“I finished the last one earlier.”
“Then we’re out.”
“We can’t be out!”
“If you finished the last one, then we’re out.”
“Why didn’t you get more?”
“We’ll go to the smoke shop and beer barn tomorrow.”
“But we’re out!”
“Can’t you drink something else?”
“I don’t want something else!”
“It’s only until tomorrow—”
He flung his plate against the wall. It smashed beside one of the cuckoo clocks and fell in pieces to the brick-tiled floor. Fish fillets and noodles went everywhere. The clock let out a surprised chirp.
“There, look! Are you happy now?”
“Fred—”
“What good are you, can’t even keep enough beer in the house?” He stormed out, stomping down the hall hard enough to make the floor shake.
Maude looked at the mess. Her appetite was gone. She just felt so damn tired, so damn used up. All she wanted to do was crawl into some cool, dark, quiet place and let the world go away.
She knew just where.
Okay, maybe it was crazy, but so what? She didn’t care anymore.
The sky had the color of an old penny beginning to corrode and go green. The air hung flat, limp and humid. Planes droned overhead. Traffic made its steady snarl.
The shed door peeled open not with a Velcro sound but a barely-sticky-tape sound, from where the tattered mossy threads had already started knitting back together. The cool, musty draft washed over Maude.
She stepped inside, feet sinking into that spongy cushion. She closed the door. Blackness enveloped her. Soft, silent blackness. Wispy tendrils whispered against her face as she moved. The layer of moss at the shed’s center was deep, thick, a plush upholstery.
The tiny mushroom-cap things pop-pop-pippety-popped with a delightful bubble-wrap sensation when touched, and gave off whiffs of that mild, earthy fragrance.
Maude sat down, then reclined and stretched out. The moss supported and conformed, it molded itself around her in marvelous comfort. It was goosedown and fleece, clouds and cashmere.
Eventually, she noticed that the darkness wasn’t as total as she’d thought. No light seeped in from outside, but, faint speckles of some sort seemed to float, to drift, to waft effortlessly above her. Faint, pale speckles… like dust motes… spores that eddied on the currents of her breath, swept toward her in whorls when she inhaled, billowed spiraling upward when she exhaled.
She was breathing the stuff, and that might not be so good, but this was too peaceful, too restful, too relaxing for her to worry about possible adverse effects.
Her fingers sank into the moss, combing through it, the substance parting and closing back in to fill the channels. Soothing… it was so soothing… it would make everything all right again. Shouldn’t she be the one taken care of for a change?
This sweet, simple, undemanding, unconditional welcome… affection, almost… no judging, no anger…
Then her slowly dredging fingers snagged on something not-moss, and Maude brought it up with a vague dreamlike sense that she should have known, or that, deep down, she’d known all along. The collar’s imitation leather was moss-caked now, the encrusted tag dangling.
More tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. Gotten out, they’d told her. Must have gotten out and run off. The gate left unlatched, an accident, such a shame.
That damn dog. Her Woozles.
Not even when she felt the moss creeping over her could she dredge up the energy to be concerned. It not-quite-tickled on her skin, a gentle spreading embrace as it enfolded her limbs. It wove through her hair like a million filament fingers massaging her scalp, and made fluffy earplugs. It blanketed her body.
So quiet. So private. So cool and dark and comfortable.
The moss crept to her cheeks, her forehead, her chin. Tendrils followed the tracks of her tears. Maude closed her eyes to what felt like the delicate brushing of an eyeshadow applicator. She suppressed a slight urge to sneeze as the moss tickled into her nose.
It reached her lips. Her mouth. It cocooned her completely.
The silence held.
The cool air in the shed grew cooler still as the sun finally descended and the sky turned the murky purple-orange of a Los Angeles dusk, heading for the muddy denim that was the closest it ever got to full dark. In the bushes, crickets commenced their chorus.
Later still, as a famous nearby theme park set off its nightly fireworks extravaganza, the vibrations of their thum-thud echoing explosive concussion blasts penetrated into the shed, causing the mossy mass at the center to quiver, and rustle, and stir, and rise.
Maude crossed the backyard and patio. The crickets hushed as she passed. The bugs flitting and flicking against the porch light dispersed in a panicky scatter.
She went into the stuffy house. Fans whirred, clocks ticked. Fish fillets sat room temperature on the baking sheet; the pot of noodles had congealed into a Parmesan clump. Pieces of plate and spilled food still littered the floor.
Her footsteps were as muffled and silent as if she wore thick wool slippers, but that didn’t stop the old floorboards from creaking as she went down the hall. The den's door stood ajar, the television tuned to a right-wing rant-a-thon about gay marriage and immigration.
The smoke-filled room smelled of alcohol… not beer, but the harder stuff he swore he’d given up on and she thought she’d gotten out of the house. Fred, slumped in his recliner with the remote in one hand and bottle in the other, didn’t turn as she came in. A full ashtray rested on the arm of the chair, a butt smoldering in the ashy heap.
“There you are, about damn time,” he said. “Did you want me to sit here and starve all night while you sulked?”
When he didn’t get the expected contrite reply he turned, but by then Maude was to the recliner. He saw her and gaped.
She grasped him by the head.
Moss rippled along her arms and hands… moldy, fuzzy, living black gloves. It rushed over his face with surging, rapid, hideous eagerness. It seethed up his nose and into his mouth, choking off his scream. Fibrous, expanding like a dark fungal form of spray insulation, it clogged his throat and filled his lungs.
Fred thrashed in the chair. Always florid, he went maroon. His bloodshot eyes bulged. His body heaved and lurched. His chest swelled up like that of an enraged bull. One flailing arm hit the recliner’s lever, pitching him backwards, kicking his feet up on the footrest. With the other hand, he clutched at Maude and only came away with an oily, fetid fistful.
His spine stiffened, arching him up from the seat. His heels drummed. Then he collapsed, loose and slack, limp deadweight. He shuddered. His fingers twitched.
Then… nothing.
Maude waited.
The moss plugging his nostrils and windpipe dissolved, with a foamy hissing bubbling sizzle like hydrogen peroxide. The wad clenched in his fist withered, going brittle and white, disintegrating into powder. Fred’s swollen chest deflated, expelling a sickly gas of alcohol fumes, cigarette smoke and decay.
Soon, no traces remained, no residue.
Heart failure, they’d decide. Stroke, or embolism. Unsurprising in a man of his habits, who hadn’t been to the doctor in years because he knew what they’d tell him to do and had no intention of doing it. A pity poor Maude had to find her brother this way, but, at least it had been quick.
She’d taken care of Freddie right up until the very end, and isn’t that what their mother would have wanted?
The moss prickled and tickled as it crept down her body, the hairlike little rootlets withdrawing from her skin. It flowed onto the den rug, forming a fuzzy lump that grew and coalesced into the semblance of a little black dog. Maude picked it up, stroking the woolly coat. It wiggled with happiness, wagging its stub of a tail.
There’d be so much to do… selling the house, starting over… but before beginning any of that, she’d call the kids to cha
t and catch up and apologize.
After all, as people liked to tell her, she’d always been so good about putting her family first…
Christine Morgan recently relocated from the Seattle area to the Portland area, beginning a new, more-social phase of her life among the local horror/bizarro weirdo creative community. They like how she brings goodies to readings and events. In addition to her several books and dozens of short stories in print, she's a regular contributor to The Horror Fiction Review, the editor and publisher of the Fossil Lake Anthologies, and dabbles in many various other writing-related projects. Her other interests include history, mythology, cooking shows, crafts, superheroes, gaming, and spoiling her four cats as she trains toward eventual crazy-cat-lady status. She can be found online at https://www.facebook.com/christinemorganauthor and https://christinemariemorgan.wordpress.com/
Chagrin (noun) – frustration or distress at having been humiliated or failed
“Quit scratching your fucking shoulders,” Nigel said from the armchair. “It’s like you’ve got fleas or something.”
James, still a little stoned from the joint he’d smoked earlier, rubbed the skin beneath the sleeves of his black “Scum” t-shirt, with one hand on either shoulder. He tried not to scowl as he looked at his stepdad.
Steptwat, more like.
“They’re itchy,” James said, fighting the urge to get up from the couch and hurl Nigel’s open super-strength beer at him. James was only sharing the same breathing space as this douchebag because he liked his mum believing that they got along.
Nigel settled back into the armchair that James’s late dad had paid for. Its plush brown leather had once seemed like luxury compared to the lounge’s stained carpet and nicotine-yellowed walls. After Nigel had moved in a couple of years back the seat had lost its sheen, and the armrests were now peppered with coarse, plasticky fag burns.
Slouching, Nigel bent one knee and tugged off a sports sock. A rank odour wafted over James, smothering the baking smells drifting from the kitchen. Nigel’s foot was grey, bristly, its nails so jagged that they would have shamed a hobbit. Keeping his eyes on the TV, Nigel said, “You’re putting me off the snooker.”
Trying not to heave, James said, “It’s a crap game anyway. Just two blokes playing with their balls.”
Nigel narrowed his eyes. “Don’t start that queer talk today, Shitpool.”
“Shitpool” was Nigel’s attempt at a twist on James’s favourite superhero, Deadpool. It referred to James’s birthmark: a wide patch of dark-brown skin covering the lower half of one cheek. James had always suffered playground insults and laughter, but never so badly as after the day that Nigel had picked him up from school and called him ‘Shitpool’ in front of the other students. Even now, just a few months from his final exams and his 18th birthday, the name still stuck.
“Snooker is a game,” James said, improvising, “where two guys grasp their long poles and push balls into someone else’s holes.”
“Something wrong with you, boy,” Nigel said, his face darkening. “Why don’t you go play with your imaginary computer friends?”
“The best part is when someone wins the championship,” James went on. He had nothing against gays himself, but he knew just how to piss off his stepdad. “That’s when they pop their champagne corks and squirt white foam all over their mates. Sounds a bit like an outlet for closet-cases, doesn’t it?”
Nigel’s breath whistled in his nose. When he stared back at James he wore a hateful, boozy leer. “Keep talking, Shitpool. See where it gets you. All I’ve gotta do is wait a couple more months, and then you’ll be gone.”
“Ha! Dream the fuck on.”
“Don’t matter what you think, boy,” Nigel said. “Coz I’ve convinced your ma what’s best for you. And, you know what? We both think that you need to stand on your own two feet. Become independent.”
James’s chest went cold. “What are you on about?”
Nigel lowered his voice. “You’re outta here, boy. And while mummy thinks that you’ll be prepped an’ ready to take care o’ yourself, I’m willing to bet that in two shakes of a lamb’s bollock, you’ll be out on the streets, fiendin’ for brown, an’ suckin’ off old men for change. Probably be dead in a year or so, just like daddy. Now there’s a nice thought.”
James stood up, ready to launch himself at the alcoholic bastard, but then his mum bustled into the lounge, followed by the smell of charred sugar. Her hair was a bushy mess at the best of times, but today it was even wilder than usual.
“Enjoying the match?” she asked. Her eyes didn’t quite focus on James. Onto the coffee table she placed a tray bearing two rows of black lumps that might once have been biscuits. “Here, I’ve baked some cookies.” She smiled blearily and took a sip of Nigel’s beer. “May have left them in a little long, but that’ll just add to the flavour.”
When James had been young, his mum had baked brownies and crumbles, muffins and shortcake. She’d been much better at it back when James’s dad had still been around.
“They look wonderful, Susie, love,” Nigel said. He stood up, threw his arms around her and leaned in close. She pecked his lips but Nigel made a pantomime of slipping his tongue into her mouth.
James’s mum’s cheeks became even rosier. “Nigel!”
James felt sick.
“Sorry, Susie, love,” Nigel said. “Jus’ can’t keep my hands off you.”
“Well, you just enjoy the snooker, and save anything else for later!”
As she turned to leave again, Nigel hit her backside with a whap. When she was out of earshot, he said to James, “She’s no cook, but trust me: your mummy fucks like a demon.”
James kept his gaze level, imagining Nigel’s head bursting into flames.
And his shoulders continued to itch.
As James settled into his bed in the darkness of his little room, he heard a knock. His stomach clenched as he imagined his steptwat popping his head in for one last insult, inspired by the end-of-session rum that he guzzled before bed every night.
When the door opened, James saw the silhouette of his mum’s tangled hair.
“Jusssst thought I’d say nuh-night,” she said, her voice slippery with wine.
“Um. Okay.”
The door closed. She didn’t turn on the light, and when the room was just greys and blacks again James heard three steps before her weight flopped onto the bed beside him. After a brief silence, James’s mum said, “I know that you two don’t always get along.”
James smelled the brewery waft of her breath, felt the weeble-wobble of her weight.
“But Nigel makessss me better. He makes me alright.”
James couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so awkward. It was like being a kid again.
“He’ssss not… not like your dad, I know.” James felt a movement that was probably his mum shrugging. “But he’s better than nothing.”
James wanted her to know how much of an arse Nigel was, but he was no good at arguing. It wasn’t as if his dad had been much of a role model, either—he’d just been… nice. It was that simple. He’d been a smackhead towards the end, yes, but James felt that his dad had always tried. Before everything had gone downhill, James remembered his dad making his mum smile, with no need to load her with wine or super-strength beer.
“I know you’ll be allllright when you go,” she added. Her shadow loomed over James and he felt her squeeze his wrist. “When you get your own place, you’ll be a man, won’t you? A big man.”
James wanted to yell that he already was a man. He wanted to punch the walls. But he just lay there stiff and tense and bitter as his mum pressed her lips to his cheek.
She rose, fell back, and then rose again, and he heard her totter through the dark to the door. The yellow crack of light reappeared and vanished again as she left.
James swallowed hard.
“Don’t do it, don’t do it… ” he told himself.
But then, for the first time since his dad�
��s funeral four years ago, James began to cry. He never let Nigel, or the assholes at school, or even his mum see that he was hurting. He turned over and muffled his sobs with the pillow.
“Grow up, you prick,” he growled through the tears.
He thought back to everything his steptwat had said. His dad had been an addict, so what was to stop James from becoming the same, without a roof over his head? He’d never had a job. He wasn’t a great student at school. All he really knew was playing massive online multiplayers and smoking weed.
He imagined trying to convince his mum that Nigel was playing her like an idiot, but he’d heard what she’d said. She hardly believed that the sun shone out of Nigel’s beer-farty arse, but she didn’t seem to think that she could do any better, now that dad was gone.
James’s mum deserved a man to support her, though, not to drown her in booze.
“I’m more of a man than him,” James muttered, wiping his eyes and shifting onto his side.
He jumped when his shoulder touched the mattress.
Both his shoulders had become tender, red and blotchy as the day had gone by, so he had used two dollops of his mum’s face cream on them before getting into bed. It had done nothing to soothe him.
James’s mum’s headboard began to thud against the wall. Her mewling came between the sounds of what James assumed were spanks, like the ones he’d seen people doing on the internet. His stomach turned at the familiar noises.
James remembered his dad nodding off in the armchair, not even bothering to hide the greasy track-marks that dotted his arm. Then he pictured Nigel in the same chair, supping his beer and leering at James’s mum.
Did James want to follow either of their footsteps—or was there a better way?
He sat up panting, brow damp and shoulders prickling like nettle stings. He ripped at the itchy spots with his nails while his mother and steptwat humped and bumped in the next room. As he scratched he stared up through the darkness, wishing that he believed in God or that he had someone else to reach out to. There was no one, though. James needed to take things into his own hands—he had to become the real man of the house.
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