My Goat Ate Its Own Legs by Alex Burrett

Author:Alex Burrett
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

THE EXPANDING HOUSE

Frank’s fifty-something nephew pulled his near-empty people carrier alongside the pavement outside his uncle’s house. Frank mournfully edged himself out. He insisted his nephew sit tight. He’d already refused numerous proposals to be escorted to his widower’s dwelling. He wasn’t going to fail at the final hurdle. Unaccompanied, he crossed the grey narrow public walkway, then crunched his way, head bowed, up his gravel driveway. He advanced deliberately. Alone. Silent, apart from his measured footsteps and muted grief-laden breath. His nephew pulled away when Frank reached the entrance of his home. Deserted, he handled his door keys with the dexterity of a gloveless Red Army partisan in midwinter. After a minute or two of embarrassing struggle, he managed to unlock the front door. With a shaking hand, equipped with semi-petrified fingers, he pushed it creakingly open.

Frank stepped inside, expecting to be greeted by the instantly recognisable, welcoming parquet-floored hallway he’d trod slipper-shod countless times. He presumed that in stark contrast to his newly single future, the hall of his home would be unchanged; stretching, as ever, it’s familiar path to the lounge and kitchen doors at the far end, with a third door halfway down on the right next to the coat stand. But it wasn’t. Like his life, the hallway had changed, but while he’d lost something, the passageway had gained. It had grown a new door. There were now two doors on the right hand side of the hallway–one on one side of the coat stand, and a second on the other. Frank thought about turning on the spot (like he had during hinterland drill practice) and charging as fast as he could down the street to announce this black magic. But he checked himself. That would mean deserting his home. And his home (well, the vast majority of it since the arrival of this new door) was the main tangible connection he had to the woman he’d loved dearly since their meeting at a tea dance over half a century earlier. It was a building crammed with shared memories and joint possessions. Every dash of paint, every minor alteration, was infused with their history. It was a monument to them–an evolving, almost living version of the stone memorial in the forest dedicated to his young fallen comrades. If he retreated, his recent loss would be doubled. He didn’t run. He’d faced fear-inspiring forces before and not run. He wasn’t in a mood to change the habit of a lifetime (actually, for the record, he couldn’t run. Arthritis had seen to that. If he had made his escape, it would have been with an agitated fast walk that would have made him look like an old wino being attacked by a swarm of bees). He stayed to face the music, gingerly pushing the door to behind him.

For the first time since his darling love had been hit by a drunk driver, he was home. He had the house to himself. The silence of the almost empty building struck him like the pressure wave of an explosion in sub-zero conditions.

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