by James Plumb
Frustrated, Gareth dropped the tray to the floor and backed out of the bedroom. Jen rushed to her daughter’s side, kissing her face and stroking her hair.
Gareth ran back down the stairs and into the kitchen. He swung open the door to the fridge, looking for something, anything that his daughter might eat. Abandoning the open fridge, he moved to the cupboards, pulling out tins and packets of dried foods, hoping to find inspiration. It had been difficult to get Ana to eat anything for the past few weeks, near impossible to get her to keep anything down.
Shaking with rage and exhaustion he went to the sink, grabbing a dirty mug and lifting it to throw at the wall. He looked over to the bread knife left out on the counter, small spots of Jen’s blood still on the blade.
An invitation among the crumbs.
Lowering the mug to the counter, he seized the knife and scraped its serrated edge across his palm. He repeated the action, harder, tearing the first layers of skin apart.
He watched as skin parted and beads of blood formed at the new opening in his hand. Making a fist, he held it over the mug and squeezed, allowing his blood to splatter into it messily. Bizarrely, he felt no pain.
When the mug was a quarter filled with the dark red liquid, Gareth ran back up the stairs and into Ana’s bedroom.
Barging past Jen, he brought the mug to Ana’s lips. Her nostrils flared slightly, eyelids flickered and lips parted.
‘What are you—?’ Jen managed to get out.
Gareth hesitated for just a moment, before carefully tilting the mug towards his daughter’s mouth. The blood oozed slowly towards the brim before meeting Ana’s lips. There was brief resistance before Ana opened her mouth wider allowing the blood to pour into her eager mouth.
SEVEN
‘So what now?’ Jen asked, while they two of them lay in bed.
‘Hmm?’ Gareth managed.
‘She tried to attack me. She tried to bite me. So now what? You go back to work and let her try bite me all day long?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No. You want me to be honest. I haven’t got a fucking clue. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a psychologist. I. Do. Not. Know.’ Gareth looked up at the ceiling. ‘Listen to that, she’s calm now. She’s sleeping. And so, for however long that lasts, I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to enjoy the peace. Because right now I don’t have any answers, Jen. All I know is that when she feeds, she’s satisfied. She’s content. She’s not that… thing. She’s Ana again. Even if it is only for a short while.’
Jen waited. She watched Gareth carefully, knowing that he would need to calm down before she even attempted to talk to him.
‘Ana needs to eat. Eat real food. This… whatever this is, it’s a quick fix. It may be calming her but it can’t be healing her. She needs food and rest.’
Gareth turned his head to Jen, he rolled his body over and put his arm around her.
‘You’re right, I… I panicked. I just wanted her to be better. I just don’t understand why all the medicine and the appointments aren’t working. I want things back the way they were. I just want Ana back. She hasn’t eaten, she hasn’t spoken in weeks.’ Tears filled his eyes. ‘I’m just scared that we’ll never get her back.’
‘I know. I’m scared too. I miss her, Gareth, I miss her little laugh and the stupid little things she found funny. But she will come back to us, we just have to carry on and be strong for her.’
Two grown adults lay in bed, terrified at circumstances beyond their control, crying until sleep claimed them both.
EIGHT
Gareth stirred from his doze.
He heard something, an unfamiliar sound. He turned to see Jen lying unconscious next to him in the bed.
The sound repeated, a rapping against wood. His first thought was Ana, but this was too subtle a sound to be caused by the thing in Ana’s room.
His brain made a connection. It was the door. Someone was knocking on his door.
It was an alien sound, he and Jen had had very few visitors in recent weeks, managing to delay and dissuade various consultants from coming to see Ana. At best, they would have been unimpressed with Ana and her parent’s steady descent from wholesome nuclear family to the sad parasitic parody they had become.
Carefully, he got up from the bed and moved to the bedroom window. He could see a car by his driveway. A private car, not a postman or policeman or some other public servant. But from this angle he couldn’t see who was at the door.
Persistently they, whoever they were, knocked again. Gareth crept out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Through the frosted glass of the front door, he could make out it was a woman with blond hair and a familiar outline.
The post flap on the door lifted, Gareth moved out of the line of sight.
‘Gareth?’ A voice called out. ‘Gareth, its Karen from HR. Gareth, we’re all concerned in work. I don’t know if you’ve been trying to contact us, but we’ve received no notes from yourself for weeks.’
Gareth frowned. Weeks? He was sure it had only been a few days since he had last e-mailed work. But he realised he had no clue what day of the week it was, let alone what the date was.
The voice waited, expecting a response.
Gareth kept quiet.
‘Gareth, if you could get in touch as soon as possible, we’d greatly appreciate it,’ said Karen.
The post flap closed. Karen straightened herself and adjusted her jacket. For a moment she just stood there, staring in Gareth’s general direction. It was impossible to know if she’d seen Gareth or not.
Eventually, the post flap reopened and an envelope dropped through, falling onto the top of a pile of unopened, forgotten mail.
Gareth watched her outline move away from the frosted glass of the front door. He heard a car engine start and the sound of tyres pulling off on gravel.
He stared at the envelope.
Inhaling and holding his breath, he bent down and picked it up.
As he stood up, he found Jen standing behind him.
‘Who was it?’ she asked.
‘Work,’ Gareth stated, ripping open the envelope and quickly reading the letter inside three times. On the first two attempts, the words didn’t sink into his brain. On the third attempt, he had gotten the gist.
‘Well?’
‘They’ve invited me to a disciplinary interview.’
‘When?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘What time?’
‘Doesn’t matter, I’m not going,’ Gareth sighed.
‘You’ll lose your job.’
‘I’ll lose my daughter.’
‘Gareth, we—’
‘What good would it do? I’m surprised work have let it drag on this long. If they’re at the point of writing this letter, they’ve already checked with their solicitors that they can get rid of me. It’s already done. Me abandoning my family for a few hours in the middle of this crisis will make no difference. They’ve already made their decision. They were just doing me the courtesy of telling me to my face.’
Gareth dropped the letter where he stood, giving it no more thought. He knew he couldn’t afford the distraction of work at the moment. He needed to focus all of his energy on his family first.
NINE
Gareth and Jen lay on the sofa with a blanket over them. Weeks of Ana being ill had turned to months. Consultants had given up trying to make appointments. The world outside had moved on, Gareth’s bank balance was dangerously overdrawn and the only visitors that came to their door were debt collectors.
It was late at night, but neither had the energy to get off the sofa and up to bed. They just lay in the darkness, not bothering to put the lights on when the sun had set. They had watched television until the light from the screen hurt their eyes. Gareth and Jen found it strangely reassuring that the world at large was also experiencing its own trials and tribulations.
A crashing noise from Ana’s room startled them from their lethar
gy.
‘She’s kicking off again,’ Jen croaked.
‘It’s your turn.’
Jen slowly turned her head to look at Gareth.
‘I know. I know it’s my turn. But, Gareth, I don’t think I can do it again.’
Gareth looked at his wife. She was right, she was drained, figuratively and literally. He rolled off the sofa and to his feet. He took a step, but then the dimensions around him wavered and his eyes unfocused. He slumped back down into his chair.
‘Gareth?’
He put his hand up to Jen to reassure her.
‘I’m okay. Just need a moment. Stood up too fast.’
He sat motionless, trying to catch his breath. Closing his eyes in concentration, Gareth searched his whole body for some glimmer of energy.
More noises from above motivated him. Gripping the arm of the sofa, Gareth pushed himself to his feet. He took another step, holding out his arm to steady himself on the wall.
‘Gareth, we can’t go on like this...’
‘Jen...’ Gareth thought of the hundreds of reasons and excuses they’d used on each other over the past few weeks. But they’d both heard it all before, so he simply stated. ‘Jen, it works.’
Leaving his wife on the sofa, Gareth moved towards the kitchen, using furniture as makeshift crutches. Entering the kitchen, he flicked the kettle on before he eventually made it to the fridge. Out of breath, he summoned the energy to open the door to the fridge, its bright light making him squint.
The contents of their fridge were fairly pathetic; jars and bottles of condiments and a solitary milk carton. Within the plastic carton was not the expected milk, but instead a pint of his wife’s blood.
‘Just like mother used to make…’ Gareth muttered grimly.
He took the carton from the fridge, noting that it was the last one, and placed it in a small bowl. Gareth cleared a space on the festering kitchen work surface, amidst used needles and disposable lighters.
The kettle clicked, its contents boiled. Gareth poured the boiling water into the bowl, and waited as it gently warmed his wife’s blood to above room temperature.
It pained Gareth how cruelly similar this action was to one he carried out thousands of times when Ana was a baby being bottle fed.
Gareth scratched at the scab on his right arm. He noticed an angry looking bruise had formed, matching the one on his left arm.
‘Time to move onto the legs, then,’ he muttered to himself.
On his way back upstairs, Gareth stuck his head around the lounger door and found Jen dozing.
‘It’s the last one. Can you help drain me when I’m finished?’
Jen didn’t reply. Gareth assumed, with envy, that she was asleep.
‘Gareth we can’t—’ she whispered, finally.
‘She needs blood or flesh or something. If it’s not us, then who?’
Jen opened her lips but no reply came.
TEN
Gareth and Jen sat silently in the car as it glided through quiet town streets in the early morning. It was becoming obvious that the people who were out on the streets at 2am were not the kind of people you’d want in your car, let alone feed to your rabid five year old daughter.
At one point, they had driven for so long, they found themselves in what passed for Cardiff’s red light district, street walkers approaching the family car, not batting an eyelid at the presence of Jen or even Ana in her child seat in the back.
‘Keep driving,’ Jen muttered.
Gareth accelerated, leaving the prostitutes to float on to the next car that showed interest.
‘We’re going to have to get someone,’ Gareth said.
‘So far, our choices have been tramps, addicts or prostitutes. Ideal candidates for blood poisoning, AIDs or syphilis. You want to deal with that too on top of everything else?’
Gareth banged his hand on the steering wheel, glancing in the rear view mirror at the dazed, panting thing that his daughter had become. Eyes back on the road, Gareth saw something red and white sprayed over the road. Pulling over, he stepped out of the car before Jen could ask what he was doing.
In the repetitive flash of the hazard lights, Gareth leant over the animal carcass. He guessed, from the size and colour, it had been a dog earlier in the day. Holding his breath, Gareth started to scoop up the roadkill in to his hands. Half of it remained fused into the tarmac, but the hind half came away in his hands.
Waddling awkwardly to the car, Gareth attempted to open the back door. The interior light came on, revealing how far from his daughter the creature in the back seat had become. Small black veins or arteries had appeared, crawling from out under Ana’s hairline. Her once chubby cheeks had vanished, replaced by painfully angular cheekbones, her baby fat a distant memory. Her skin was a greyish-white, apart from around her mouth, which had taken on a pinkish hue, stained from the constant bloodletting. Gareth looked into Ana’s eyes, trying to find some semblance of his daughter, but all he could see was a dazed animal staring back at him with blood shot eyes.
After a moment’s hesitation Gareth held the dead thing towards Ana.
Ana’s head rolled forward, and for a brief moment Gareth’s hopes were raised. Ana’s nostrils flared.
‘Christ, Gareth…’ Jen said turning her head back to the road.
Ana turned her head away from the offering.
‘Ana, c’mon love, you’ve got to eat something. You’ll be ill otherwise. Please, love, for Daddy. Please.’
Gareth could hear Jen weeping softly in the front of the car. Looking back at his daughter, he could see she was making no progress. Gareth threw what was left of the carcass back onto the side of the road. Getting back in the driver’s seat, Gareth hesitated before gripping the wheel, his hands still covered in gore. Without missing a beat, Jen handed him a baby wipe.
Gareth began to turn the key in the ignition, but stopped.
‘It’s riskier, but if we’re gonna feed her something that won’t end up killing her or making her worse, we should try to do it in the day.’
Gareth stared at his hands on the steering wheel, waiting for Jen to reply.
The interior light faded as she exhaled.
‘Let’s go home.’
ELEVEN
Ten minutes away from home, Jen grasped Gareth’s hand on the gearstick. He was about to ask her what the matter was when he saw the lone figure lurching by the side of the road.
A quick glance around assured Gareth that they were unlikely to have any interruptions. Without exchanging a word, Gareth pulled over alongside the drunken teenage boy. Jen wound the window down.
‘Bit late to be walking by yourself?’ she said.
‘Silly cow cheated on me at a party…’
‘You shouldn’t be walking in your state, we can give you a lift.’ She smiled at him reassuringly.
‘S’alright…’ the teen said, shaking his head.
‘It’s dangerous out at this time of night.’
Looking in the backseat, the teen saw the apparently sleeping Ana. He cast his gaze back to Jen and Gareth in the front seat. He tried to carry out some drunken risk assessment in his booze-addled head before shrugging and climbing into the back seat.
Carefully, Gareth indicated and the car pulled off. Moments passed silently, the teen lulled into an alcohol assisted coma by the gentle sound of the tyres on the road.
Gareth remained silent, watching in the rear view mirror.
‘Cheers mate. Bit past her bedtime?’ the teen managed, patting the back of Gareth’s backrest.
Gareth hit the brakes suddenly, sending the teen crashing into the back of Jen’s seat.
The teen bounced back into his seat, hands flying to his face.
‘Guh, dou fuhk-?’ he spat through a bloody nose.
While Jen held her head and bent forward, Gareth leaned over and unfastened Ana’s seat belt.
Ana looked down at her loose belt. Looked over at the bleeding teen. And then towards her father.
; Weakly, Gareth nodded his consent.
Ana leapt out of her chair and onto the teen. Jen buried her face into her hands, unable to watch.
The car began to rock. Gareth continued to watch in the mirror as his daughter began to eat the boy’s face.
TWELVE
An exhausted Ana rested her head on Gareth’s shoulder as he carried her up the stairs. Gareth had performed this action hundreds of time, but the creature in his arms felt totally alien to him now.
Ana smiled and a dribble of blood escaped her mouth, trickling down Gareth’s creased white shirt.
***
Just a short distance outside of the town limits, a fox found a larger than usual meal by the side of the road.
Warily, the vermin approached his meal, sniffing cautiously at the spilled intestines on the tarmac.
Partway through his main course, the fox abandoned chewing on the teenage boy’s nasal cartilage as his feast started to move.
The fox had long-since scarpered into the undergrowth by the time the dead boy lurched towards the distant lights of the town.
THIRTEEN
Gareth woke again to the raucous sound coming from Ana’s bedroom. His left eye hadn’t quite woken up yet, but through his right he could see that wherever Jen was, she wasn’t next to him, where he expected.
Rolling out of bed, Gareth crept to Ana’s bedroom, the red glow from the night light shining onto the landing. He looked in through a crack in the door and saw his daughter thrashing on the bed, straining against the bungee cables that bound her.
Exhaling wearily, Gareth trudged down the stairs and peered through the window to see his wife out on the driveway. Jen was scrubbing the back seat of the car with baby wipes. Next to her, lay a carrier bag filled with used wipes stained various shades of red.
He thought about making his presence known to her, but the noises from upstairs distracted him.
