by Shaun Allan
Her hand was on the door. Something was troubling her. A niggle nudging at the back of her mind like a kitten wanting a bowl of milk.
She turned back to the room, scanning across it. The usual mess of discarded clothes and shoes covered the floor, an assault-course of attire that made getting to the bed in the dark a dangerous undertaking. The bed itself had once been made. The quilt had been straightened and the cushions set out so it looked like an oasis in a sea of insanity. That once was roughly about six months previously. Apart from a casual tidy when the bedding was changed, the bed did its very best to match the rest of the room.
She liked to call it 'lived in.'
Nothing was out of place. Rather, everything was out of place, which meant it was all IN place. She shrugged.
She opened the door. Normally, she'd walk along the short corridor, picking up her keys from the wooden bowl on the small table along the way. She'd grab a coat if necessary (which it wouldn't be today as the one day of summer a year had decided today, you lucky people, was the day), and she'd be out of the front door.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to what she was seeing, and a longer moment still for her mind to adjust to what she wasn't.
Then she vomited. The remains of her breakfast, cereal and toast washed down with a tepid tea, were launched into the corridor. Or what was meant to be the corridor. What was supposed to be. What she remembered it being.
But what was actually...
It started off fine. The big, brash patterned wallpaper. The chrome light switch not quite seated correctly so it clung to the wall at a slightly skew-whiff angle. For a foot or two, anyway.
Then the hallway became a sickening whirlpool of tortured flower wall print and beige carpet that spun off to, well, forever. She felt she was hanging over an abyss, one that was ready to suck her from her feet and swallow her along with the hall.
She slammed the door and fell backwards onto the floor, cushioned by a fallen cushion and the previous day's cardigan. She wiped her mouth and stared, unseeing, at the remains of puke that ran up her wrist. After a few deep breaths had steadied her (though a vodka might have had more effect), she pushed herself to her feet and returned to the door.
She turned the handle and pulled.
Swirling, yawning maw. Colours merging to an indescribable mess.
And breathe.
She took a step forward. It was her imagination. She gulped to hold back the vomit. Her hand lifted to flick the light switch, but there was no bulb - or ceiling - to respond.
She was standing on the small part of the floor that was still in one piece. Keep walking. It's not real. Ten paces and you'll be at the table. Another two and it's the door. Go.
GO.
She lifted her foot and slowly moved it forward, only to see it lengthen and join the whirlpool before her. Her leg felt like a hundred hands were dragging down the flesh, pulling it away into the void. She held back the vomit, but fell backwards again.
This time there was no cushion to protect her. Her backside landed on one of her copious shoes that were strewn across the floor. She didn't feel it. She was too busy touching her leg, frantic to make sure it was still in one piece. To make sure she kicked out, slamming the door once more.
A moment passed. She could feel her thoughts whirlpooling like the chasm beyond the door. She looked around. There was no other way out.
Wait.
The window.
Rising slowly, unsteady on a leg that she wasn't yet sure was still attached properly, she moved to the window. It was a first floor flat; she would have no problems climbing out and hanging down, dropping to the ground.
She looked out. All seemed right with the world. It was a typical Sunday morning. Cars were driving by. People were walking. Talking. Some holding hands, some on their phones, some huddled down, hands in pockets.
The window was locked. It always had been. She'd never had reason or inclination to open it. The key. The key...
Ah.
On her dressing table was a small lidded pot. In it was a jumble of hair clips, a spent battery, and the key to the window lock. Rather than fumble, she up-ended the pot and emptied the contents onto the table. She expected to need to search, but the key lay on top, almost wanting to help her escape.
Thankful, she snatched it up and slipped it into the lock, surprised at herself that she managed it with shaking hands. There was a soft click. She turned the handle and pushed.
Her breath was yanked from her lungs as the world outside changed suddenly from the street she knew to the vortex in the hall. Again the colours were thrown together, melting into one another. She could see faces and cars and buildings, but they were stretched and fused together. She held onto the sill and looked from this new Outside to the window.
Through the glass she should still see the street. People still walked. A dog pulled at its lead. Someone was talking to a driver that had pulled over to the kerb. They were laughing.
She pulled the window shut. The world beyond went on, ignorant to the shock on her face. Oblivious to the high mewling that she didn't realise was coming from her mouth.
She stepped back. What? Why? How could she SEE the world but not ENTER it? What had happened to the hall? Outside? Why could she see it through the glass.
The glass.
An idea stole into her mind, creeping through the confusion then slipping away before she could quite grasp it.
She looked at the window again and then ran her fingers along it. She could see the street. She could see the reflection of her bed and the clothes on the floor.
But she couldn't see herself.
It occurred to her that she might be a ghost. She'd died in the night. Her body would be on the bed, still looking like it was sleeping peacefully. She turned and looked. The bed was empty.
Her gaze returned to the window and she waved her hand. Her lack of reflection didn't wave back.
A movement out of the corner of her eye.
The mirror.
She turned quickly, but could see nothing but her room. But...
She walked slowly over. The room in the mirror expanded as she moved closer. She could see... herself. But it wasn't herself. It was someone who looked like her, but that someone wasn't standing at the mirror looking back. That someone was on her phone, talking. It would be Ed, her boyfriend. She always spoke to him before her jog. She always...
What did she do? She couldn't quite remember. The hall. Outside. It had jumbled her mind, casting her thoughts aside like clothes on the floor.
Surely.
The call was ended. The her in the other room walked to the door and turned the handle.
She screamed out. "No! Don't go out there!"
But in the mirror, she could see the hallway. She could even, if she moved her head over to the edge, see along it to the corner of the table. It was all as it should be.
She didn't have a reflection. She didn't have a world outside this room.
She banged on the glass.
"Come back! Don't leave me!"
Other her walked out into the hallway, pulled the bedroom door closed.
"No!!"
The door clicked shut.
She looked around at her own door. Longing. Wishing.
Then her world - her reflected version of the real world beyond the mirror glass - disappeared until the real her ventured into the room again and the reflection was needed once more.
"No..." she whispered in the darkness.
Look For Me
Look for me in the sea of faceless faces.
Look for me in the empty soulless wastes.
Look for me in the barren, hopeless places,
And in the cruel and heartless traces.
When you feel the confines closing,
When you see the bridges collapsing,
When you hear the thunder crashing,
Look for me.
I am your shadow.
I am your darkness.
I
am your light.
I am your friend.
There Be Dragons
That's how the dragons get in and out. My cousin told me so.
I think I was 9 at the time. He was older than me. 16 and loving scaring his younger protégé. Of course I believed him. I also believed in Santa and the Tooth Fairy.
Even now, an adult, I can't sit in the bath with my back to the taps. I have to be facing it. I have to be able to keep watch on it.
At the sink, it's the same - though I don't get a bath in the basin. But, when I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face, I'm always a little wary.
The overflow. A little hole (or group of holes with the grill on the bath). An innocent aperture happily guzzling the excess water from when you fill up the sink or bath too much.
The overflow. Dragon swallowing entrance to the Underworld.
You'd think that, now I'm all grown up, it wouldn't worry me. You’d think I'd be fine. Technically, it's just a hole to prevent the water overflowing. It kind of does what it says on the tin - or the ceramic. It's nothing. A rather ingeniously simple method of ensuring you didn't have to swim out of your bathroom.
What is there to be afraid of, hmmm?
Well. There's the voices, of course.
Low. Not much more than a whisper. Just enough to be able to understand what they say.
Voices that tell me I'm going to die. Voices that tell me my world is going to end. Not the world. My world.
Subtle, yet significant, difference there.
I'm not paranoid. I don't hear voices. OK, perhaps I do. But I mean, I am not one of these fruit-loops who say the voices in their head are telling them to take a knife to their wife. Or a gun to the local shopping centre. I'm not a lunatic.
Besides, the voices are not in my head, so I can't be crazy.
They're in the overflow.
No, really.
Of course, I don't really believe there be dragons in that there overflow. Not at all. I told you, I'm not crazy. That'd be silly. Besides, it's too small to fit a fully grown, fire breathing dragon in there. But there ARE voices.
The first time I heard them was about three weeks ago. It was morning. I was brushing my teeth, probably wondering if the cup of tea I'd already made was going to be too cold. I often did that. Made a cuppa and got so tied up in doing 'stuff' that it wouldn't be warm enough to drink by the time I got back to it.
I was spitting and rinsing. Leaned over. There was no 'Hello, how are you?' or any such introduction.
"You're going to die."
Succinct, don't you think? Why use ten words or more, when a snappy little phrase would do just as well.
I almost hit my head on the tap, I stood so fast. I looked around. I was alone in my house. My wife had taken the children to school and I didn't have to leave for a good twenty minutes. Still, I looked out onto the landing.
"Hello?"
There was no answer. There wouldn't be. I'd imagined it.
Two days passed. Two silent days of normality, when I realised my mind had been playing tricks and was just trying to scare me, the little tinker.
Then.
"You're going to die."
It was evening. I was washing my hands after a particularly long stretch on the loo. Well, I will take my phone in there and jump between Facebook, Twitter and whichever book I'm reading at the time.
I froze, my eyes staring into my reflection's. Had I heard that? Again? Or was it a trick of the running water hitting the ceramic bowl? Sure. That was it.
I laughed to myself. Daft old bugger. Not that I'm particularly old, nor am I known to be daft, but I can admonish myself with the best of them. My mind was wandering and the spill from tap to sink had tripped it up as it went, that was all.
"You are going to die."
No amount of water sprinkling and tinkling on any surface is going to make sounds like that. It's not like a load of monkeys got together and, in lieu of some typewriters, decided to urinate in the sink, the resultant splatterings eventually forming actual words.
Not exactly Shakespeare.
Right. I wasn't home alone that time. My wife, Olivia, must have been messing about. Or one of the children. A bit of fun. Yeah, so funny I could die...
I grabbed the towel and walked out of the bathroom, drying my hands as I poked my head into each of the bedrooms.
All empty.
I frowned. Was I losing my marbles? Were they spilling out of my ears and bouncing across the floor? No. All faculties were in order, front and centre, standing to attention.
I went downstairs.
My children were watching television.
"Hi dad," they chimed in unison. I smiled. It was clearly neither of them
"Ollie," I said.
She turned. She was making the packed lunches for the next day. In one hand was the butter knife and in the other the half empty tub. Again, it couldn't have been her.
She must have seen there was something wrong as her expression changed to one of concern.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Rather than say anything in front of my children - to worry them or have them think their dad was weirder than they already did - I nodded my head towards the door. She put the butter tub down and slid the knife into it. I watched it enter, wondering if it could enter my own flesh as easily.
What? Where did that come from?
I shook my head and went through into the hall, my wife following.
"Have the children been upstairs?"
Ollie smiled. "You know what they're like once they're lost in the TV. They only get up for food or toilet breaks. They haven't shifted since tea time."
She was right. The 'Hi dad' was more than I would normally have expected.
"Have you?" I asked, knowing she hadn’t but needing an answer.
"No, love. I've been sorting the pack up."
I chewed my bottom lip. It was a nervous habit I thought I'd grown out of. Along with thinking dragons inhabited the bowels of my basin.
"Are you ok?"
I looked up, not realising I'd been looking down.
"I'm fine, babe. I thought I heard something. Thought they were messing about. It's OK. Long day."
"OK," she said. "I'll get the pack up finished, then the kids can go watch TV in their room and we can curl up on the sofa."
"Sounds good," I said, smiling.
We kissed and she returned to the kitchen. I stayed where I was for a moment, looking up the stairs. It was my imagination.
Idiot.
Right. Come on. I went back up to the bathroom and finished off. In silence. No voices or threats of death.
And none for another couple of days. In the lull before, I'd put it behind me. Pretended it hadn't happened. I couldn't do that now, though. I couldn't make out all was well when strange voices were foretelling my doom. But neither could I say anything.
"Hey, Ollie. I've been hearing voices from the overflow."
"Voices?"
"Yes, they're telling me I'm going to die."
It wouldn't go down very well. She knew about my problem with overflows and would think my childhood phobia was overflowing into my adulthood. Overwork. Stress. Insanity.
Olivia was a very understanding woman. She would do anything for me and would go out of her way to make sure I was happy. But I would guess she'd draw the line at the dragons.
She would worry. She would fret. She'd get those wrinkles on her forehead. Or she'd tell me to not be a Muppet and get a grip. Either way, I just couldn't figure out how to broach the subject in a reasonably sane way. So I kept as quiet as I hoped the voices would.
And they did. For two days.
I didn't know the deal with the two days. Did a dragon sleep for that long? Or was Pennywise the clown paying me a visit and that was when I fitted into his rota of sewer based scares?
"You're going to dieeeee."
At home, it was ok. Well, not ok, but... contained. The oddity, the fear, the madness. At home it was deala
ble.
At the cinema, when you go to the toilet after sitting in one place for the best part of three hours, things are a little different. It's more sterile. More space.
More overflows. More dragons.
More voices.
I'd hoped to not be alone in there. I wanted some company. That had to be the first time ever I wanted somebody to be standing at the next urinal. thankfully the dragons waited until I'd finished before voicing their concerns.
"You are going to die."
I stumbled back, my lower back making contact with the row of sinks behind me. I turned, aware that a half dozen overflows would be staring at me.
In a similar way to how my children almost always spoke in harmony, six voices spoke together.
One word.
"Die."
I ran out of there. Out of the cinema. Leaning on my car, panting. My heart threatening to explode in my chest.
Ollie caught up with me.
"What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost!"
"No, no. I'm fine. The smell in there. Someone hadn't flushed. I thought I was going to be sick."
Ollie put her arms around me.
"You sure you're ok?"
I've never lied to my wife. Honesty had always been a major player in our relationship and we instilled it into our children. You don't get into trouble so much for what you've done as you do for being caught out lying about it.
"I'm sure."
A hug.
"Let's go home."
You'd think you can avoid bathrooms and sinks. Ignoring the fact that there's a sink in the kitchen, you can't. At some point you must brush your teeth. At some point you MUST relieve yourself in one way or another. I happened to hold off for two days.
I walked into the bathroom, forcing each step, pushing myself.
I did what I needed to do, then washed my hands.
I waited.
Silence.
With a breath deeper than my boots, I left the bathroom. Two days passed. Another visit. Another absence recorded on the register from the dragons. Perhaps they'd flown away. They escaped in the night and had found some other prey. I breathed easier. Another couple of days and another absence.