Behold the Void

by Philip Fracassi

  Yes, I recalled a recent phone conversation between Julie and her bizarre grandmother. I had walked by the living room when I heard Jules’s hushed and hurried voice, as if relaying the most private entries from a hidden diary to a co-conspirator. But it was just one more secret between the two of them, and I had long grown weary of concerning myself with the weight of their hidden messages.

  “Sounds like a great idea,” I said, stabbing at a hefty helping of pork roast and mashed potatoes. I shoved the meat in my mouth, and said through muffled chews, “Please give her my best.”

  “I will, Howard,” she said, then added quietly, “she asks about you often.”

  I nodded at this, stared at my food, felt a tightening in my throat. I wished the vermin would leave that very second, and not in a day. I listened to the slurping and smacking of the child, the cooing of the mother, and wanted nothing more in the world than to be free of them both.

  At that moment I was overcome by an alien desire, something so forceful, dark and evil that it was wholly unrecognizable to me. It was murder I thought of, the idea spreading like molten venom through my blood. I realized, with surprise, that I wanted them both dead. For the first time in my life my mind contained the needed mixture of repugnance, fear and volatility to make myself capable of the damnable act. I looked at them and imagined how I would do it.

  She would die first. I would crush the black life out of her. I would clinch my hands onto that skinny white neck and squeeze as hard as I could, crushing her supple throat shut until she expired.

  The boy I would smother. I would use a cushion, or his own bedding if need be. Perhaps a plush toy. I would rather feel him die via proxy—for flesh of my flesh should not be killed directly by my bare hand. I didn’t think, despite my misgivings of his nature, I would want to feel his skin turn cold against my own. He was, after all, my only child.

  I was lost in these reveries when I snapped back to reality. I focused on my family across the table and saw with a chill that the child stared at me, his endlessly deep brown eyes as strange and empty as a rotting calf. I wanted to lunge for him right then, but knew the mother would have to be first. I could not be so cruel and devoid of humanity as to make a mother witness the slow, suffocating death of her child.

  With a force of will I met Howard’s eyes, daring him to change my stance. Praying he would do something to make me feel compassion toward him. But he only stared, then looked to his mother, impeaching her attention. She glanced my way abruptly, as if my innermost thoughts had been revealed. I smiled and went back to my dinner. I knew there would be time to rid myself of them upon their return. There was no sense in having a scene.

  They left the next day.

  * * *

  While they were away, I had spent most of my free time lounging around the house, reading in my study and organizing notes for an article I was to publish in the coming weeks. My nights I spent away in the arms of the young student, and the reprieve allowed me to forget my worries and dark thoughts for a time.

  Given a bit of space to think, it was with embarrassment and a degree of self-loathing that I reflected on my murderous thoughts. I surmised that the strain of fatherhood and my career were creating unjust stressors on my psyche and had polluted my perspective of the things most important in my life. I researched whether postpartum depression could affect the male in the relationship and was both relieved and astonished to find it not only feasible but common. A few nights of reprieve had me feeling much like my old self again, and I was resolved to try harder with Julie and little Howard in an effort to regain the family bond which had slipped away like frayed strips of silk through my fingers.

  I had not, however, expected them back until the following morning, and was momentarily alarmed when I felt a weight settling onto the bed next to me.

  Julie had returned in the middle of the night.

  “Jules?” I said sleepily, groping for her.

  She moaned something incoherent. My hand wove itself through tangled sheets to find her skin. I found the meat of her upper arm, and as I touched her I nearly cried out in alarm. Her flesh was scalding hot.

  “Jules?” I said anxiously, feeling more of her, her breasts, her belly. “You’re burning up.”

  “Yes, Howard, I’m afraid I’m a little sick, so we came back early. Little Howard is sleeping, and I desperately need to sleep as well.”

  “Should I care for the baby in the morning, feed him or change him?” I asked quietly, although this is something I had never done, or been asked to do. With my newfound surge of conviviality, I thought it the smallest of sacrifices.

  “No, please don’t,” she said, her voice tinged with alarm. “I’d rather he not be disturbed. He didn’t sleep well coming home and he needs a day to rest. If he cries, please wake me. Otherwise, he was just fed and should sleep through. Now please, Howard, I must sleep. Goodnight.”

  I was confused but not overly concerned, and relieved to have been availed of my offer. I looked at the clock. It was not yet close to dawn. Feeling mischievous despite my wife’s ailing, I pressed my body toward her, reaching again for the feel of her heated flesh. I made it so far as a fingertip when she pulled from me with obvious rejection. She yanked the sheets around her like she always did when I was disallowed from affection, swaddling herself and leaving me nary a scrap to cover with.

  With the determination of a short-armed hangman I leaned toward her again, desperate for her to feel my newfound sense of family loyalty and husbandly love. She recoiled, turned only briefly and said sharply, “Please don’t.”

  Her breath, I smelled, was foul. The same sickness that was frying her skin was likely boiling her insides and poisoning her intestines, the diseased secretions making their way through her nasal passages, coating her mouth and throat with rank bacteria.

  Having just enough bedding to cover myself, and the press of the night pushing me toward sleep once more, I pulled myself away, closed my eyes, and left Julie to her healing slumber.

  I don’t know what time it was when I woke. It may have been a noise, a sudden movement, or something else altogether, but something had shaken me loose from my dreams.

  I opened my eyes and knew it was still night. Drowsy, my senses came to me one-by-one. The room was warm, moist, and filled with a sharp animal odor. Although I was no longer covered by sheet or blanket, my skin was sticky with the pungent air, as if my body lay in a heated coffin with only browning fruit and the worms for companions.

  I was about to rise when I heard strange sounds beside me. Slowly, I turned my head toward Julie, my body stiff with tension beneath the grimy, slick excretions of my flesh. It was dark, so horribly dark, and yet I could see the sheets rolled around her as to form a womb. It encompassed her from head to toe, not a bit of flesh visible. No moonlight came through the blinds, no ambient light from the hallway. The bedroom door gaped open to an even deeper darkness beyond.

  It must have been the smell that woke me, but it was the odd sounds coming from within the roll of sheets, where Julie lay, that made me alert. It was a shuffling sort of sound, the kind one might make fighting a straightjacket—a disjointed, struggling, sliding, jerking noise. The muffled, panicked exertions of escape. For a moment I wondered if Julie were being smothered in her sleep, much as I had imagined doing to little Howard. I moved to help her but was held back by an internal force, a kernel of inherent knowledge that stayed my hand, petrified my limbs, and kept me from making any movement whatsoever.

  I noticed a respiratory rising and falling movement within the bulbous shape of the bedding, as if the twined ball of sheets themselves were swelling with the inhalations and exhalations of life. I held my breath.

  I saw the first leg slip through the fabric.

  It was thick as a wrist, but blacker than night. I could see the smooth pointed tip, the long coarse hairs flowing along the bent-angled limb.

  I was too horrified to scream when the mass of bedding beside me slackened, the thing insid
e sliding heavily to the floor with a loud, meaty thump.

  After a heartbeat I heard the hesitant clicking of stiff legs against hardwood, like sticks being tapped in rhythmic unison along the floor beside the bed. The clattering quickened and, with a heavy shifting sound, the thing slid itself beneath me. I wondered if it was momentarily sheltering, instinctually gathering itself in safety before venturing out into the larger world.

  Perhaps it was—she was—just a little frightened, at first, of what she had become. Curious despite my horror, I fought the urge to look beneath my bed at the creature. I did not look, but heard the slightest drumming of a rapid heartbeat and the wet, prolonged squelching of her slick black jaws flexing open for the first time.

  A moment later the heavy tapping on the floorboards resumed, much more assured now. The sounds moved away from beneath me, toward the far wall, then up along it. It finally settled high in the corner, presumably looking down at me. Presumably judging.

  * * *

  So I wait. Here, paralyzed in my bed, my prone flesh a sacrifice to the monster.

  It moves. Its stiff legs tapping higher up along the wall, then, yes, across the ceiling, warily, as if cautious to my impossible flight. I close my eyes tightly—so tightly—not wanting, not daring, for the sake of the sanity left to me, to witness the demon. The drumming taps of its legs continue and I know the thing is moving right above me...

  And now the legs are silent. Has it stopped? Or, like the beast in the wood, is it lowering itself even now?

  No longer sparing my mind, I force my eyes open to see it hovering just above me, its body bulbous and gleaming despite being covered in stiff, coarse hair. Its twitching legs, extended from its body, are as wide as the bed. Her jaws are wet, and her eyes—oh lord the thing’s eyes—are Julie’s, but multiplied!

  I open my mouth to speak, to reason, to cry out, but the beast moves quickly—too quickly to counter—and lands on top of me, heavier than I’d imagined, its prickly weight settling onto my bared chest. There is a moment of reprieve, perhaps consideration.

  Tears stream down my face as I look into its glassy eyes, searching for traces of my wife. I want to speak her name. I want to touch her.

  I slowly lift a hand toward the hairy bulk. I feel a deep surge of love mixed with my fear. My Julie, I think, and almost smile.

  Before my fingertips reach her, she shifts her weight and makes a quick, jerking movement.

  Something sharp and long punctures through my skin, punching through my abdomen and pushing upward, deep into my stomach. I feel the barb moving inside me, sinking deeper, piercing some inner membrane. I gasp as a rush of cold fluid fills my insides, the chill spreading from my stomach to my chest, my groin, my legs. The venom rushes to my heart. My muscles atrophy, my jaw tightens. I weep like a scared child in quick, gasping heaves. I look into her black eyes and cry, streaks of hot tears flow from my eyes, drool leaks from my agape lips, moistens my chin. She shifts again, the weight of her pressing numbly on my groin, and she rolls to one side, then the other. I feel her silk twine around me. First my feet and quickly, oh so quickly, up my legs.

  Things are softening now, my head grows quiet, and I only wish it to be done, for my life to be over. It’s possible, I pray, that a new life waits beyond the void, beyond the dark sacrifice of this world. I feel no hate, not even now, and I pray it was compassion, perhaps forgiveness, I saw in the multitude of her alien eyes. I hope so.

  They say the function of hearing is the last thing to go before the spirit departs. And so it is, in the numbing darkness, the womb now taking over my face, that I hear sounds from the dark hallway—a soft clattering along the wooden floor growing louder. Something coming from the nursery with quick, clumsy taps.

  As the world disappears I take solace in my dying moments knowing that, like his mother, I will contribute to the sustenance of my child.

  Little Howard will feed on me after all.

  Fail-Safe

  The door was thick. The room, well-made. I knew. I’d seen. Every step.

  I never heard Mother screaming in the night. I knew she was, it was obvious. I’d seen her with the cameras. Father had made me watch when I was young. Father had worried I didn’t fully understand. Fully believe.

  But I did.

  My favorite days were when it was over and Mother was allowed to return. Mine and hers both, I imagine. She was never happier than after. She would hold me and squeeze me tight, and I’d laugh and she’d pepper my cheek, neck and forehead with kisses.

  Father would stand by, watching, smiling, looking haggard and wistful. After giving us time to reshape our natural bond, he would join as well, hugging us both. Kissing us greedily.

  I loved my parents. Loved them dearly.

  * * *

  Deep down, secretly, I worried I would wake up one morning and find myself alone. That the room would take them from me. I’m only a boy still, sure, only twelve. But I’m growing. Learning.

  When Father first built the room I had watched. Had helped, even. In those days, Mother had been held elsewhere. By men I did not know. By friends of my father’s. But she always came back, happy and healthy, hugging and kissing, just like it was after the room was built. I liked it better, having the room here. Liked her being home, with me and Father.

  The room is not large, but it’s well built. It has many fail-safes. Father explained these to me as he built them into the room’s design. The walls are steel. Thick, slick, impenetrable from the inside. The door also, steel. One foot thick of it. Handle-less. Released by internal bolts that are hidden behind the metal-plated walls.

  There is one light. A pair of fluorescent tubes behind a cage in the ceiling. Impossible to reach. That’s what we thought.

  The restraints, however, are really impressive.

  Crafted to hold, but not hurt. That’s what Father said. To keep her, and us, safe. I nodded when he told me these things. I felt I was learning, getting older, wiser. Helping.

  “Then there’s the gas,” Father said, showing me the vents high in the walls, just below the ceiling. Far above where even her unnaturally-lengthened hands could reach them. “That’s our last line of defense,” he said, ruffling my hair, messy as always. “That’s if all else goes to hell.”

  I nodded, but Father could see I didn’t fully understand. He knelt down, took my arm, pressed kinda hard, looked into my eyes.

  “If she gets free of the restraints,” he pointed to them lying listless on the smooth concrete floor, “she still can’t leave the room, see?”

  I nodded, growing.

  “If she gets to the door, does some damage, then I hit a button, and whoosh!” He expanded his hands in a circle to show the spreading affect. “She gets the gas.”

  “Then what? She goes to sleep?”

  Father nodded, dropped his eyes a moment, then found mine again. “She’ll be dead.”

  I thought about this. “And we’ll know she’s dead because of the cameras.”

  Father smiled broadly, eyes sparkling with pride. “That’s right, Son. The cameras.”

  We were standing in the half-constructed room at the time, and Father pointed to high corners where reflective orbs were tucked. I waved, saw a distorted reflection of another boy—a smeared, tiny boy—waving back.

  “We’ll watch her and make sure she’s dead before we come in,” he said, then put a firm hand on my shoulder. “She’d want us to be sure.”

  I knew this was true, because she’d told me so a hundred times herself. She told me to always be sure, if something were to go wrong, to always be sure we’d killed her. “I might lie,” she said. “I might pretend.”

  “Like a game,” I said.

  Mother smiled and nodded, stroked my hair away from my forehead. “Like a game you must always win.”

  When Father and I left the room, now deemed ready, Father stopped by the heavy steel door, the shining heads of the sliding bolts poking inch-high from the edges of its frame.

  “One
last thing,” Father said, taking off his lab coat and hanging it on a bent steel nail next to a mask and a tarnished yellow rubber suit. “And this is the most important thing of all. There’s always a chance, a very, very slim chance, that Mother won’t keep turning. That she’ll turn once, and stay that way. Forever. You understand?”

  I nodded.

  “If that happens… or, if anything goes wrong. If I’m not here, for whatever reason...” He paused, because there were too many wrongs to think about. “Well. There’s one last fail-safe.”

  I waited, thinking it silly, knowing Father would always be around, but willing to hear him out, to learn.

  “It’s a timer, see?” he said. “I start it every time your mother goes into the room. If for any reason, any reason at all, I don’t stop or reset that timer in twenty-four hours, the room fills with gas.”

  “Whoosh!” I said, mimicking Father’s hand gesture.

  “That’s right,” he said. “That way, if something, well... if something goes amiss, then all you have to do, see, is wait it out. You don’t have to do a thing. Just wait twenty-four hours, and that timer will tick off, and things will be handled inside. The gas will go off, and the gas is poison. Poison that kills. You got that?”

  I nodded, then remembered something from my lessons. “Like the cat.”

  Father’s eyebrows came together in confusion.

  “Schroeder’s cat.”

  Father thought a second, then laughed out loud, a wonderful laugh that filled the steel and concrete room he and his friends had just completed.

  “Schrodinger!” Father bellowed, still laughing. Laughing so hard he was wiping tears from his eyes. “Schrodinger’s cat. Not Schroeder. He’s from Peanuts.”

  Father continued laughing, wiped his eyes once more, and rested a hand on my shoulder, pushed me gently from the room.

  “But yeah. Sure, I guess. Like that.”