by Dan Mooney
Denis shook his head but was interrupted before he could answer.
“But I like playing games,” Penny O’Neill said, pouting. “I don’t see why—”
“You know very well why she can’t know,” Plasterer interjected. He was looming again, and Penny shrank back from him. They all did, moving a little farther away from the hulking clown. Denis noted the subtle change, but since Plasterer was helping him on this one, he wrote it off as good fortune. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake. Now the mood had shifted, and three of them were cowed, submissive while Plasterer stood tall. He nodded knowingly at Denis.
Oh shit. I think you’ve fed him too much. He’ll kill you, Denis.
“Time for bed, Boss. You’ve got a long day ahead of you.”
* * *
Penny O’Neill had crept into his room at some point in the night, and she slept curled up at the foot of his bed, one long, slim, furry leg dangled over the edge, and her foot twitched occasionally. Denis remembered when he used to sleep like that, back when he lived in another world, one that ran parallel to this one, so close that they were almost the same. Except that he knew better. The rules were different in this world. His alarm clock told him that it was four fifteen. It never told him anything else except the time, and it did so silently. He admired its dedication to chronology as much as anyone can admire the work of an alarm clock. He slid quietly from the bed and padded down the stairs. It wasn’t unheard-of for him to wake in the middle of the night. Sometimes he got up, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes nightmares woke him. Vivid and shocking, they would echo in his head for hours after waking, and no amount of paperwork or relentless scrubbing of the back of the toilet or dogged polishing of the wires that poured from the back of the entertainment center in the living room could make that stop. These nights were his worst nights, and in his fear and panic he would call out to his housemates who would descend the stairs like a tornado, destroying all in their wake. He would clean as they went. Not so tonight. On this night he just made his way down the stairs and into his kitchen to make tea. There was a light on in the living room.
“Somebody awake in there?” he whispered loudly.
“No,” a voice whispered back.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive,” the voice told him. It was the Professor’s voice, the rotting flesh near his lips betraying him.
“What are you doing up?” Denis asked.
“Painting all the crockery with the paints you bought us,” the Professor told him matter-of-factly.
Denis was about to ask why but decided against it. With the Professor, such answers could take all night. Instead he filled himself a glass of milk and ambled in to see the zombie. The cups were stacked in the living room awaiting the careful strokes of the master artist inside.
The Professor sat in his usual chair with the stand lamp behind it casting an eerie glow around his rotting frame. His hands were poised delicately as though mastery of art could be acquired simply by posing in just the right manner. The paintings on the crockery were crude at best. Mostly smiling faces again. One or two sad faces. Standing proudly apart from the others, watching, were six cups. One had the face of a frowning clown. One a cat. One was purple and its eyes were dead. One was just eyes peering through a mass of thick yellow paint strokes. The other two were just slightly apart from those four.
“Why is Plasterer frowning like that?” Denis asked.
“That man is positively frownlicious, Denis,” the Professor told him. “For such a well-muscled man, he seems remarkably unhappy at times. Don’t let that painted smile fool you.”
“Why has Deano got eyes?” Denis asked, ignoring the implied warning. The Professor could be remarkably dour at times. “I’ve never seen Deano’s eyes. I guess I always knew he had them, but they’re never visible.”
“Don’t let our little furry friend fool you either. He goes along all right. He does as he’s told. But only for now. He’s watching it all. He’s just waiting for new orders.”
Denis shook his head at the cryptic response. The Professor was at his strangest now.
“Have you ever wondered, Denis,” he inquired, “as to why we all fit ourselves into boxes? Metaphorical ones, I mean. Everyone knows that fitting yourself into a literal box is among the most fun things you can do to pass the time. It’s the metaphorical boxes that seem to really contain us.”
“I’ve never thought of it to be honest,” Denis told him, sipping his milk. “Safety I guess.”
“Not that safe in there, I think,” came the reply. “Not when it suffocates. Plasterer loves boxes. He’d climb in them all day if he could. He’d put you in them too.”
“What about you?” Denis replied.
“What about me?” the Professor asked, puzzled.
“Would he put you in there too?”
“Heavens no. We live in the same box you see.”
Denis shook his head again. There was no making sense of the Professor when he was in such a mood, sitting in his lamp-lit chair, expounding on matters of philosophy as he painted smiley faces on cups and plates.
The last two cups were smiling also. One of them had yellow beads in its hair.
Denis went back to bed.
* * *
The following morning proceeded as usual, save for the marching of his housemates, who were running drills on the hallway landing and preparing to hunker down in their shared bedroom as soon as Rebecca arrived. Denis executed his morning on schedule, save for the minor irritation of having to scrub one of the bowls clean for his high-fiber cereal. One should not discuss such matters, but a healthy bowel is important in one’s day. Perhaps the only difference today was an extra-special effort at grooming. Privately Denis would have to admit, only if pushed on the matter, that this was entirely for the benefit of Rebecca. Outwardly, this was because one should always maintain high standards of personal hygiene and appearance. He gave a thought to the possibility that she may take a look at the house and find it unsuitable to her needs. This would surely be a relief to him and the others, but for some reason it didn’t feel like a good thought. It made his stomach tighten. He shook it off. He avoided thinking about the last thing she had said to him at the door before she had announced her decision to come and view a room. It had hit him harder than them, but why wouldn’t it? They weren’t there. They didn’t have to see. They arrived at the hospital after it had all happened with their red eyes and their hugging. Not for them the sound of screaming and the distant wail of a siren, getting closer and closer.
Plasterer stood in the doorway. He was gritting his teeth noisily.
“You look like you could spit nails. And not fingernails either. Hard nails. Like the ones the Professor used to nail all those books of yours to the floor that time,” Plasterer told him.
“Sorry. Distracted. You guys finished pretending you’re an army?”
“We are an army. An army of five. Unstoppable too. No wily women with beads can dare prevail against us.”
“Plasterer, she’s not the enemy. She’s just going through what Frank and Ollie went through at the start. She’ll grow out of it.” The words rang hollow even in his own ears.
“Maybe. Maybe not. One way or another, we’re prepared and ready.”
“They’re the same thing.”
“You’re the same thing.”
Denis gave him one of his patented flat unfriendly looks. Plasterer remained impassive.
“Anything else?” he asked the clown.
“We’re ready for fallout. When she gets here, it’ll be like we vanished into thin air.”
Denis nodded and returned to his duties. Socks don’t iron themselves, you know.
For someone as preoccupied with time as Denis, there are certain aspects of life that you simply have to learn to accept. For example, no one else ever operated on such a r
igid time schedule as Denis. Inevitably, everyone else was late. This normally wouldn’t trouble him if it meant that he could simply take out his paper and read while he waited, but this was not the time for such things. A veritable tsunami of rational-life destruction was bearing down on him, and it didn’t even have the decency to tell him when it was going to ruin his week. He tried texting. Well, at least he tried to try texting. He took the phone out and sat staring at the screen. He played with a number of options for tone. Stern about punctuality? She’d laugh at it. Casual and offhand? She’d take that as license to turn up whenever she wanted. Mildly curious? She’d see right through it. He opted instead for an extended period of procrastination and text reflection. Basically, he just sat there, continuing to stare at the screen, even after it had gone into sleep mode and was entirely blank. The housemates were playing Slaps in the living room. This game involved slapping each other. The rules were not complex. They rarely were with his coterie. There was a stunned silence when the doorbell finally rang. The four tiptoed out of the room in a highly exaggerated manner and proceeded up the stairs. Penny O’Neill hovered slightly behind, perhaps wanting to catch a better glimpse of the woman who would be sharing their home.
Denis’s heart was pounding as he headed for the door. He absently fixed his hair, which, of course, did not require fixing. He cleared his throat and cleaned his teeth with his tongue. He tested the door three times, as was customary, and opened it. She was standing there, smiling as usual. That smile burst through the dark clouds in his life. He instantly felt better upon seeing it, and the smile he returned her was genuine. That is, until he realized that she’d come fully packed. Her belongings in a pile around her with Frank and Ollie unloading even more from Frank’s flashy car.
“Hey hey, Chief,” Ollie called. “There was no way I was missing a chance to see the inside of your house. Me and Frank have twenty between us on which of us finds your porn stash first!”
Denis swallowed hard. He should have realized that such things don’t go off without a hitch.
“I thought you were just coming to view the room.”
“Changed my mind,” she told him presumptuously.
“Now either give me a hand with the bags or at least make some coffee for my manservants.” She was smiling at him still, but something in her look told him that she was also measuring his reaction. There could be no sign of cracking now. He hoped the housemates were well hidden.
“Come on in,” he told her.
For some reason he felt a remarkable relief as he spoke.
JUST DON’T ASK
They came as intruders to his house. No matter what kind of nice face he put on it, all the forced politeness and offhand charm in the world wouldn’t change the simple facts of the situation. They were not welcome here, and yet, here they were. To add insult to injury it was barely one o’clock in the afternoon. Sure, his mom came and went on Sundays, but her visits were spectral; she floated in like a ghost and left like one too. She hardly counted as a visitor. These though. These were visitors. They unloaded the bags, with surprisingly little chitchat, and then the three invaders set about exploring.
Ollie pawed through Denis’s things, hefting some as if to check their weight. He marveled at the wonderfully large television, his fingers leaving greasy prints on the smooth, glossy black screen. He idly tapped at some of the keys on the ultraslim keyboard that sat, glorious in its precision, directly in front of the computer’s monitor. He dragged his hand along the office wall as he walked around the room and fidgeted with the cases that held the DVD collection Denis loved so much. Frank did less fidgeting, but walked from place to place, checking things. Inspecting his belongings as though he didn’t quite believe that they were there. He looked in closets, noting how normal everything seemed. He checked and checked, searching for signs of some kind of rebellion against order. Had they looked in just one of the upstairs bedrooms they would have found at least four examples of rebellion. Thankfully, that disaster seemed, temporarily at least, to be avoided. Rebecca checked neither his things nor his cupboards nor even her room. She checked him. His face hurt from the effort of affecting a casual smile. Central to Plasterer’s plan was that everything seem okay. It was the only way to make them leave. Smile through it now. Clean everything they touched later. She knew though. He was sure that his mask never slipped, but somehow, she knew.
“Get out, idiots,” she told the other two, not unkindly. “You’re making my landlord uncomfortable.”
“I should think so,” Frank replied. “He bought this house six years ago, and this is the first time I’ve managed to get in the door. I keep expecting to find chopped-up bodies in the closets or something.”
Ollie laughed his agreement.
“I’m not uncomfortable,” Denis lied.
The words were barely out of his mouth before Plasterer made him wish he’d never opened it. A shock of multicolored hair was poking out from behind the kitchen to utility-room door. All of their backs were to it. He tried not to stare. A face followed the hair, since hair seldom goes anywhere alone. Unless it was Deano, obviously. His smile was slipping a small bit; he could feel it. He tried to put it back on. Plasterer was staring at him from the door.
“Yeah, say what you like, buddy boy,” Ollie told him, “but you look hugely unhappy. And frankly, kind of creepy.”
Plasterer made frantic, aggressive shooing motions in the air behind their backs.
“No, really,” Denis lied again. “It’s totally fine. You guys want to sit down in the living room? I’ll make some tea...”
Plasterer was now slowly waving his arms back and forth and mouthing the word no, over and over. He pointed at the living room and struck a pose so similar to Penny O’Neill that Denis thought he might laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. He started when he realized that she might be in the living room, but covered it by pretending to yawn. What if she was there, sprawled across the couch, her head hanging over the edge of the seat, her long mane spilling onto the floor? He killed the momentary panic and hoped it hadn’t shown on his face. He forced himself to look polite and inquisitive.
“It’s nice out, isn’t it?” he asked no one in particular. “Maybe we should go out the back?”
The Professor might be hiding out there. Badly. He really was terrible at hiding.
“Nah, it’s all good, Chief,” Ollie told him. “We’ll let you two lovebirds stop pretending that you’re not going to share the same room and get out of here so you can get all nostalgic with one another.” The emphasis he put on the word nostalgic allowed little room for wondering at his meaning.
Plasterer stopped moving instantly. His arms cut off mid-gyration. Instead, he stared balefully at the back of Ollie’s head. He raised one hand and pointed a finger threateningly at Ollie’s back. There was something chilling about it. Denis had often found his housemate imposing, even frightening, but this was something worse, and for a short second, Denis feared for his friend’s safety, so furious was the clown.
“Right, then,” Denis said suddenly. “I’ll show you out. I still have work to get done today, and I’m sure Becks wants to settle into her new room.”
Now Plasterer was staring straight at Denis. So was Rebecca. And Frank.
“Becks, is it?” Ollie chuckled. “See, you’re right back where you left off. C’mon, Frank, let’s leave them at it.”
Becks. He had called her Becks. A cluster of memories exploded in his brain. In each one he was calling out her name, and it seemed to leave a sweet taste in his mouth. He’d never called her Rebecca. He had called her Becks. He had once twisted his ankle badly and had been laid up for a few days while Rebecca had played nurse for him. He had milked it to an extraordinary degree, moaning exaggeratedly and calling out her name, Becks, over and over whenever he wanted tea or a cookie or for her to hand him the remote. Eventually her nursing skills slipped and she threw the remo
te at him. He had laughed for half an hour straight that day as she fussed over him and apologized for the little bump she’d put on his head. He fought down the shining memory quickly and savagely. None of them should be held up to the light too closely. He forced another smile and showed the boys to the door. Plasterer had made himself scarce again. As he passed by the living-room door, he glanced in. Penny O’Neill was nowhere to be seen either. He sighed as he locked the door and triple-checked it for security. He thought the hard part was done.
But his day did not get much better. Not even a little.
The first problem was preparing a speech to explain why he lived with four housemates who he’d never mentioned before. He was certain that she’d run into them, or that in their usual exuberance, they’d play a game that would result in them setting fire to something. Then the cat would be out of the bag, and so it would be better to tell her now rather than risking a plan to hide them from her. Besides, why hide them at all?
Remembering Plasterer’s grim words of warning, he decided against it. It seemed wrong to tell her, and he realized just how insane he would sound, if they had hidden. So he held his tongue and tried not to worry about it.
The second problem turned out to be photographic. Initially he had not considered Rebecca’s love for all manner of photography to be any kind of problem, that was until she attempted to introduce it to the kitchen and living-room walls. Denis didn’t hang photos. There was, he would have to admit some time later, a great deal of charm to them. They attracted dust and would therefore be a cause of some satisfaction during cleaning bouts. It was their content that offended the senses. The small one she tried to hang on the kitchen wall was a photo of the two of them sitting in the car of a Ferris wheel. As per usual, he was grinning like an idiot in the photo. It shocked him to think that of the admittedly few photos he’d engaged with in recent times, he seemed to smile like a moron in most of them. Rebecca sat next to him in the photo, one hand gently resting on his thigh. She had gotten cold that night, and he’d given her a zip-up hoodie to wear. They’d gone to a pub afterward. He drank dark stout and she had hot whiskey. Jules had come in, looking for all the world like a mirror of him with blond hair. She drank hot whiskey too. For a brief second when he first saw the photo, he could smell cloves.
