Feculence
967 Words
Feculence
Robin T. Quackenbush
Charlene locked and unlocked the deadbolt three times, then sat at the kitchen table, eyes wide and darting. Clock. Door. Wristwatch. Door. She tucked a blonde wisp behind her ear. Every passing second brought contagion closer.
Beth crashed through the door, and Charlene jumped.
“Hey, Sis. How’ve you been? I’ve got your food, meds, and mail. You been outside this week?” Beth could read obituaries and make them sound cheery. She set several brimming plastic bags on the floor.
“Maybe one day, when the doctors get my dose right, I’ll step out.” Charlene twisted the cuff of her sleeve nervously. “But I’m doing all right. I have a shifting landscape of side effects to entertain me.”
“You should visit Mom. Work up to it. She asks about you, you know.”
Charlene walked across the room stiffly and opened the door. “Same time next week, Beth?”
Beth crossed her arms and released a dejected sigh. “Love you, Charlie.”
As soon as she was gone, Charlene wiped down the doorknob with a bleach wipe, clicked the lock on the door three times, and sanitized each jar and box before storing it, label facing out, one quarter inch apart. She scrubbed her hands, then swigged a vodka tonic to ease down a pill from her new prescription.
She thought about her mother’s house: boxes and bags, stacked precariously. Items lost and forgotten languishing in dusty piles. A derelict labyrinth of filth and bugs. Charlene shuddered and drained her glass, then mixed another before retiring to the bedroom. Feculence is a slippery slope. That way lies madness.
***
Charlene sat bolt upright in bed and froze, clutching her sheets. A long screech echoed from the kitchen. A chair dragged over tile? Then deafening silence. She crept out of bed and peeked around the doorframe. A light shone at the far end of the dark hall.
She rummaged in her nightstand for the D-cell flashlight and, holding it in her thin hand like a club, inched toward the kitchen, straining to hear anything over her own pulse. At the table sat a stranger in a light gray suit and fedora, holding one of her favorite photos: Beth and Charlene as carefree, bikini-clad teenagers with towels on a speedboat. The man caressed the photo, tracing her curves with one blue-gray finger. She could feel his touch gliding cold across her skin. Revulsion rippled through her.
“Lovely,” he said, looking up from under the brim.
Set against his grayish face, his brown eyes gleamed golden. Lit from within. Charlene stumbled backward against the doorframe, screaming.
***
Charlene awoke on the floor beside her bed, shrieking and drenched in sweat. She leaped to the doorway and looked down the hall. No light. She ran to the kitchen and snapped on the switch. Empty.
The photo lay face down on the table.
Tremors surged through her slight frame. Clutching at the wall for support, she skirted the kitchen and checked the door. Locked. Goosebumps coursed over her arms. His yellow eyes followed her from every shadow as she jogged to the bathroom.
Charlene pulled down one bottle after another, reading labels and dropping them into the sink. Sleeping pills. Expired last year. Her hands were shaking. She took six, then vaulted into the safety of her bed and blankets to wait for deep, dreamless sleep to take her. She knew how to deal with hallucinations. The scarier they were, the more pills it took.
***
In the night she heard the thin rasp of wood on wood. Friction. Opening.
She fought through the fog of sleep and clicked on her bedside lamp. The Gray Man stood across the room, pawing through her drawers, throwing fistfuls of clothing onto the floor. Charlene gasped. Terror clamped her throat, trapping the scream inside. He turned slowly on his heels, holding out a pair of beige underwear.
“Really, Charlene, only taupe? Try a little harder for my next visit, hmm? Maybe something in red.” At these words, the underwear in his hands changed to a lacy crimson thong. He crossed the room gracefully, as though counterbalanced by an invisible tail and laid the panties on the blanket, just below her stomach. His hands lingered on her hips. The Gray Man leaned in, ran his tongue up her cheek, and whispered, “You’d look delicious in red.”
***
Charlene woke, staring at the dark ceiling. Her cheek was wet. She brought herself up on one elbow and her stomach roiled inside her. Light-colored heaps of underwear and clothes made a patchwork on the floor. The dresser drawers gaped like empty mouths. The room lurched to the side as she lost consciousness.
“Charlene.”
Someone gripped her knee.
“Charleeeeene.”
Her glassy eyes brought the Gray Man’s predatory smile into focus. “We are going to have such fun, you and I,” he said, and slapped her hard across the face.
She managed a groan. Her head lolled loosely, and her arms hung like dead weights.
“Is there anyone you’d like me to call? Emergency services, perhaps? It’s not too late to pump your stomach, you know.” He paused while Charlene tried to mouth words. “No?” he said, sitting on the bed. “I forgot. You don’t like visitors.”
He traced a finger over her eyebrow, around the socket. “Are you awake or asleep? Can you tell?” His hand slid up the inside of her leg. “Either you’re awake, and I am really here...touching you. Or you’re asleep, and I am so close,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “that I am literally inside you.” Tears ran from her wide eyes. “Which one makes you feel more vulnerable?” His tawny eyes glittered. “More...defiled?”
Charlene’s breathing came quick and shallow, and the room wavered around her in a grotesque mirage. The Gray Man pressed his bloodless lips to her ear, “I know it’s indecorous to be this...giddy,” he said, his voice husky, “but it’s hard not to be excited, when we’re poised together at the edge of eternity.”
- Writer
