by Andy Cox
She did not answer. They were almost back, almost safe.
•••
She rinsed the dirt and pine needles from his appendages while his head and torso cooled down. After she put him to bed in jittering portions, she tweezered glass from her skin and bandaged her cuts. She cleared the remnants of broken glass from the ground. Removing piles of canned goods from the pantry, she yanked two wooden shelves from their pegs. From a rusted toolbox beneath the sink she retrieved a hammer and nails.
Dusk made long fingers of the branches’ shadows, and she swore those fingers were scrabbling at her back as she boarded the kitchen window from outside. Her own breath weighed heavy in her ears and sweat beaded on her forehead. At one point she became convinced that Dearheart’s kids were watching her from the driveway, but when she looked over her shoulder, of course no one was there.
She dropped the second board, and didn’t catch her breath until she was inside with the door bolted behind her.
•••
When Dearheart started growing, she did her best not to notice.
In the months after she chased him down the driveway, she watched him stand on tiptoe to stare out the window through the gaping crack she had left between the boards, heedless of the wintry drafts that whistled there. Later, when he could gaze out while standing flatfooted – on feet that looked less and less like hooves – she pretended he had never needed to stand on tiptoe after all. She turned a blind eye when he began to pull open the freezer door by himself, with fingers far too jointed to be popsicle sticks, and smiled whenever she barely squeezed him into his highchair.
As he grew, the separate meats of his body stretched to make him humanoid. Countless new sinews merged on his multi-hammed chest and his arms grew to three times longer than any chicken’s legs. His mouth became fully articulated soon after the front of his pig skull caved inward, deforming itself into a functioning jaw where once that gargling hole had been. Playtime toys were swallowed in his flesh. His teeth were formed from the wheels of his matchbox cars, his fingernails from the toy soldiers’ broken base-plates. Sometimes when she looked at him, she didn’t know him.
“Do you want to play?”
“Maybe I’m too old for it, Mom.”
He asked her for crayons and paper and wrote imitation letters for hours on end. They were nonsensical, comprised of random, curling scrawlings. He would never say who he was writing to, but he occasionally got up to look out the window.
She referenced the recipe nightly. Over and over she read a scribbled note in familiar penmanship that suggested a Somewhat Child could be cured into jerky and last almost indefinitely. But at no point had she hung Dearheart in a smokehouse, and no jerky she knew of could grow a mandible of its own accord.
She wondered if all parents felt this helpless when their children grew up.
“Dearheart,” she said, when he wiggled toes at her for the first time, “please stop this. Stop growing!”
He blinked at her with new, sausage-skin eyelids. “How? Did you stop, Mom?”
•••
On a midwinter afternoon she opened the freezer to discover that there was simply no possible way Dearheart could fit inside it any longer. She wiped her running nose on her arm and gently tugged away one of his arms, intending to shove him in piecemeal, but he screamed in frustration and pulled the drumstick from her hands.
“Why are you doing this to me?” His eyes, more soulful than marbles now, seemed almost capable of weeping. He backed up into the boarded window, clutching his arm to his chest, knocking snow from the sill. “I just wanna sleep in a bed, like you.”
“I’m sorry, Dearheart. Maybe we could have a big freezer delivered here. Someone can stop by, just like the grocery man.”
She put her hand on his cheek, but he withdrew.
“You’ll have to talk to someone, though.”
She removed all the shelves from the fridge and tried manipulating him into the fetal position. That felt unnatural to him, so instead he wrapped his arms around his chest and grudgingly allowed her to detach his legs from the knees down so she could shove them separately into the freezer. She managed to force the doors shut.
She picked up the telephone. Her hands shook.
•••
The major appliance man at the door smelled of sweat, and his truck in the driveway reeked of exhaust. She averted her eyes and directed him to the kitchen. He wheeled the long freezer in. She asked him to install it in the center of the room.
While he worked, she stood by the old fridge and coughed every time Dearheart scratched at the door. The man said he could transfer her goods to her new freezer at no additional cost, but she shook her head. When he asked whether she wanted to order a new window from another department (because that winter draft was cold and she was sure to get sick), she shoved a check from her mother’s savings account into his hand and showed him out.
The major appliance man lingered on the step. “Pardon me, but did you used to be home-schooled in this house years back?”
She tried closing the door. “You’re mistaken.”
“No, I recognize you! My sisters and I used to come out to these woods and play in your driveway. You’re Carol Higgins, right? Thought you got out of this town.” He scrunched up his face. “Oh, hey. I was sorry to hear about your mother.”
A crashing sound from the kitchen coincided with her hurried intake of breath. “You’re thinking of someone else!”
She slammed the door, then slid down it to the floor. After some time, she wiped her face, stood, and tiptoed down the hallway to the kitchen.
Dearheart had pushed the fridge over onto its side, knocking the bottom door open. He pitter-pattered on his hands across the lid of the silver freezer, his legless torso balanced above him.
“How do you like it?”
“Can’t you get me a purple one?”
“I don’t think they make purple ones.”
He tugged on her skirt. “Can’t you ask? Please?”
“No.” It was never enough. She pushed him away, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m very tired.”
Dearheart slumped. He crawled to his freezer and opened the lid. “You’re the one who can’t go outside,” Dearheart told her, before shutting her out.
•••
By springtime she could no longer punish him. If she tried to remove his hands she would be tearing genuine flesh, and he would bleed as any non-provisional person might. The cookbook lay long since abandoned beneath the nightstand.
Eventually the plastic teeth in his mouth became glossy and transformed to pearly bone. Her teeth ached terribly, ridden with cavities.
When his hair grew in it was thick and beautiful. Hers clogged the shower drain.
When he grew skin, she developed crow’s feet.
The face Dearheart grew was terribly beautiful, and the eyes that sprouted in his sockets were a lovely shade of brown. It hurt to look at him.
“You never see the children outside without clothing,” Dearheart said, watching her scrub the kitchen. (Dearheart really didn’t dirty things anymore, but she did not know what else to do.)
She all but peeled the clothes from her own back and handed them over.
“But what will you wear, Mother?”
She pulled her mother’s old cardigans out of the closet. She tried not to wonder when he had stopped calling her “Mom”.
Dearheart pulled on her dresses and strapped on her shoes and when he stood in the doorway, combing his hair with his fingers, she knew he couldn’t be Dearheart or even “he” any longer.
“Carol,” she said. “You’re Carol Higgins, Dearheart.”
“Who else would I be, Mother?”
The arms Dearheart-Carol wrapped around her mother’s stooped shoulders would have felt comforting, had she not squeezed so tight.
“I’m going out.” The homunculus glanced at her reflection in the freezer and led the way to the door. “Do you think they’ll still run aw
ay? Mother? What’s the matter?”
“You should visit whenever you can, Dear— Carol. Or maybe one day you’ll come home and I’ll be gone.”
“Gone where?”
She swallowed. “People aren’t always there when you come home.”
•••
In her mother’s cardigan, she peered between the boards as Carol approached the kids jumping rope at the edge of the driveway. Of course there were kids there.
When Carol stepped from green spring grass onto the driveway, she poked one of the children on the shoulder with one of her beautiful hands. The boy nodded.
The kids held the rope taut for her, then began to swing it, round and round.
Alone in the kitchen, Carol’s mother clutched her chest and awaited the jump.
•••••
Leah Thomas’ debut novel Because You’ll Never Meet Me is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. Her short fiction appears in Asimov’s, 3-Lobed Burning Eye, Pseudopod, and Ideomancer, among others. Tea is her lifeblood. When she’s not huddled in cafes, she’s usually at home pricking her fingers in service of cosplay.
THE HUTCH
RAY CLULEY
Jess wasn’t upset when her rabbit died. She wasn’t happy about it, exactly, but she wasn’t upset either. Relieved, maybe. There’d be no more cleaning the hutch, scraping out pellets of poo and damp straw. She wouldn’t have to empty the bowl of that dry dusty muesli stuff it was supposed to eat but never did (in fact, she found a lot of its poo in that bowl). She wouldn’t have to remove the blackened stumps of carrot it always left, either. And it wouldn’t be able to bite her anymore.
They had a funeral for it in the garden. Harvey cried even though it wasn’t his rabbit but then Harvey was just a kid. Not even a kid really yet. He was only two. Jess was twelve and in ten months and eleven days she would be a teenager, practically a grown up.
“Do you want to say anything, sweety?”
Jess didn’t look up from the shoebox in the ground but she knew how her mum would be looking at her. She’d be using the sad eyes, the eyes that were meant to make Jess sad too, or at least show her how it was done. But Jess didn’t care about the stupid rabbit. She’d never wanted it in the first place.
“Jessica?”
Jess shrugged.
“Rabbit,” said Harvey.
Jess glared at him. She didn’t want to say anything so Harvey shouldn’t either. It wasn’t his rabbit.
“Maybe I should read from the Bible or something,” said Mr Levis. Levis, like the jeans. She would never call him Dad.
“I don’t know if we have one,” said Mum. She sounded apologetic. She often sounded like that when she talked to Mr Levis. Jess really hoped they didn’t get married. In fact, she hoped he’d leave and take Harvey with him.
Down in the earthy hole, a worm was wriggling beside the shoebox. It had been cut in half by the shovel and it wriggled all over itself. She used to think both bits became new worms but she’d learnt in school recently that only one part survived. She wondered if it was screaming but doing it so quietly nobody could hear.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” said Mr Levis. He probably knew it from TV. That was where Jess knew it from. She picked up a handful of the soil, still wet from the rain they’d had, and threw it into the hole because she’d seen that done on TV too. On TV the dirt always broke apart and scattered on the coffin but her handful had been too big and wet, clumped together, and it thumped down heavily on the shoebox lid and rolled and fell onto the worm. It left a dark smear across the white cardboard. Mum had suggested decorating it but Jess didn’t see the point when it was just going in the ground anyway.
She wiped her dirty hands on her dress because she could get away with it today and said, “I don’t want another one.”
“Not yet, dear, of course not.”
“Not ever.” She hadn’t even wanted the first one.
“It’s too early,” said Mr Levis. He said it quietly, which meant he wasn’t talking to Jess, he was talking to Mum.
“Rabbit,” said Harvey.
“Yes, rabbit. Rabbit-bunny,” Mum said.
Jess went inside.
•••
Jess watched from her bedroom window as Mr Levis buried the box with her dead rabbit inside. Mum and Harvey had come in as well because it was spitting with rain. Jess could hear the TV downstairs and the rattle of dishes as Mum washed up. You could hear everything in this house whatever room you were in. It was too small, much smaller than their other house. It was still bigger than where Dad lived, though. You could hear everything even the neighbours were doing at his place. But it was nicer. There were lots of shops underneath where he lived and a big Tesco down the road, one of the really big ones that had DVDs and CDs so it was like going into town. Where Jess lived with her mum there was only more small houses, lots and lots of them, the estate a warren of streets that all looked the same. There was a park but only teenagers went there. She’d be able to go there soon.
Outside, Mr Levis tipped the last of the dirt into the hole and pressed it down with his feet. Then he smoothed it with the shovel because he’d left footprints. Finally he pushed a cross made of ice-lolly sticks into the ground to make it a proper grave. It looked rubbish. They had bought the lollies especially for the sticks and that made them taste rubbish too, even though she’d been allowed a Magnum which she normally loved.
Downstairs, Harvey was crying. He could cry for any reason and no reason and he did it really loud. He was supposed to stop doing it when he stopped being a baby, so Jess supposed he was still a baby.
“Jessica, sweetheart?” her mother called.
She didn’t answer.
“Jessica? Can you see to your brother please?”
Jess sighed but didn’t move and didn’t say anything, wondering if she could get away with staying in her room.
“Jessica, unless you want to do the washing up, go and hush your brother.”
Now that the rabbit was properly gone she was supposed to get on with things. She’d heard her mum’s friends say how kids adapted quickly and it made her wish she was a kid again.
She went downstairs. “Step brother,” she said quietly.
“Thanks honey,” Mum said. She’d only heard her coming down the stairs. Mr Levis was standing in the kitchen doorway though and he’d heard what she’d said, Jess could tell.
“Quiet, Harvey,” Jess said. “Look, it’s the Cadbury’s caramel advert. You like the caramel advert.”
Mr Levis didn’t say anything. He just took off his muddy shoes and went to help Mum at the sink.
Harvey would not stop crying.
•••
“When are the other people coming back?” Jess asked at dinner. Dinner was pasta shaped like shells made with sauce from a jar that made everything orange.
“What people?” asked Mr Levis.
Jess chewed her food, happy for the rule about not speaking with your mouthful.
“What people, honey?” said Mum. She was spooning pasta to Harvey’s mouth and trying to scoop sauce from his face afterwards.
“The people that lived here before.” She took another handful of grated cheese from the bowl in the middle of the table and dropped it onto the mound still trying to melt on her food.
“Careful with the cheese, Jessica,” said Mr Levis, which really meant no more cheese Jessica. But she needed it to make the pasta taste nice.
“They’re not coming back,” said Mum, “we live here now.”
“I thought they went to France.”
“They did, but not for a holiday. They went there to live.”
“But we’re staying here,” said Jess.
Mr Levis made a clicking sound and pointed at her with two fingers and a thumb like a gun. He fired it to show she’d got it.
“There’s no room for my bike. It’s getting all rusty in the rain.”
Mum and Mr Levis exchanged what they probably thought was a secret look but there was nothing
secret about it.
“We’re going to get a shed,” said Mr Levis.
Jess didn’t like sheds. Sheds had spiders and they were almost as bad as rabbits. Back at their old house, when all her friends lived close, she had gone to Rebecca’s and seen a massive spider in her shed.
“Are we getting rid of the hutch? If we got rid of the hutch I could keep my bike under that bit of roof.”
“We can’t get rid of the hutch.”
“Why?”
“Because is doesn’t belong to us.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“The people who lived here before.”
“But you said they moved to France.”
“It’s still theirs, sweetheart.”
Jess sat staring at the cheese that refused to melt. She spooned pasta on top of it to see if that would help but it was too cold. She thought of how the rabbit used to leave poo in the food it didn’t like.
“We could ask them about the hutch, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind,” Mr Levis said to Mum. Jess didn’t like it when he tried to stick up for her because it never felt real. It felt like he was trying to be friends, like when Miss Jacobs said she could talk to her about things if she wanted.
“We might get another rabbit one day,” said Mum.
“Rabbit,” said Harvey.
“I don’t want one.”
“Your brother might.”
“But if you have a pet you have to clean up after it and feed it. You said so, even though I didn’t want one.”
“Jessica—”
“Well he won’t do it.”
She only meant to point at him with her spoon but there was food on it and it flicked him in the face. He started crying immediately.
“I didn’t mean to!” Jess said quickly.
“Go to your room.”
“It was an accident!”
“Go,” said Mum. She didn’t even look at her, just wiped sauce from Harvey’s face even though he was already covered in it anyway. He had an orange stain around his mouth like a clown’s smile.
Jess stomped her way up every single step. She slammed her door.
•••
When Jess wheeled her bike into the back garden she had to struggle getting it past the gate because it liked to close all on its own. She held her breath as she leant the bike against the rabbit hutch. There was just about enough room for it if you turned sideways after leaning it there. It meant nobody else could get in the garden but nobody else came into it from the side anyway, they only came in through the kitchen. She bent down to lock the bike and hit her head on the handle bars. “Shit.” She thought about saying the f-word but didn’t. She didn’t mind saying it but if you had to think about it first then there was no point.