by Aeon Authors
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb. I hear you put your glasses on the bathroom counter every morning, and I don’t hear you pick them up again until after dinner.”
“What’s this have to do with Joseph Conrad?”
“Do the contacts hurt your eyes? I can smell the saline solution you clean them with.”
Constance tries to sound annoyed to mask her guilt. “I got tired of glasses. I look better this way, but I didn’t think you’d care.”
“I don’t care. Doesn’t bother me at all.”
“Good.”
Constance searches for her place in the book.
“I really don’t care what we read,” says the Underthing. “Just so long as you’re safe and happy.”
“Always,” says Constance. “Now shut up and listen.”
“I thought you’d like to know I’ve eaten three spiders for you today,” says the Underthing from beneath the bed.
Constance stops on the carpet, curling her toes as she holds the plate of warm, rotting meat on her finger tips.
“Thanks,” she says.
“You have a bit of an infestation and I don’t want you getting bitten in your sleep.”
“Thanks.”
Constance places the plate near the bed-skirt.
“One of them bit me,” says the Underthing, the bass in its voice sending a buzz through Constance’s bare feet.
“Oh,” she says.
“So now I have a spider bite on one tentacle, and a splinter in another.”
Constance stands up and puts her hands on her hips. She’s never known the Underthing to try for sympathy, and it frightens her because she has no idea what it really wants. After all these years it still knows her better than she knows it, and she’s never taken that for granted. She tries to mask her unease behind annoyance—something she normally does well.
She sighs and says, “Are you in pain?”
“No,” says the Underthing. “Not really. But the spider bite itches.”
“I have anti-itch cream in the bathroom.”
The Underthing sniffs. “Ah, there’s fat in it this time.” Its tentacles snatch the plate of beef, scooping it under the bed-skirt with lightning grace.
The Underthing’s speed hasn’t made Constance jump in years, but it still makes her blink. She waits for the sound of its grinding molars, then makes her flying leap onto the bed, landing a little harder than normal because she jumps a little higher.
“Watch it,” mutters the Underthing as it eats. “You’ll make me choke, and I don’t think you have enough arms to do the Heimlich on me.”
“Goodnight,” says Constance as she lies down and reaches for the light switch.
“You know I love you,” says the Underthing.
Constance’s fingers pause on the rotary switch. “What?”
“I love you,” the Underthing mumbles between swallows.
Constance’s heart rises into her throat.
“I’ve always wondered,” she says, her voice miraculously calm despite the spinning in her head. “Do you think of me as a younger sister, or an older sister?”
Constance listens to the chewing and swallowing somewhere beneath her where the dust is afraid to gather and the spiders meet their match. The Underthing is taking too long to answer, and this makes Constance afraid. She’s glad it’s currently high on the rot of beef, unable to accurately taste her pheromones.
“Sibling rivalry,” says the Underthing, “is a mammalian concept.”
Constance clicks off the light and pulls the covers tight to her neck. “I’ve always thought of you as younger.”
“Goodnight,” says the Underthing.
Constance’s plan is to bring back Heart of Darkness and trade it in for something else only a moment before the store closes. That way Bran can offer to walk her home or invite her someplace, or at the very least talk to her without interfering with his work.
The street light changes before she can reach the button at the crosswalk, so now she has to wait through the entire cycle. She teeters on the curb, rocking on her heels as she grips the book in her small fingers. Her jacket is zipped to the throat.
“There are other bookstores, you know,” says the Underthing. “Ones that don’t close so early.”
Constance looks at the US mailbox standing a few feet to her left. The Underthing is getting too big to fit under such small spaces, and its tentacles poke out now and then like a dozen black tongue-tips.
“Why are you following me?” Constance asks, knowing the drivers idling next to her can’t hear.
“I’m not,” says the Underthing. “We just happen to be going the same way.”
The light changes and Constance marches across the street, arms swinging stiffly like clock pendulums. She scans the sidewalk ahead for places where the Underthing may be hiding, but she sees nothing for the next block.
“You shouldn’t be walking alone so late at night,” says the Underthing from a storm drain Constance didn’t see.
“I’m carrying mace,” Constance mutters as she passes. She checks her watch, sees she has two minutes before the book store closes.
“You know I’m better than mace,” says the Underthing from beneath a parallel-parked car.
“I was going to save it for a surprise,” says Constance as she speeds past the final block, knowing the Underthing could be under any of the half-dozen parked cars lining the curb. “But mother gave me some leftover pot-roast last Sunday. It’s been on the balcony all week.”
“Chuck or round?”
Constance trots across the last street, knowing she grows less and less attractive the faster she moves, but she can see the lights turning off in the store.
She reaches for the door just as Bran flips off the last light switch and steps outside with a jangle of keys.
“Oh, am I too late?” Constance asks, catching her breath as Bran stares at her. She can’t tell if the surprise on his face is the good kind or the bad.
Bran looks down at the book in her hand. “You know you own that now. This isn’t a library.”
“But I finished it and I don’t have anything else to read over the weekend and you’re closed until Monday.”
“Till Tuesday, actually,” says Bran.
“I know you better than I know myself,” says the Underthing. But Constance is the only one who can truly hear its voice for what it is.
Bran looks around, listening to the wind. “Cat fight,” he says.
Constance glances at the strip of shadow beneath a dumpster only a few feet away. She wishes she could talk back to the Underthing in public the way it can talk to her, with Bran hearing nothing but the bitterness of distant alley cats or the caws of flesh-glutted ravens. She would say to the Underthing, “You’ve held me back. You’ve filled my life with conversations and routines and security, and for that I thank you, but there are some things you’ll never be able to do for me. I shudder to think of doing those things with you, and I’m sorry.”
Instead, she feigns a shiver and says to Bran, “It’s getting cold out here.”
“I’m hot,” says Bran. “But I guess if I’d been out here for awhile I’d be cold, too.”
“He’s a real Shakespearian courtesan,” says the Underthing.
Bran glances at the alley at the end of the block. “They’re really going at it.”
He looks at Constance and says, “So, did you like it?”
“Like what?” says Constance.
Bran gestures to the book in her hand.
“Oh,” says Constance. “No. No I didn’t. But remember you said you wouldn’t hold it against me.”
“I didn’t like it either,” says Bran.
Constance smiles with relief. “I thought you were going to judge me based on my lack of literary pretension.”
“I would’ve judged you only if you had liked it. But don’t worry, you’re safe now.”
“He smells like grade ‘A’ choice,” says the Underthing. “But
maybe he doesn’t count as red meat.”
Constance spots a wisp of shadow stretching slowly across the sidewalk, curving toward Bran’s right foot.
She stomps the tentacle under her heel, and it whips back under the dumpster.
“Damn it, girl!” says the Underthing. “I’ve always wondered what you’d taste like….”
Constance gasps as the tentacle wraps around her left ankle.
So many times she’s imagined herself being snapped under the bed, jerked under the couch, sucked down the nearest storm drain. Would he start with her feet and work his way up, or swallow her all at once? Why did she think it would never come to this?
“You okay?” asks Bran.
And the tentacle is gone, leaving the sting of cold on her ankle.
“I didn’t mean it,” says the Underthing. “I was just playing. I promise.”
Constance tries not to shake. She walks just out of range of the dumpster.
“I’m hypoglycemic,” she lies. “Blood sugar dropped all of a sudden.”
Bran stands beside her and says, “You need something to eat?”
The idea is so perfect, so easy, so heaven-sent, Constance temporarily forgets about the Underthing’s attack.
“I think so,” she says.
“My roommates are having a cult party tonight and they always order pizza,” says Bran.
“A what party?”
“Cult TV shows. Tonight we’re watching ‘The Avengers,’ the ones with Diana Rigg.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a sad hobby,” says Bran. “But you’re still more than welcome to join us. There’s usually more eating and talking than actual watching.”
Constance smiles.
“Let’s go home,” says the Underthing.
Constance frowns. She knows the Underthing would follow her to the party. That’s why she says “no” when everything within her is saying “yes.”
“I really don’t feel so good,” she says. “I should probably just go home.”
“You sure?” asks Bran. “I could drive you.”
“No. I’m okay.”
Bran frowns, and Constance knows she’s losing him.
“But thanks,” she says. “Maybe I can show up later, if I feel better.”
Bran brightens and pulls out a small pad of paper from his back pocket. “I’ll give you my address. We’ll be up till about midnight.”
Bran writes his address and hands it to Constance. She smiles and walks away.
Every time she looks back, Bran returns her stare.
When Constance returns to the apartment, the Underthing is already waiting under the loveseat.
“Would it really have been so bad?” it says.
“What are you talking about?” Constance asks as she drops her jacket on the floor.
“He’d last me all week,” says the Underthing.
“Don’t talk like that.”
“I want to talk about our relationship.”
Constance shudders, and she knows the Underthing can smell it.
“Why am I making you so uncomfortable?” it asks.
“You want me to move into a bigger apartment? My bed’s too small, is that it?”
“You know I would never hurt you, no matter what happened.”
“What are we talking about?”
The Underthing’s voice rises in volume but lowers in pitch, causing dishes to rattle and pipes to buzz. “I can’t decide if we should think of him as steaks or chops. You think he’s ‘the other white meat?’”
Now Constance’s fear borders on anger, and anger gives her confidence, which in turn feeds her anger, like a snake growing fat on the feast of its own tail.
“If you threaten Bran again,” she says, “I’ll chop you into sushi.”
The Underthing’s subwoofer sigh causes something to rattle and fall in the kitchen. “I have no desire to eat you, little girl.”
“I’ll only need Bran for a few hours a day,” says Constance. “You’ll always have the larger portion of my life.”
“Really, Constance? I suppose we’ll be reading James Joyce next, or maybe Thomas Pynchon.”
Constance grabs her jacket in a huff.
“Where are you going?” says the Underthing. “You stink of something I don’t know.”
“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it?” says Constance.
She reaches for the doorknob.
“In whatever life you two create,” the Underthing rumbles, “I’ll always be there! Under your table! Under your couch! UNDER YOUR BED!”
Constance freezes.
She always imagined herself as an old woman doddering over a half-deaf husband while the Underthing smacked toothless gums beneath her bed. But now she knows it’s impossible. The few times she imagined the Underthing leaving her, she always saw it slinking down through the kitchen pipes into someone else’s apartment, to someone else’s bed, another child, a little girl afraid of shadows, a girl in need of the Underthing’s deep, room-filling voice as she clutched her teddy bear tight, waiting for dawn. But the Underthing is too big now for spiders and mice. It’s too big for the simple pleasures of children.
Constance shakes because she knows the Underthing will not leave her peacefully. If it had been willing to leave easily, it wouldn’t have been her truest friend. And so she knows if she chooses Bran over the Underthing, one of them will die.
“You’re confused,” says the Underthing, its voice now a smooth, muscle-relaxing hum. “You have so many emotions oozing from your pores. Poor girl. I’ve frightened you, and it was never my intention.”
Constance has never allowed herself to imagine killing the Underthing. She may as well sever her own arm. But this is the Underthing’s choice, not hers.
Surely Bran can take care of her. Surely he’ll try as best he can.
She drops her jacket to the floor.
“I’m tired,” she says.
“The morning will be different,” says the Underthing.
“You’re hungry.”
“Yes.”
“Wait for me under the bed. I’ll be there soon.”
Constance glances at the couch and sees no tentacle tips, hears no rumbling breath or licking of teeth. She knows it waits for her under the bed because that’s their ritual, the sound of her barefoot approach adding to the pleasure of the rotting meat, night after night. She knows what it imagines.
On the balcony is a full pound of ground chuck on a glass platter. The pot-roast was a lie, but this is second best, four days old and spotted with maggots. She owns no weapons, and poisons are too easy for the Underthing to smell, so after she heats the meat, she unplugs the microwave and grabs a bread knife from the kitchen drawer.
She saws the microwave’s thick, three-pronged power cord from its base, leaving a ragged stump of frayed wire and rubber insulation. She packs the pound of warm, rotting beef around the severed end of the cord, then rubs the remaining several feet of exposed cord with meat to mask the smell of rubber. And then, with the platter in one hand, and the gathered tail of the cord in the other, she walks to the bedroom.
She feels no anger as she stands on the carpet, staring at the thin line of shadow under the bed-skirt. The Underthing has ceased to be the same friend and guardian she grew up with, and so it has already died to her. She feels as if it has been on its deathbed for a long, long time, and now she can finally let it go.
“That’s not a roast,” says the Underthing.
“I was lying,” says Constance. “I’m sorry.”
“It still smells good,” the Underthing says.
Constance places the platter on the floor near the bed-skirt, then leaps onto the bed with the three-pronged plug in hand. She readies the plug near the outlet beside her, where the nightstand lamp receives its power.
A pair of thin shadows lash out, scoop up the platter, and jerk it under the bed. Constance listens, and when she hears the first munch, she reaches for the outlet.
“Good
night,” she says, as the plug drives home.
The Underthing bucks the bed beneath her, and its scream shakes the walls, mixing with the pop and sizzle of frying flesh. Black tentacles lash out around the edges of the bed as the circuit breakers trip and the room goes dark.
