Arcane II

by Nathan Shumate (Editor)

  Darby saunters over to the stove, which is covered in a thick black sludge. It looks as if Darby has been making fudge, but the smell says otherwise. “We look at that dog in a few. Cool your jets.”

  “Yeah,” you say, nodding as he runs a ladle through a pot, struggling with the thickness of the coagulated mess that has overtaken his kitchen. You say, “I hear you, but I’ve gotta be quick about this. Hundred bucks you said, right?” You pull out your checkbook and start to scribble. You better ask if he has his shots. If he doesn’t have his shots, then that runs your bill up unexpectedly high. You might as well have just gotten a security system if you end up dropping more than three bills.

  “My old lady isn’t around anymore. Not since...” Darby starts to say, and you’re ready for him to end the statement with since my kitty died. “Not since she fell into the basement. Thing about the basement is: when you go into the basement, that’s all they wrote, ya know?” No, you don’t know. “Basement eats people up and shits ’em out the light sockets, best I can reckon.”

  You form a sort of saggy grin, looking back and forth between your checkbook and Darby, wishing he would bring the damn dog out, finish off the transaction, and let you on your way to a life of safely protected electronics, wife, and jewelry.

  “I’ll give you the nickel tour, then we get you moving. I can see you’re fidgety about getting done, but you’re gonna wanna see this—what’s your name again?”

  You tell him your name and he chuckles, plopping the ladle back into the pot. You hear the squishy sound and it reminds you of having sex, which you haven’t done in months.

  “Well fuck me sideways. That’s a funny name right there—sounds like a dinosaur screwed a wombat when you say it all fast like that.”

  “My parents had a sense of humor,” you say, but it’s another in a series of lies.

  Darby grazes past you, taking his sweet time. As he passes, you notice the smell of the kitchen waft away for a nanosecond, replaced by the smell of ginger and orange. It’s coming from Darby. The smell isn’t entirely revolting, and it’s far superior to the shit smell... which is back again.

  You follow Darby into the den, where he snatches a candle from the mantel, then points at the electrical socket. “One of the reasons I don’t plug in no lamps is ’cause the sockets don’t work anymore.” He rubs his auburn-colored beard, sighing. “But it’s okay when you get down to it. The sockets feed me. They got puddin’, ya know?”

  “Pudding? I don’t follow,” you state. You let the dead kitty and dead wife subjects go by without taking target, but with the pudding statement you’ve given up trying to follow through context.

  “Puddin’. My house weeps puddin’ somethin’ fierce. You had your dinner yet?” Darby asks. You wait for the punch line but it never comes. You shake your head from side to side as Darby glances down at his watch, the flame of his candle flickering against what appears to be an Armitron with a calculator built into the face. “Best grab a cup if you’re hungry. It’s comin’ any minute now. When my house cries, it gets all over the place. Everywhere except your mouth.”

  You stare at him, looking around the room for any sign of the Rottweiler. “Okay,” you say, but you’re just sputtering out words to fill dead space. This isn’t okay. You have a short amount of time on this earth, and this dummy is wasting that time.

  “Ten, nine, eight, seven,” he says, counting down. He reaches behind the couch and returns with a mug. Holding the candle up to the mug for you, he grins as he displays the mug’s catch phrase: JUST ONE CUP OF COFFEE BEFORE YOU FUCK UP MY DAY. It’s witty, you think. Not that witty, but just witty enough if you’ve got the kind of significant other who regularly climbs into your sphincter about how she doesn’t want her grandmother’s wedding ring stolen by hoodlums. “Six, five, two, twelve, three, one!” shouts Darby, and then it begins.

  The pudding dribbles from the electrical outlet at first, seeping down the wall (the color of which you cannot determine because it’s too damn dark, even with all the candles decked all over the place like that shitty video by The Police, the one where all their fans knew it was the end of the road because Sting was officially wearing feathered hair and exposing his bare chest).

  Then, it kicks into high gear, just as Darby has the mug positioned beneath the early dribbling. “Might wanna back up!” he shouts over the sound of what he refers to as “puddin’” jettisoning out of the electrical socket. It stabs you in the chest and it sort of hurts, splattering into your eyes. As you hit the ground, blinded by pudding, you wipe it away from your eyes and soon realize that it stings like a son of a bitch. You can sort of see Darby through the sticky (and awful-smelling) muck, dancing a silly jig as he slurps from his mug. As you look around the room, wondering where Sting and The Police went off to, you realize that all of the sockets in the house are acting the same way. The idiot hadn’t been lying.

  His house is weeping pudding. If you’d call it weeping. More of a torrent of anguish. More like its kitty just died.

  ***

  “It’s sort of like house milk. It don’t have saggy teets, but it keeps me fed. Used to feed my kitty, too. And my wife.” He pauses, reflecting on the death of his two pussies. “You know I ain’t had a hamburger in three fuckin’ years, but I ain’t missing them all that much. Changes a man, once he discovers the puddin’,” Darby says, clapping you on the shoulder. You feel how completely the “house milk” has saturated your clothing. You hope that the stuff isn’t flammable, what with all the goddamned candles all over the joint.

  The smell. Oh, the smell. You try to grab your nose but soon realize that old Darby has tied your wrists to the chair. You’re at his dinner table, directly across from him. His eyes glow in the candle’s sporadic bursts of light. His mouth is covered in the slick pudding that the house so grievously weeps.

  You look down at the table, to observe the source of the stench that is particularly poignant in this moment.

  Before you is a ceramic bowl, filled to the brim with the brown and black pudding. There is a wooden spoon shoved into the sludgy mass. “The first time you have a taste it’ll probably feel a little bit like somebody’s rippin’ out your brain. Like somebody’s jammin’ a hot poker in your peter. But it gets a little better every time.” Darby spoons a mound into his mouth, slurping and slapping his lips together as he chews on the sticky goo. “I bet you like fried chicken. Bet you like mashed potatoes. And I bet you like hamburgers.”

  You resist the urge to nod. Yes, all of those things sound wonderful right about now, as your stomach growls in protest. You’re not quite sure how long you’ve been held captive, but you’re certain that it’s been at least a few hours. You can barely remember your life before entering Darby’s house of evil pudding. The life you once lived seems like a distant echo, fading away one bounce at a time, but you only lived in that other life a short while ago.

  “You won’t much like that kind of food no more. Once you try the puddin’, it’s all over. I had friends like you before, who couldn’t handle it. Ate themselves silly. Couldn’t get enough of the stuff. One fella—his name was Robby but I called him Wobby ’cause he had one of them speech pet-a-mens—well, Robby ate so much puddin’ it started comin’ out of his ears. No joke. Then it started coming out of his nose, but he kept on eating, shovelin’ it in so fast that the wall sockets couldn’t even keep up with production. No word of a lie, he started shittin’ himself and then he got blocked up. Kept on eating and eventually his stomach ripped right open, sorta like an alien was trying to work its way out. Such a sight. Put him in the backyard after that happened and I think those flaming wolves came for him.”

  “Flaming wolves?” you ask, not so much distracted by the story of a man eating himself until he split open, but more concerned about the idea that this guy has gay wolves in his backyard. “How do you know they’re gay?”

  “No, no, no. Not gay. By flamin’ I mean that they’re on fire. Big fireballs in the shape of wolves.”
Darby pauses, suckling on his spoon, rubbing his tongue along the edge and grinning wildly. “Yeah, damned things are always scratchin’ at the back door. They get hungry for the puddin’ just like the rest of us. But I don’t let them in, what with all fire coming off their fur. Don’t want my house to burn down.”

  You stare the goo in the bowl as you try to picture what a flaming wolf would look like. Something tells you that you’ll be introduced soon enough.

  “Listen, friend,” Darby says, standing up and walking around the dinner table in careful strides. “I got ya tied up because the first time can be somethin’ of a son of a bitch. You won’t want me to keep feeding you. You’re gonna scream and cry and beg me to stop, but it’s for your own good. Once we get through the first feeding... well, last fella told me it was somethin’ like pullin’ a band-aid off real fast. Once it’s done, you can’t help but smile some.”

  You shake your head from side to side as he lifts the spoon from the muck, the resistance quite apparent as he grunts. “Get the fuck away from me with that stuff.”

  From beyond the table, the sockets start to spill more pudding and you’re wondering what would happen if Darby never ate the stuff—if he would fuckin’ drown in it.

  “Open wide,” Darby commands. You purse your lips together but he manages to shimmy the spoon through enough for your tongue to taste the pudding.

  Your tongue screams with pain and your legs start to tremble.

  He shoves another load in and you feel the tears spilling down your face as you plead with him. It reminds you of peanut butter, sticking to your tongue and roof of your mouth as you struggle to process. Your words become garbled and Darby can’t help himself. He chuckles at your struggle, but something in his eyes tells you that he’s done this many times before, and that they all react as you do.

  Around the time the pudding stops dribbling from the wall sockets, you feel a calm wash over your body, as though you’ve just smoked an entire joint in one long breath.

  The stuff doesn’t taste all that bad after all. Once you get past the smell, the flavors are something of a blaring symphony that shakes the cockles of your heart.

  ***

  As you shovel half-dead kittens into the wood stove in the basement, you hum a song by Duran Duran, the one about being hungry like a wolf. You’re not sure if Duran Duran was talking about flaming wolves, but if they were, then the members of that band are most assuredly dead in a ditch somewhere, their entrails strewn across the dirt.

  Upstairs, you can hear Darby pounding the walls with his hammer, beckoning the house to feed him, that he is “fuckin’ starvin’ like Marvin!” over and over again.

  Since you’ve arrived, production has slowed. It hasn’t stopped altogether, but the house seems to be fucking with you and Darby. At first you were convinced that the house was asking you to leave, but now you’ve developed a new theory: that it likes you a whole lot better than it does Darby.

  Sometimes the house gives you chores to do, and you commit to them with a fervor that impresses the shit out of the house.

  FEED THE FURNACE. With Kittens.

  BATHE DARBY. In puddin’.

  FILL THE FISH TANK. With paper clips.

  TAKE A SHIT. On your and Darby’s pillow.

  FLAP YOUR ARMS AND SCREAM. Like a dying eagle.

  CARVE A HOLE IN THE SHEETROCK. Give it a good old-fashioned dicking.

  Yes, Mister House, you say, sounding like a battered wife. Hop hop hop, here you go a-hoppin’. Give you that puddin’ and you’re right as rain.

  The kittens scream as you put them to the sharp flame and the furnace chortles in delight.

  ***

  You keep seeing Darby sticking his head out the back door. He’s been talking to the flaming wolves behind your back. He’s planning something because he’s starving. You’ve ruined the equation, thrown it out balance. He barely looks like the man who once offered to sell you his vicious doggie. His face is gaunt, stretching over his skull like a latex mask. His eyes are losing the spark that they once had. Most times, his jaw hangs open, hoping that some pudding will jettison from one of the sockets unexpectedly and slide across the landing strip of his tongue.

  He’s losing his marbles. Every time you sing the Duran Duran song, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs.

  You’ve caught him licking the sockets, begging the house to give him another chance. Funny thing is this: whenever Darby is asleep, the house weeps puddin’ like it’s a goddamned rainstorm. You lap it up greedily, never saving any for Darby. He’s catching on to that fact, as you are not losing weight like he is.

  This morning you heard him in the bathroom as he was trying to squeeze an undigested pebble out of his butt hole. He was asking the house, “Do I have to kill him? Is that what you want me to do? If I kill him, will you start feeding me again?”

  You’re not sure how the house responded, as it only talks one-on-one with the two of you. It never speaks to you in Darby’s presence, and vice versa. The house has told you plenty of things, but there is no sense that it intends to destroy you. Quite the opposite, really.

  The house loves the shit out of you.

  ***

  This morning the flaming wolves got into the house. It was quite a sight. Darby’s flannel shirt caught on fire as he shooed them out the back door. One of them snapped at him, taking a charred bite out of his forearm.

  He’s been in the bathroom by himself all morning, sobbing like a little girl.

  ***

  Darby’s not moving, but his lips are emitting a low hum.

  You ask the house what you should do, but it doesn’t respond. It’s got no further opinion of Darby. You’re the number one guy now, and isn’t that swell?

  Instead of giving a share of your puddin’ to Darby, you take a hot dump on his chest. There’s something satisfying about shitting on another human being. You wished you had realized that in the outside world, before Darby had ensnared you in his devious house. You would have been shitting on people for decades had you known the feeling of such triumph.

  Darby’s trying to say something, but it’s something inane, something about God.

  You can’t help but laugh.

  God. Now that’s some seriously funny shit.

  ***

  Darby died this morning. The wolves seem to know right away. They open the door to the back deck, standing on their hind legs and turning the knob with their front paws.

  They walk right past you as you eat breakfast, working the pudding into your teeth because that feels mighty fine first thing in the morning—better than a cup of coffee and a croissant, both of which disgust you when you think of them.

  The four flaming wolves that came to act as pall bearers each grab one of Darby’s appendages. They pull until he shreds apart like papier maché. Each wolve saunters past you, its head hung low, and brings the quartered man into the yard.

  As you search the house, grateful that it is now yours... ALL YOURS... you find a photo album. You open it and thumb through, looking at successive pictures of Darby, each with a different man, woman, child, or animal. These are the guests he has invited over the years. Your stomach starts to turn as you wonder why the house chose now to remove him from his throne.

  Why are you so damn special?

  Why, because this house loves your ass. You’re the new Darby, puddin’-stained lips and all.

  CRY, CRY, CRY. Into a volcano.

  OBSERVE THE DEAD. Undress them with your eyes.

  TOUCH YOUR TOOTER. Pinch that meaty midget.

  POST AN ADVERTISEMENT. I need entertainment.

  ***

  There is a laptop on the table the next morning. The house has asked that you post an advertisement on the internet. It wants entertainment. It says that if you don’t follow the rules, that the pudding will stop. Darby broke the rules, the house says, and look what happened to him.

  You ask the house what rules he broke, but the house doesn’t respond.

 
The next three hours are spent reading and re-reading the ad you have devised. The house makes suggestions to the wording, but you go rogue, because you’re a special kind of person. You survived, even when Darby did not. Darby had been in the house for decades, or so it seemed from his pictures, but you dethroned him. You’re really fuckin’ special, aren’t you?

  Your advertisement reads: “Looking for hot girls? You’ve come to the right place. My sister and I are hot and horny and ready to have some fun. Come see our kittens and play with our wolves.” It seems mysterious enough to attract the strangest of men, and maybe even a woman or two. Leaving mystery provokes curiosity, or so the house has told you over and over again.

  In the back yard, the flaming wolves howl and you hit the button that officially posts your ad on to the internet. Within ten minutes, horny men are sending you emails from all over the world.

  ***

  After you’ve received more than two thousand messages, you start to review. You stumble for awhile, dissatisfied with them. Nobody really stands out.

  But then you come across a fellow by the name of Jerry Mathers. You can’t help but laugh at the fact that this dummy has chosen Beaver Cleaver’s real name for his fake avatar. Surely, the guy isn’t named Jerry Mathers. It has to be a ploy.

  Intrigued, you send a reply: YOU SOUND INTERESTING. COME SEE ME AND WHEN WE CAN SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

  Ten minutes later, he replies, also in capital letters: BE THERE IN TEN MINUTES IF YOU GIVE ME ADDRESS.

  You give him the address, which the house has provided to you. And you wait.

  ***

  You open the door and look upon the lecherous scab who replied to your advertisement, and immediately you begin to tremble. You feel your knees giving out beneath you, so you grip at the door frame, fighting back an urge to vomit on the guy’s shoes.