Iris stared blankly from the other side. She gripped the green duffel as the unlocking sound occurred.
Then, the door moved in to reveal the man standing - and breathing heavily - behind it.
Both Iris and Lennard’s eyes met. She held her breath in an instant as her foe failed to recognize her. And why should he, anyway? It’d been years. Decades, even.
“What do you want?”
Iris tightened her fist on the strap and threatened to do something with it. The action was enough to avert Lennard’s gaze from her face, along her gown-covered midriff - and to the fact that she wasn’t wearing any footwear.
“Shit,” Lennard said. “What’s up with you? Are you okay?”
Filled with rage, Iris squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could.
The strange behavior from the female stranger filled Lennard with unease.
“Look, we’re not buying anything today—”
“—Lenny, man, who is it?” came his wife’s voice from the front room.
He quickly looked over his shoulder and threw an excuse her way.
“It’s, uh, okay. Some strange woman. I got this.”
He turned back to Iris with seemingly fresh eyes. It wasn’t until this point that something didn’t feel quite right.
“You don’t speak much, do you?”
The stranger standing before him said absolutely nothing. She didn’t need to. It would take as long as it had to for him to just acknowledge her.
Lennard fought the stare back and folded his arms across his shirt-covered breasts.
“Do I know you?” he chanced. “You seem awful familiar.”
Iris’s mouth contorted in a semi-venomous fashion, prompting the man before her to continue his line of questioning.
“Look,” he continued. “I dunno what kinda sick game this is, but—”
“—Lenny,” his wife called out from the front room. “Get rid of her. Tell ‘em we’ll call the police”
The words barely seeped through his ear and into his brain as he watched the slender woman lift her left arm up to the side of her face.
“Yeah, uh—”
A beautiful tattoo swiveled into view on the underside of her wrist; sprouting wings of blue and yellow, in perfect contrast to her dark, olive skin.
Lenny realized there and then who the stranger was. His knees almost buckled as he grabbed the side of the door for balance. He’d never seen the tattoo before, but he recognized the ancient cut marks buried in the skin.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
A smile etched across Iris’s face. She seemed to nod, but Lennard couldn’t be quite sure if she was about to attack him or had simply confirmed his reaction.
Her gray eyes fixed on his.
The way her skin seemed to sink just under the cheek bone brought it all back for Lennard; an older version of a long-since departed demon he hoped had been banished for all eternity.
“Iris,” he said, quietly.
A bead of sweat rolled down his brow. He had planned to shut the door.
Or tell her to leave.
The vibrations thundering down his body prevented him from doing either. A mess of confusion. A fat, shivering, and anxious mound of blubber.
“Just stay there, okay?” he said. “Stay there.”
Obliging his request, his younger sister stayed there as he shut the door in her face, turned around, and darted as fast as his gelatinous legs could carry him into the front room.
He half expected his wife to turn up at the door, and was relieved to see her about to sit on the couch. “Crystal?”
His wife looked up from the TV as he reached for the remote. “Babe? You’re sweating. What’s going on? Did she leave, yet?”
“Uh, no. Not quite.”
He hit the big red button at the top of the battered remote control. The TV shut off, leaving an eerie silence to drift into the room.
“Hey, I was watching that—”
“—Babe, I need you to go to the bedroom.”
“You what, now?”
Lennard would have dropped to his knees and begged if he thought it would work.
“Look. Please. Don’t argue with me—”
“I ain’t goin’ to bed now. It’s the weekend, my first chance to relax. Besides, it’s only one o’clock—”
“—Babe, please.”
Crystal wasn’t having any of his nonsense.
“Who was that at the door?”
“It’s a long story. I, uh,” he stumbled through having to explain why he needed to attend to the stranger at the door. He sighed, near to tears, and lifted his head up to his wife’s face. “I need to talk with them.”
“With who?”
“Don’t worry about that. You trust me, don’t you?”
Crystal shifted her buttocks and pulled her slender frame away from the couch.
“This better be good, Lenny.”
Lennard swallowed, thoroughly relieved that Crystal was willing to play along.
“I don’t need this shit now. You better tell me what’s up when she’s gone, ya hear me?”
“Yes, I will. I hear you.”
Crystal moved to the front room door. “I’mma check on Sam. I want them gone by the time I get back.”
Lennard bit his lip as he watched her disappear around the corner and leave a shaft of light running across the landing wall.
A silhouette of the slender no-longer-stranger waiting to be invited in.
Crystal crept into the darkened bedroom at the far end of the hall and closed the door behind her.
“Hey, Sam. You asleep?”
The six-year-old boy shuffled under the duvet and groaned, half-asleep.
“Mom?”
She perched on the side of the bed and ran her fingers over his brow. “Yeah, sweets. Can’t get to sleep?”
“Naw.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll drift off soon.”
The hallway floorboards creaked double-time, this time. Crystal looked at the door with the full knowledge that the stranger had entered her apartment.
“Where’s daddy?” Sam asked.
“He has a visitor. They’ll be gone soon.”
“Are you going to stay with me till I fall asleep?” Sam asked.
“Sure,” she smiled. “I’ll stay with you.”
Iris followed her behemoth of a brother into the front room. She clocked the kitchen to her right as they walk past.
Lennard shuffled through the door frame to the front room and turned around.
He had so many questions to ask, and such little time to ask them.
Likewise, he thought, Iris must have felt the same. After all, it had been so long. What could she possibly want from him now?
An apology?
An explanation?
Braving the severity of the impromptu meeting, Lennard offered her a seat next to the television set.
“Want to sit down?”
Iris just focused her pupils on his face and didn’t move.
“Iris? You’re scaring me.”
She smiled at the confession and dropped the bag onto the worn-out carpet.
“What’s in there?” he asked.
Iris lowered herself into a squat position, never tearing her eyes away from his face. She pulled the zip open folded out the flaps.
Lennard squinted at the contents. What seemed like hundreds of thousands of bills stared back up at him.
“Oh, Jesus.”
Before he could ask what was going on, she closed the bag and returned to her feet to simply stare at him once again.
Lennard certainly wasn’t expecting that.
“Is th-that for me?”
Iris shook her head, slowly.
“I don’t understand,” he said, wincing away the pain shooting in his legs. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
Iris shook her head once again, followed by a pathetic half-chuckle.
Such a pathetic vision was Lennard, trying as he did to lower h
is buttocks to the couch and make himself comfortable.
“It’s my legs. I can’t stand too long,” he explained. “Why are you here?”
Iris had no answer for him, no matter how hard he fished for information.
Lennard ignored the futility of his endeavor and continued as Iris reached into her nightgown.
“How did you find me?”
Fully expecting the question, she lifted her left hand and pointed to the text on her wrist.
He leaned forward to read it. “706. T3. My address?”
Iris nodded.
“I don’t understand, how did you find—” he said, before deciding to stop short of delivering his question. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Iris agreed and shook her head slowly, suggesting that he was in serious trouble.
“You found me. I thought enough time had passed.”
Lennard ducked his head and focused his attention on his bulbous knees pushing through his jeans.
“I, uh, don’t know what to say.”
The lack of a response thumped away at him, forcing his tear ducts to blast into overload as he blurted the necessary.
“I dunno what I thought would happen, you know? I guess I knew this day might come. I kinda figured it wouldn’t, you know. That we’d all moved on.”
As he rambled on, Iris walked over to the table and pressed her hands together; not that Lennard noticed through his inexorable tears.
“I heard what happened to dad after they relocated me. I struggled for years with knowing I was responsible. If that’s any consolation?”
He wiped his eyes and tried for a brave face.
“It was okay for a while, you know. They treated me good. Worked up north for a while, met a few people. They never read the papers. Never knew who I really was. It gave me a new start. A new life.”
Iris scrunched her face and gave off the vibe that a potted history of his life until now was the very last thing she cared about.
“I’m a different person to who I was back then. I’ve changed,” Lennard said as he fought the urge to cry like a baby. “I just, I just… I’m so sorry, Iris—”
She slapped her palms together as hard as she could to cut his speech.
He looked up with bemusement and tried to speak again.
“Iris? What are you—”
Clap.
She did it again - and this time, she didn’t stop.
Clap… clap… clap.
“What are you doing?” he bawled through his upset.
Staring at the disgusting, fat slob of a creature pleading with her only made her clap her hands harder. It was as if she was trying to slap him to death remotely.
“S-Stop doing that.”
She stopped mid-clap and lowered her arms, pleased with his response.
“Look, Iris, I don’t know what—”
Lennard would have continued speaking if it weren’t for a strange, dull wet patch seeping through the material on her gown between her thighs.
“Uh, uh, Iris?”
He pointed at her legs, but she didn’t look down. She knew what she was doing.
“Do you n-need the bathroom? You’re wetting yourself.”
She let out a small huff, blinked once, and continued to stare into his eyes.
“It’s out in the hall, first on the right,” Lennard said.
Iris turned around as she felt the wet patch form over her front, and drifted out of the room.
She entered the hallway and made her way to the bathroom.
The open kitchen door loomed ever forward as she walked. Lennard was correct - the bathroom was first on the right, before two more bedroom doors at the very end.
She didn’t go to the bathroom, though. Instead, she turned left and stepped into the kitchen.
A dining table sat to her right, complete with used bowls and plates, indicating a rushed dinner. Judging by the stench of fish and potatoes, they’d eaten late.
The harsh kitchen lights rolled over her face as she clocked the refrigerator in the far corner, illuminated by the outside street lights beaming through the window.
The gas stove, old and decrepit, loomed to the left. As soon as she laid eyes on it, she smiled.
Back in the front room, the green duffel had caught Lennard’s attention. He moved his not inconsiderable weight to the edge of the couch and pressed his chest onto his knees.
He extended his arms out and yanked on the zip.
“What the hell is going on, here?” he said as he yanked it a few inches towards his feet.
The zip rolled along the opening, pulled by his chunky fingers. A lot of money all in tall stacks peered into view.
“I don’t believe this. There must be at least a hundred grand in here—”
Creak.
The sound of the floorboard suffering someone’s weight made him release the bag and look up to the door.
Iris had returned.
A strange hissing sound - like that of a large snake - whirled from behind her shoulders.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
Iris trained her eyes on Lennard lifting his arms in defense.
“I never touched it.”
She was about to go for the bag when she noticed something very peculiar happening on Lennard’s face.
His nose elongated; each nostril flared outward, covered by a heavy, scaling facade. Every time he inhaled, the action forced his trunk of a nose to pulsate.
Iris widened her eyes in shock.
It wasn’t just his nose, though.
A pool of sweat had formed around his buttocks on the couch. She gulped and tried to stop her jaw from hitting the floor.
Lennard wondered why she was so stunned.
“What? What did I do?”
Now his voice had deepened into a bizarre grunt as he spoke.
Iris shook her head in disbelief as the black skin on his arms cracked. The fabric of his shirt split apart as he gained even more weight.
His breathing turned into a low-pitched growl which finished as a feral whine.
The tip of his nose blew out as it slapped against his thighs. Iris took three steps back, fearing for her life, as Lennard’s jeans split apart to reveal a chunky slab of white meat.
“Oh G-God,” he growled through his feral grunts. “I d-don’t feel t-too good.”
Whine… whine…
Iris blinked hard. What the hell was happening? It didn’t matter to her as she eyed the bag one last time. She wanted what was inside - and quick, before whatever was happening to Lennard prevented her from success.
She darted forward double-time and extended her arm with the intention of grabbing the handle.
GROWL — GRUNT.
A plume of soot blew out from Lennard’s trunk. He flung his right arm in the air, which now resembling a sweaty slab of meat, and punched the duffel.
As he looked up at Iris stopping in her tracks, his ears had shed; now replaced by two flaps of what looked like elephant ears.
Iris held her breath.
She clutched her chest and felt like screaming.
What was once her brother had now morphed into a creature resembling an elephant.
She looked around the room for an escape.
The hissing from the hallway grew louder and louder with an accompanying sense of suffocation.
As Lennard rose to his hind legs, the backrest of the couch split in two, having been whipped by a spindly tail just above the crack of his exposed eyes.
STOMP-STOMP.
Lennard huffed once again through his trunk. He tried to speak through his mouth, which was now tucked under what little of a chin he had left.
“I’m s-sorry, Eye… Eye… Rissss.”
Lennard struggle to speak as the four walls in the room closed together. He swung his head from side to side and let out prolonged, guttural whine that threatened to wake God himself up from his slumber a million miles above the building.
The coffee table in the middle of the
room prevented him from moving forward. His giant, gray stumps for feet pressed against the side and threatened to obliterate them.
Iris took her chance right there and then. She flung herself forward and grabbed the holdall in both hands, forgetting that the flap was already open.
The bills sprung out like a lava shooting from a volcano and wafted around the room as Lennard head butted the coffee table.
In a state of near-convulsion, Iris swung the duffel at him.
Swish-swish.
A bizarre sight for anyone who might have been in the room with them. A mute woman dressed only in her tattered nightgown trying to fend off what was surely an elephant.
GRUNT.
Lennard couldn’t speak any longer. It was futile to try. Iris grunted back and followed it up with a scowl as she waved the blade over to the door.
Lennard swung his trunk around in front of his face, catching the coffee table’s back leg. It flew against the ceiling and crashed back around him.
Iris carefully took another step back - left foot, then right - and, without thinking, she entered the hallway and slipped away from view.
The hallway filled with a suffocating gas.
Iris drifted towards the kitchen door.
The stove rumbled as all four rings produced their blue lights, burning nothing but the available oxygen in the apartment.
THUD.
The sound of an elephant stomping against the door shot from over her shoulder.
Lennard rammed his front through the frame, busting it to pieces.
WAIL.
His trunk flew up and smashed against the ceiling. Fragments of plaster coughed down around him as he barreled into the hallway, desperate to find his oppressor.
Iris wasted no time with her plan.
She reached into her gown and pinched the small packet of matches.
HISSSS.
Lennard’s giant ears flapped as he struggled to breathe. Then, he clapped his bulbous eyes at the match in Iris’s left hand.
He stopped, knowing full well what she was about to do.
“N-nuh,” he grunted through his whine. “No.”
Scritt.
Iris ran the match head along the edge of the packet. The end sparked and produced an orange glow, stopping the beast in its tracks.
Crystal’s voice shot out of the bedroom at the far end of the corridor. “What the hell is that noise?”
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