the stupor. The audacity she had to draw that, knowing what would happen. The nerve.
And maybe it’s because it’s one of those cheap calendars the admins at my old job used to have, tacky and badly typeset, filled with pictures of kittens in fields posed in an array of tiny hats, a collection of miserable, blank kitten faces staring into the camera, maybe that’s what finally snaps me out of it.
Hang in there, she'd say with a smile, watching them open me up on the table again. Yes, I'm sure she would think the whole thing was hilarious, if she could think about anything anymore.
God, how I hated her, truly.
My legs are stiff and angry when I pull myself up. I've been under the desk forever, or maybe a couple hours. It was hard to tell. Time was strewn around the floor in little bits and pieces.
And really, who needs time anyhow? What has time ever done for anyone? I'm better off without it, I tell myself, pushing my unease back under sludgy layers of apathy. What difference does it make to a thing like me?
Seven is probably still splayed out on the dining room table. Just for me. Just so I know what I probably did.
And it’s true. I flinch when I turn the corner, eyes dropping to the bloodstain painting the horrid, ugly carpet. The body looks happy, manically so. And you know, at least somebody is. That counts for something.
Are you satisfied, Mother Seven? Have all your dreams come true? I'm a proper monster now, and Seven got a vacation in whatever hell things like her go to.
She shouldn't still be here. It doesn't make sense, but sense is something that happens to other people. It's just like her to leave her cold carcass on the table like yesterday's turkey, making me look at what I probably did, acting like she was ever real to begin with. Oh, she'd think that was a hoot. My, how realistic, she'd say, shoving my face into it. See, that's what people aught to have inside them. Unlike you...
No one has cleaned up, or bothered to close her eyelids. Who would have? I'm the only one left now, the only one left. My head is ringing. The only one...
Apart from him.
Wherever he is. Does that even count? My awful owner's been awful quiet since...
He's been gone for days now, decades, months. My head has never been so blissfully empty without him in there screwing around. Maybe he's dead in a ditch somewhere, clutching his horrible little hands to his horrible little head, pretending it’ll all go back to normal in the morning.
And bless our malignant little heart, it just might.
Hilarious. I could scream. I could cry, if I had anything in me to wet the tears with.
At some point, I wander into the kitchen and make a cup of tea. I don't like tea, but it's better than staring at the blood on the curtains, the windows, the ugly blue cabinets. The body in the dining room... My shirt is cemented to my skin, tugging my armpit hair when I reach for a mug. There’s blood in my armpits and I don't even like tea.
The kettle is whistling harmony with my head. A major third, my brain supplies helplessly. Ding dong, Beethoven’s 5th. I consider throwing it through the kitchen window. That's what a proper monster would do, I think, and I'm a proper monster now. A terrible beast that ruins the carpet and lurks around snarling at calendars. I set the kettle gently back on the stove.
When I wander back into the dining room, the body is still on the table. Just for me. Just so I know what I probably did. For fucksake, she didn't even exist, why the hell is she still here for?
Looking at her is making my eyes burn, so I go back to contemplating the horrid, ugly carpet. Red splatters on lime green swirls. The red is my fault of course, but whoever unleashed their vision of midcentury misery on this unsuspecting pile of coal baron showboating did the worst of it well before I got here.
I'm losing the the thread. It's all unraveling now. The smell of blood and earl grey is making me sick, so I tip the mug out and watch my tea bleed into the mess around it. It doesn't matter what I do at this point, not that it ever did. The carpet is already ruined.
I'm making a noise like a giggle. It's not funny, so I must be crying. I don't even like tea and it doesn't matter even if I did because the tea isn't real. The house, the horrors, the body on the table. The fake wind-up monster clutching his fake mug of fake tea with fake shaking fingers.
God, how I understand the fear in their eyes now. It isn't real, I yelled, watching them claw their faces off with that horrible look in their eyes. It isn't real, it isn't real. God, how I killed them all with three ugly words and I wasn't even enough of a person to die with them. Black streaks of nothing slip down my face.
I'm feeling pathetic now, so I go back to the office to wait for time to pass again, for lack of anything better to do. It doesn't. It sits in pieces on the floor like an angry toddler, staring at me in silent accusation. The creak in the office chair agrees and I make a note to burn it later, along with the papers flung across the desk and the books lining the shelves behind me. Endless notes on the town, the victims, the fake plastic monsters like me. Rules, lessons, faith, belief. Books, trinkets, junk, mess. Paper monsters piled in great heaps against the doors and windows, suffocating ourselves with gleeful abandon.
Yes, there will be a lot of things to burn later, I think, idly picking flecks of gore from my nails. The calendar is boring a hole through my head from the wall, but I'm going to burn it later with the rest of the house and maybe then the ringing in my ears will stop.
I press my dirty claws into my face, but don't dig in. No, I'm too tired today and there isn't much of a point to it anyway. I wonder how well fiction burns, if it'll drift to the sky on a column of smoke or if it's carved itself in too deep into the hillsides.
Maybe I'll give it a try tomorrow.
—–+ #Horror #ShortStory #Writing #Fiction
_____________________ Hello! I'm Nilly. I write stuff and draw stuff. You can also find me at mastodon.art.