Alice and the Fly

by James Rice

  Once I was clean I stepped through to the bedroom again and fetched some fresh clothes from my bag. I hadn’t thought I’d need them so soon. You were still on the bed, head tipped to the side. A string of spit hung from your mouth.

  I leant over you, shook your shoulder.

  ‘Alice?’

  Nothing.

  I told you you could sleep soon, but wouldn’t you rather get out of those sick-splattered clothes?

  Nothing.

  I slid my arms beneath you, one under your neck, the other under your legs. I hoisted. A pain shot through my hand. You were much heavier than Scraps had been. You struggled in your sleep and I told you there-there, told you it was OK. Halfway to the bedroom door I had to stop and crouch, your weight on my knee while I re-gathered my strength. I stood again, heaving you over my shoulder into a fireman’s lift, before stoop-stumbling out across the landing.

  I lay you on the bathroom floor. You shivered in your sleep. I rinsed and plugged the bathtub and turned on the hot tap. The water rose. Steam fogged us, misting the mirror, gathering at the ceiling.

  I took off your coat. I had to guide your arms out then drag it from under you. There didn’t appear to be any vomit on it except for a few strands of drool, dried across the collar. I cupped some water from the bathtub and scrubbed them away. Next I peeled off your dress and tights, which were saturated, clinging to your legs with webs of spit. Finally I removed your sunglasses. I carried your clothes through to my old room, everything whiskey-stinking together in the corner, and shut the door behind me.

  You looked so cold, lying there in your underwear on the bathroom floor, so I sat beside you, back against the tub and held you, icy in my arms. I pressed my face into your hair, breathed in the smell of whiskey and smoke, trying my best to ignore the tang of bile. The bath rumbled behind us. The pipes clunked in the walls. Once the water had reached the three-quarter mark I stood and lifted you. It was hard because I didn’t have your clothes to cling to, just your skin, so cold and goose-pimpled. You struggled at first, flinging your arms in your sleep. I nearly dropped you. You soon settled once I’d lowered you into the water. I cradled your head above the surface. I was shocked at first to see blood, spreading from the back of your neck, clouding the water, but then I remembered the hole in my palm and passed your head to my right hand, holding my left in the air to try decrease the blood flow. Once the bath had filled I reached over and turned off the taps and just knelt there, holding you.

  I tried not to look at you – your body, I mean. I kept my eyes fixed on your face. For a few minutes the tap dripped, rippling the water. Then the dripping stopped and the water was still and what was left was a near-perfect silence. I thought maybe I should break the silence, talk to you, only I didn’t know what to say. My knees ached against the floor tiles. How long are you supposed to bathe someone? I checked my watch but the screen was blank. I rubbed it with my thumb, the ink of the digits blurring beneath. I must have submerged it. I guess it wasn’t waterproof.

  I decided to wash your hair. I know girls can be particular about exactly when and where they wet their hair but the ends were crunched with dried vomit and I thought it best I rinse them. I dipped your head back – your red curls danced below the surface. Their redness mixed with the tinge of my blood, tinting the water pink. I spread my fingers across your scalp, massaging every notch and socket of your skull. I thought of the times Mum’d wash my hair, the feel of foreign hands on my head. There wasn’t any shampoo but I figured that didn’t matter too much, so long as I got the sick out.

  Somewhere outside a firework screeched. I lifted you from the water, picking the loose strands of hair that clung to your forehead. You looked so beautiful, your face pale and clean, glittering with beads of bathwater. I wanted to kiss you but we’d already had one failed kiss and our next had to be romantic, an embrace on a station platform, hand-holding at sunset on Finners Island beach. I thought of Finners Island again and couldn’t help but smile. I hadn’t had a chance to tell you where we were going yet, but there’d be time for that later. Plenty of time for that later.

  You murmured in your sleep. Another firework crackled outside. It flowered at the window, giving the room a green glow. I turned to watch it descend. It was then I caught a glimpse of you, the rest of you, your body, blurred beneath the water. I’d shifted slightly when I turned and the movement was still passing through you, your legs bobbing, your breasts rising then sinking. Your feet were crossed. Your hands lay motionless on your belly. Your bra was plain black but your knickers were grey with a sort of pink frill. Something was swelling inside me, some pressure, rising from my stomach to my forehead and I turned away, glanced up at the ceiling, and that’s when I noticed one of Them, wriggling out through the slats in the air vent.

  I kept my head down. I concentrated on you. Your sleeping face. I figured that, if I ignored it, then maybe it could be like I hadn’t seen it. We could carry on our bath in peace. Only it doesn’t work like that. Once I knew one of Them was there I couldn’t help but glance above me. Couldn’t help but notice it, edging along the wall towards us. Just as it reached the window another firework burst outside, red this time, spreading its gangly shadow across the white-tiled wall. The water rippled out around you. You were shivering. No, not you, I was shivering. I was shivering and you were just lying there, sleeping, shaking in my arms.

  I should have lifted you out then, should have carried you through to the safety and solitude of Nan’s parcel-taped bedroom, only I was determined we weren’t going to be disturbed by Them. I wasn’t going to let Them do it again. They’re Metaphorical Phantoms, all I had to do was block Them out of my mind and there was nothing they could do to harm us. I kept telling myself this. I may have said it aloud as well, I don’t know – everything from then on seems blurred – my head was still throbbing from the whiskey.

  Then a scratching started over at the sink and I turned in time to see another, crawling out from behind the mirror. This one was enormous, about the size of your hand – which I was holding now, clutching in my bloodied fist – and it too approached the bathtub, only quicker than the first, not so slow and steady but in these short scurrying bursts. Two more followed from behind the toilet cistern. I noticed another, over by the extractor fan. Another, up on the rings of the shower curtain. I breathed steadily. I closed my eyes. I told myself I had nothing to fear, they were Metaphorical Phantoms. They were Metaphorical Phantoms. They were Metaphorical Phantoms. Then one of the tiles slipped, bouncing from the bathtub and shattering across the floor and a swarm of Them scrambled through the hole, spreading up the bathroom wall.

  By this point the fitting had started. I was shaking violently, my arms slapping the surface of the water. You were shaking with me, your head rocking over the crook of my arm. I clutched you tight to my chest, trying to hold you still, your eyelids flickering, beads of bathwater quivering on your forehead, but I couldn’t seem to hold you, couldn’t seem to stop you from shaking with me. Blood ran down my chin, dripped onto your cheek and I realised I’d bitten into my tongue. The water was splashing right over the side of the bath, splattering on the dusty floor.

  They started to hiss. The usual stuff, calling me a psycho and a pervert, etc. I tried to concentrate on something else, some pure, happy thought – Finners Island, that day with Nan, that time with the eagle. I started to tell you about it, about Finners Island, about how we could live so happily there, the two of us – whispering to you, my face pressed against your hot wet scalp, but with my tongue bitten up I was lisping more than ever and I found it hard even to understand myself. Your hair was getting in my mouth, matted with blood from my tongue. I retched. I glanced up one last time. By now there must have been hundreds of Them, a great black tide of Them, spreading out across the ceiling. Steam collected around Them, their bodies glistening like a sea of fat black olives. I remember laughing. I remember wondering how they could keep a grip on the bathroom ceiling when everything was so damp and then
, right on cue, one slipped and thudded to the floor, wriggling on its back. A couple plopped down into the water. Others began to descend on webs.

  I shut my eyes. Pressed my forehead to yours. I told myself they weren’t there, they weren’t real, but the truth is they were. I could feel Them. On my neck, my arms, crawling down the back of my shirt. I could hear Them, their mass hiss growing, surrounding us. I could see Them. Even with my eyes shut I could see Them. Wriggling from their cracks in the ceiling, from the collar of Goose’s fleece, from the dark corners of your shed, the Lair. More and more of Them, every second. I saw Them on your father as he sucked at his whiskey bottle, on the Vultures as they danced around the stage in their leotards, on Mum and my father and Ursula and Ken as they sat scooping forkful after forkful of burnt salmon into their fat grinning mouths. I saw Them on Miss Hayes, creeping out over her face as she read at the front of class, all those pointless words that don’t mean a thing. I saw Them in the meat at Hampton’s counter, wriggling between the folds of flesh. Infested. I saw Them pouring from Mum’s Italian leather couch, its stitches splitting, its white folds parting like some great sagging mouth, vomiting a sea of Them out across the living-room carpet. I saw Them on Angela Hargrove as she lay unconscious on Goose’s bed, head bobbing to the thrusts of the near-bald Hawaiian-shirt kid. I saw Them spilling from the belly of your fat fuck of a father as I forced the knife into him again and again and again and the tide of Them just kept on coming, on and on. Metaphorical Phantoms. I saw Sarah, not as she is now, but when she was little, when she’d scratch and scratch at Them, just like I was scratching at you now, trying my best to claw Them from your skin, but there were just so many, too many. It was like the time in the boat all over again, the other time on Finners Island, the time I try not to think about, with all that splashing and shaking, your head dipping back below the surface just like Sarah’s, mouth open as if screaming, only silent, bubbles rising through the water. Metaphorical Phantoms. My jaw locked, my shaking churning the bathwater.

  Metaphorical Phantoms.

  Clutching you to my chest, as tight as possible, everything getting dark until there’s only the warm metal taste of blood.

  Metaphorical Phantoms.

  Metaphorical Phantoms.

  Metaphorical Phantoms.

  01/01

  The robin’s back. I haven’t told you about him yet, have I? The robin? He appeared first thing this morning, woke me up. I was on the lounge carpet. I don’t know what time this was because my watch is still blurred from the water, but I sat up as soon I heard him cheeping. He was perched on those boards across the lounge window, head poking through the gap. By the time I stood he’d gone again but he’s been back about five or six times since. Each time he does the same thing – pokes his head through, cheeps at me, then disappears. It’s been going on for about two hours now. I don’t know what he wants. I just can’t work it out.

  It’s strange, being back at 1 Kirk Lane. I know I said so last night, but here in the daylight it’s even worse. Right now I’m sitting in the lounge and the longer I sit here the more unfamiliar everything gets. There’s something missing, that’s the only way I can describe it. And I know Nan’s missing, I know that’s the obvious answer, but it’s more than that. The colours are wrong – everything’s too dark, the boarded windows murking everything in this veil of gloom. There’s a strange smell. The damp’s got to the wallpaper, giving the various floral designs this warped, wrinkled effect. Everything’s so much smaller. I found a bag of half-knitted jumpers, Nan’s final batch, tucked down the side of the armchair – how did I ever fit into those jumpers? And those plates, those cat plates that line the stairway wall, the ones Nan sent off for each week from Love Cat Magazine, each decorated with a different-coloured cat, they used to seem enormous, the cats’ heads as big as mine, but now they’re no more than saucers.

  What really gets me, though, is the silence. All I can hear is my pen, scratching the paper. The steady rasp of my breathing. In and out. In and out. It’s far quieter than I ever remember. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why all morning and it wasn’t until just before, when I went up to check on you, that I finally realised. It’s the grandfather clock in the hall. It’s stopped, forever reading five to twelve. Forever losing its steady tick.

  I’m sitting in Herb’s armchair. It’s the first time I’ve ever sat here. We’d never use the armchair, Nan and I – we’d share the couch, hunched together with our necks straining so we could see the TV. That’s how we sat every night, watching those old movies. It seemed wrong, once Herb was gone, for one of us to switch to the armchair, just for the sake of comfort. The house is freezing again. The heating must have given out. I hope you’re OK up there. I wrapped you as snug as I could, using Nan’s old sheets, as well as my Snoopy duvet. ‘Happiness is being part of the gang’. I put you in Nan’s room. I thought it’d be safer, what with all the parcel tape.

  Nan and I spent vast amounts of time and resources securing this house, barricading Them out. We went to such extremes that Mum feared we’d seal the place completely, that it’d become some sort of airtight tomb and the two of us would suffocate in the night. Mum banned us from parcel-taping downstairs so Nan and I concentrated our efforts on her bedroom, taping the walls and windows and Herb’s old wardrobe, transforming it into a pretty-much-impenetrable parcel-taped nest. For the last few months she was taping pretty much constantly, buying the entire stock down at the post office each time she went to pick up her pension, stockpiling. All she ever talked about was the Great Influx. That and the Devil. I think Nan knew what my parents were planning. Somewhere deep in the jumbled logic of her brain she knew I was moving back to Skipdale. She knew about Golden Pines. She was sealing off her bedroom from her own versions of Them.

  The snow’s started up again. I went out before, to the shed, to get more boards. The shed, the plant tubs, the back wall, they’re all iced in whiteness. I doubt we could leave today even if you were up to it. The buses are probably all cancelled. I doubt we could even get through the front door, with the snow.

  My tongue-hole feels wider than usual. I must have chewed it pretty badly up in the bathroom. My hand keeps bleeding too. I’ve still got your tights wrapped around it. I should find a new bandage. I keep meaning to. I keep finding bloodied prints everywhere and wondering whose they are and realising they’re mine. I just can’t seem to focus on anything.

  I’ve boarded the back windows. I figured if we’re going to stay a while I’d better secure the place. We need to at least try and keep Them out. It’s hard, hammering the boards with my hand messed up. I have to hold each board in place with my shoulder or my elbow and the boards keep slipping and to be honest I could really do with your nail gun. I boarded the gap in the lounge window too. Sorry, Mr Robin. Whatever it was you wanted, I hope you find it somewhere else.

  I checked Nan’s wardrobe and there’re still rolls and rolls of parcel tape up there. The stockpile. I’ve counted it out: twenty-seven rolls. It should hopefully be enough. It’ll have to be enough.

  I’ve just been up to check on you. You look better now, in Nan’s room, all wrapped up. I hated seeing you like that, in the bathtub. You were so silent, so still. The water had settled over you and your hair had settled in the water and you looked frozen. You looked as if you were frozen in glass. There was no sign of Them, of course, by then. No chipped plaster or tiles missing from the walls. They crawl back to their holes once the fitting’s over and then everything’s back to normal. I can still feel that chill as I reached into the water. The cold sting. The splashing and trickling as I lifted you. You were stiff and your stiffness made you hard to carry but I carried you anyway, across the hallway to Nan’s room, the only safe room left in the house. I lay you on Nan’s bed. I wrapped you up. I wanted to keep you warm but also to cover you, to cover those scratches, the marks I must have made when I was fitting. I kissed you once on the forehead and sat there for a while, beside you, on the bed. I felt as i
f I wanted to say something but I didn’t know what, so that’s when I came downstairs.

  I just retrieved my Breakfast at Tiffany’s video-case. I emptied it, laid out our money, the feather, the button-eye of Mr Snow. I laid out all the entries of my diary. There’s so much writing, all those words, even more than I thought. Poor Miss Hayes, she never even got to see it.

  I took the journal upstairs, read you a few extracts. Only short ones. I just wanted to break the silence – I can’t stand it. I read the parts about you and the parts about Nan and the parts about Finners Island. Then I got distracted – I told you all about Finners Island, about the birds and the church and the beach. I told you about the opportunities for an artist there, the beauty of the landscape. I told you that maybe we could get another dog, call it Scraps II or something. Then I realised how insensitive that was and apologised and assured you we could never replace Scraps, we’d have to think of a new name, or get a different animal altogether. Maybe the animals that already live on Finners Island could be our pets instead – all the different birds, the exotic ones and the regular ones. The ducks. They could all belong to us.

  Then I told you about the eagle. I’ve never told anyone about that. I promised Nan I wouldn’t.

  After that I tried to sleep. The throb in my hand wouldn’t let me. Maybe you were right, maybe I left it too long and the tetanus set in. Maybe it’s working its way up my arm to my brain. Sorry to bring that up again. I don’t blame you. It just hurts, you know? Maybe I need a doctor or something.

  I haven’t taken my medication today. I forgot my pills, can you believe that? I brought my clothes and my toothbrush and my money and deodorant, but somehow forgot my pills. I hate to think what Mum’d have to say about that.