Weird Horror Magazine: Autumn 2022 by ISSUE 5

Author:ISSUE 5
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Undertow Publications

From the street, the house had an evacuated look: open curtains and darkness within. As he went around the back, where the door was unlocked, a text from Livia pinged through. Hope you got there safe. Sorry for what I said before. And about the house. Like I said, it’s a mess. Oh, and one thing—

He took off his shoes and went inside.

After Mum died, Ray had let the place fall into disorder. Ben took in the used mugs and bowls, the piled junk mail and magazine subscriptions, the sixpacks of cider that marked the journey between rooms (the old man drank to vent—the whole family did). He even found cigarettes inside the bread bin, a discovery that enraged him until he took one from the box and it crumbled to flakes in his palm. In that regard, the house was much the same as his last visit. But something had changed in the intervening months. Now Ray’s illnesses had taken over everything.

Dosing cassettes: lozenges, capsules, and tablets. Medical consumables: bandages and adult diapers. And equipment everywhere—a heart monitor, a blood pressure cuff, devices for palliative care. But most prominent was the oxygenator. The instrument had pride of place on the living room rug. Ben jiggled the cable until the flow whooshed online. He inserted the nostril tubing and snorted—the enriched air made him giddy. Then, as he found his balance, he stepped into wet carpet. “Fuck me,” he said as the liquid soaked into his socks. Only then did the rest of Livia’s message arrive. One thing. For the love of God, don’t take off your shoes.

He went upstairs.

Ray had slept in his recliner towards the end, so the main bedroom hadn’t been used for some time. There was a mirror propped against the bed, and a brighter oval of paintwork where it had been removed from the wall. Within it was a stain in the plaster, irregular in shape and variously discoloured. Like a bruise, Ben thought.

He re-hung the mirror to cover the mark. Then he looked himself over. Everything was wrong: rank asymmetry, deviated septum, the stippled remainder of teenage acne. And now something new, a skin tag in the crease of his eyelid. There would be nail scissors in the bathroom—sharp, precise, useful for minor surgeries. But you had to be careful. You could get carried away. One time, slicing off a mole had led to several stitches in the hospital. Because once you started, you had to keep digging to get it all . . .

He rode the stairlift down, just for the hell of it.

There was a strange, quiet atmosphere as the night wore on. Eventually, he found himself in the dining room. To his right was the screen door into the conservatory. You couldn’t see into the garden beyond, only the mirroring of the room behind him in the interior light. He appraised his shape one more time. Then, for a second, he swore the old man’s reflection appeared beside his own. Ray was just as he saw him last: wattles at his neck and a pendulous sag in the groin.

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