Amid the Recesses: A Short Story Collection of Fear Read online

The Horse, the Elephant and the Lion

  It took Irene Bright two days. Despite the protest of pouring rain—tears cast from the objecting heavens—nothing would stop her.

  Irene used a plastic trash bag. It was the simplest tool for the task. It was solid black—the kind of bag designed for the fall leaves that no one wanted. She couldn't bear to see inside of it. She couldn’t bring herself to tie the bag closed.

  Let it breathe, she thought.

  She neared the end of the alley. The rain poured in fierce revolt.

  Only God will judge me, she thought.

  Nothing lived in the alley. There wasn’t a scurry of rats or a squirm of maggots. There wasn’t the shuffle or diseased cough of homeless vagabonds. Light shunned the space. Pavement cracked and lifted from the ground around her feet. A river of rain water ran through the middle of the alley to vomit sedimentary pebbles into the street.

  It was the hour when demons and devils enjoyed free reign. It was the time when most of the passing cars were piloted by inebriated kamikazes. Everything was closed except 24-hour convenience stores, manned by exhausted foreign attendants with dead eyes and others with guns in their faces.

  Each step Irene took felt like quicksand. Her heart sunk. There was no stopping her after two days of consideration. She felt a shift in the bag and stopped. Its movement sucked the air out of her lungs. She squeezed the untied end of the bag. Her fingers paled with the tightness of her grip. She felt like crying, but ran out of tears on day one. She stopped in front of the dumpster. The unsanitary box waited with an open and hungry mouth. The bags inside of the dumpster were torn and chewed through as if by the shadows themselves.

  Irene stood in the water. The water broke into small tributaries around her dirty sneakers. The stream of rain felt like a surging rapid. Her knees were weak. The world was wet and her eyes were dry. She exhaled.

  “Fuck you.” She said to the dumpster.

  The dumpster stood with a slack mouth and it must have been offended.

  Irene lifted the bag and placed it into the dumpster. She’d never been gentle with trash. She held on to the twisted end of the bag. Her clenched fist rebelled and prevented her from letting go.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  She let go.

  Irene reached up and closed the plastic lid of the dumpster. She thought of the holes in the other bags. She wondered if the dumpster was satisfied or disgusted.

  She ran. Water blasted from the stream below her. Rain rushed against her. A late night bus emerged from the eastern tunnel and shot past her near the street and drew her to a halt. She considered if she hadn’t stopped. The blues played in the old bus as it passed. She followed the bus’s lead. It was three miles to her fourth story apartment.

  Her walk home was plagued with fear and reflection.

  “I guess this is it between us, huh?” She whispered to the sky. Her baby blue eyes searched for her maker. The sky threw rain at her.

  Irene stood at the bottom of her apartment stairwell. She examined the twisted staircase that rose above her. Each step felt like a mile. Each floor felt like Everest. The air thinned the higher she rose. The door that led into the fourth floor hallway had a lighted exit sign that pointed to the stairs. She looked back down the stairs that spiraled down as they had once spiraled up. She considered the distance between herself and the first floor. She imagined how many times she would repel from metal handrail to metal handrail before she kissed the tacky green carpet at the bottom.

  Irene stepped inside of the hallway and stopped next to an open trash chute. Brown and grey streaks stained the dull metal inside of the chute. Pieces of human excess clung to the interior walls. She stepped in front of the open chute and put her hand on the metal handle. She stared into the black abyss as she closed the door. A child’s crying rose from the darkness and she froze. The echo of the sound caused it to come from all directions around her. She looked from the left to the right to survey the empty halls. She leaned closer to the opening. She listened.

  “Let me hear you.”

  A black trash bag fell from the chute above and became lodged in the opening in front of Irene. Her jaw locked and her heart rammed against her ribcage. She stared through moistened eyes at the oily bag and saw her tarred reflection in the glossy sheen. A featureless face print jutted from the bag.

  “Ma-ma. Ma-ma” A robotic voice cried. Mechanical gears buzzed.

  The bag shifted and fell down the remainder of the chute. Irene released the metal handle of the chute’s door and fell back against the opposing wall.

  Irene dug into her soaked, matted pocket. She latched onto a metal key ring and pulled her apartment keys from her pocket. The white innards of her pocket turned inside out with the keys and a red twist tie dropped to the ground. She put her foot over it and shoved the apartment key into the lock.

  Her steps squished through the living room and into the kitchen. The twist tie was stuck on her shoe. She felt it catch on the carpet fabric then scrape on the kitchen tile. She placed both shaking hands down on the counter. Bloody paper towels littered the counter. Blood was smeared across the white surface. Every cabinet door was open and bloody handprints stamped the handles.

  She pulled bottles of prescriptions from the cabinets and flung them behind her. As they rolled along the ground, the pills spun and rattled in their plastic containers. The rattling made her sick. She pulled a bottle of sleeping pills from a shelf and put it down into a streak of tacky blood on the countertop. She vomited into the sink, but couldn’t spit up her regret no matter how many times she heaved. She spit bile from her mouth before swallowing three pills, each left to dissolve in the rancidity of her mouth.

  She stumbled toward her room in disarray. Her head spun with images of black plastic bags and hungry dumpsters. Irene followed the trail of blood from where it originated: the bedroom, but stopped as she passed the vacant room in the middle of the hallway. A cradle was the centerpiece. A mobile swung back and forth over the bed, moved by some impossible breeze. A horse, an elephant, and a lion swayed, one behind another on the mobile, to and fro over the cradle below it. She felt sick again but had nothing left to expel. She pushed away from the room in the middle of the hall and went into her bedroom. The white bed sheets were stained with blood. She fell into the mess face first. She felt the wetness against her cheek but didn’t care. The sheets smelled like an old penny. She was done. The world shifted around her as a haze infected her mind. Her eyelids became heavy and drooped. She stared at the blood on the sheets until she was taken by the induced fatigue. She slept.

  She awoke glued to the bed. She arched her back and peeled herself from the bloody sheets. Her belly rolled and grumbled. Her body demanded food but she was plagued by images of the dumpster. She fell limp to the bed. She slept.

  “Waaah-waaaah-w-waaaah!” A cry seemed to rise from inside of the apartment.

  Irene’s eyes shot open. Red veins ached in her eyes as the sound pervaded her ears.

  “W-Waaaaaah!”

  She planted a hand down into the bed and the mattress sunk under her weight as she pushed herself up. She looked back toward the door of the room and waited. The crying stopped.

  “A dream. It was a dream.” She said to herself.

  Irene rolled onto her back. The sheets stuck to her as she shifted and she tugged the cemented bits from her skin. She stared at the ceiling. It looked like a Mars landscape. She wished she was on another planet.

  “Waaah! W-Waaaah! Waaaah!”

  Irene rocketed up and her heart drummed against her chest so hard it didn’t know which pace to maintain.

  “W-Who’s there?” She stuttered in a cracking voice. “I have a gun!” She bluffed and scrambled farther from the bedroom door. “The police are on their way!” She shouted.

  The crying became louder. It was deafening. The cry crawled along the walls and belched from the hallway outside of the room. She pulled a pillow over her head and laid down
on the ground beside the bed. The sound was muffled at first, but intensified.

  “I can’t! I can’t do this! Stop it! Stop it!” She screamed from within prison of her pillow.

  The sound dissipated. A crackling sound like that of a dying fire or intermittent static of a radio replaced the crying. She lifted a hand that bent the pillow over her ear and it sprung back into its flat shape. Irene rolled onto her knees and crawled to peek around the corner of the bed toward the bedroom door. Silence befell the apartment.

  Irene snuck through the apartment. Each step teemed with caution. She closed the door to the room with the cradle without inspecting it. She peeked around furniture and inside of closets. There was nothing.

  She did not sleep that night. The time was spent scouring the filth that was spread through the apartment. The bloody blankets and sheets of the bed were balled up and thrown into clean pillow cases. She didn’t consider using a trash bag for anything. She used the brush end of the carpet steam cleaner on the mattress. The stains lightened from the blackish tone to pink, but never neared the original white. Round after round, bloody water was dumped into the sink and refilled with fresh water and a bleach solution and tears.

  When her muscles ached and she could stomach no more she took a shower. The water was set just below a scalding hot.

  “Wash it away.” She sighed out.

  It did nothing. She wept against unsympathetic blue tile walls. She sat under the hot water until its heat depleted and then she sat under the cold. She looked down to her feet and saw blood swirling into the drain. She backed out of the water and assessed herself. Blood trickled from between her thighs, down her legs, and diluted in the cold water before it disappeared forever. It had been more than three days and she still bled. Weakened, emotionally and physically, she waited to see if this was the time that the bleeding didn’t stop—the time that every vein in her body was drained and deflated. She thought she deserved to die. She sat down in the tub as her strength faded. She waited for death if it would come. She drifted into unconsciousness while the falling water beat against the tub.

  She woke after an indeterminable amount of time. Cold spittle shot at her as the running water deflected from the tub’s surface. She examined herself. The tips of her fingers were blue and her skin was pale. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate and wondered if her body was eating at itself. She wondered if there would be anything left when it was done. She turned off the water and stepped from the shower. Her legs shook beneath her. She wrapped herself in a towel and stepped into the hallway. She paused.

  The carpets were bloodied. The walls were streaked with red. Everything she had cleaned was soiled again. Her mouth fell open and her lips quivered toward a scream, but she could not. A trembling hand shot over her mouth.

  “How? How is this possib—“

  She heard a metallic lullaby. The sound chimed through the hallway and came from the room in the middle of the hall. She recognized that it was the song from the mobile over the cradle. Her legs weakened and sweat sprung at her forehead. She stepped toward the door of the middle room. The sound became louder. She braced herself against the wall. Hand over hand, she scaled along the flat surface. She depended on the wall for support. She depended on the wall to remind her of reality.

  “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.” She said over and over again.

  The door to the room was cracked. She reminded herself that she had closed it. She considered a weapon—a lamp or a knife. She took a broad step toward the end of the hall before the door of the middle room opened fully by itself. She froze.

  Patterns of light projected from the room onto the hallway wall. Irene pressed her back against the wall and watched the ghostly shapes float by. The light projected a horse, an elephant, and then a lion. One appeared after the next in their endless circus march. She wanted to hide inside of the wall. When nothing came from the door, she slid closer to it.

  She shook from head to toe as she peered into the dark room. The mobile turned around and around. It sang its provocative lullaby. The light in the center of the spinning mobile beamed through the carved shapes of each animal and they circled the room. Each projected animal crawled along the wall with more confidence than Irene. When the light hit her eye with the passing of each projection, she was blinded. Light faded into darkness and darkness into light as she stared at the spinning mobile.

  The sound was too much for Irene to bear. The melancholy melody ripped at her heart. She stepped into the threshold of the door. Her bare feet rose over obstacles—she dodged animal-printed wallpaper and she stepped over unopened bags from the baby shower. She scanned the room for an intruder. Her eyes followed the projected shaped across the walls. She waited to see if something would be revealed when the light passed. Nothing was. She reached to the cradle to brace herself—it was a grounding point in the center of the room. She stared down at its emptiness. The horse passed. The elephant followed. The lion stalked behind. The room became colder. The door ticked closed but remained cracked.

  She grabbed the spinning mobile and it clicked as the motor fought to turn against her grip. The parade stopped but the song played on. She ripped the mobile from the hook above the cradle. The hook fell into the cradle and the rattle of plastic was heard as it impacted. The light in the mobile shut off and there was complete darkness. The lullaby played on.

  Irene reached for something to hold her up far from the cradle. She heard plastic shifting again coming from the center of the room.

  “No. No, I left you there!” She cried.

  The blackness consumed everything. The sound of moving plastic intensified from the cradle and then from somewhere below it. There was a scuttle of the sound across the room. The door opened a few feet and closed again, which shed light and diminished it before anything could be seen. The sound of rolling plastic went down the hall. Irene perched against a wall and hyperventilated.

  Irene ran for the door without breath. She flipped the light switch on and off, but the light never responded. She pulled the door open and cast a dim beam of light from the hallway into the room. The beam followed a now bloody path from the cradle to the door. Fragments of black plastic were shredded inside of the cradle.

  Irene took a single step out into the hallway. The hallway was riddled with blood—wet and thick blood that stuck to the bottom of her bare feet. She followed the wet path toward the living room. In the living room, she heard a barbaric metal pounding from outside. She approached the window and peeked outside through the blinds.

  A trash truck lifted the building’s dumpster in the alley. The giant, bladed arms rocked the dumpster back and forth, emptying black bag after black bag of people’s unwanted items. She thought of the sound she’d heard in the hallway trash chute—ma-ma, ma-ma. She shuddered and bit her lip. She tasted blood. She watched the trash truck’s compactor push against the trash. The bags collapsed and smashed under the pressure of the violent, mechanical wall. She heard the crunch of plastic behind her and she spun. There, in the middle of the living room was an empty black trash bag, stretched thin and jutted at tiny points. A slick wetness covered the torn bag which made it look more fluid than solid. The apartment reeked then of death. She glanced to her left as a subtle movement caught her attention.

  A fleshy cord dragged into the hallway. The cord left a thin bloody line in its wake. Irene shot a hand over her mouth but could not stop the sickness—she vomited into her hand. The grey mush split between her thin blue fingers. She stumbled forward and wiped her hand across the towel that covered her body. The cord disappeared from her vantage in the living room. She followed it and saw the cord dragged into the bathroom. The sound of water gushed from the bathtub after the squeal of turning knobs. She paused. She pinched her arms until they were bruised.

  “Wake up! Wake up!” She screamed. “Please—Just wake up!”

  The sound of water intensified as it seemed overflow from the tub. Irene stepped into the hallway. Her fee
t squished below her and blood bubbled around each step. Bits of gore tangled in her toes, but she did not stop. She peered into the bathroom and watched as the water overflowed and flooded the bathroom’s tile floor. The water was clear from the faucet and blood red as it poured over the side of the tub.

  Irene’s body convulsed as she waded into the flooding water. Her hand shook as she walked near to the wall and stared toward the tub. As she neared, she tried to discern the source of the blood. The opaque red masked what hid beneath the water.

  “I-I can’t. I just can’t.” Irene fell to her knees. Red water splashed and speckled the walls. Her knees roared in pain. She gripped the edge of the flooded tub and pulled herself over it. She smelled the dead stink. She eyed the bits and scraps of what looked like ground beef. She reached up and turned off the water. A sick silence enveloped the bathroom. Irene’s hand quaked as it neared the water. She held her breath and whispered, “Please.”

  She shoved her hand into the water and pulled the obstruction from the drain. A spongy mass curled around her hand and she tugged it back toward her. She felt resistance. She was paralyzed. She held in her hand an umbilical cord.

  The bloody water croaked and gasped as it was sucked into the drain. The water level fell. Irene felt her consciousness slipping away. Her hand opened and the soggy cord laid flat within it. Her eyes rolled to the center of the tub as something was exposed. She saw the top of a round, hairy head.

  The sound of the mobile came again and the melody rang through the bathroom. The room went dark and the images of the horse, the elephant, and the lion swirled like a tornado inside of the bathroom without a source. The light passed over the bathtub and she saw the closed eyes. She released the cord and it fell into the water with a nauseating plop. The light came again and she saw the blue lips and downturned chin. She rose on rubbery knees. The light came again the eyes shot open and the mouth twisted. Glossy black beads stared at her. The mouth of the exposed infant opened and black muck poured from it and trickled down babyish features. Irene ran.

  Irene ran from the bathroom. She ran across the path of blood. She opened the front door of the apartment. She ran down the stairs. She ran from building and out into the street. Her screams were subdued by her death, which came as a car shot into her. She flew through the air without wings and her lifeless body fell into a muddled pool of flesh and gore. Her eyes were open in an infinite stare.

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