I wrote this piece for an assignment in my fiction class in 2020 where I could write anything I wanted as long as it met the word requirement. I was inspired by my love of the horror genre, and a want to challenge myself. I wanted to face the challenge writing a story with almost no dialogue, when dialogue is usually a large part of my writing. This piece took me out of my comfort zone and was very fun to write.
Her left eye was just a little lower down on her face than it should’ve been. I imagined it continuing its odd descent, spilling out of the socket and paying an unwelcome visit to her cheekbone then her chin. The right eye seemed more correct, but it would blink just a split second after the left one. It made her look like one of those baby dolls that just got shook to all hell by an excited toddler and now had those rattling plastic eyelids that never stayed in the right place. I wondered if I held her upside down at just the right angle, if I could make her seem fixed too.
Her hair was longer than I remember it being, but her roots had grown in blonde, delicate light blonde. That wasn’t right. She dyes her hair blonde, or she used to. I’ve seen baby pictures of her where her hair is brown, and her eyes are in the right place. Mama always told me girls change when they get to high school; I don’t think this is what she meant.
She gave no indication that she saw me, I wondered if her baby doll eyes still worked. Nonetheless, they were locked on the wall in front of her. Maybe she had scratched the wallpaper, or maybe it had simply shriveled and cracked and separated itself from the wall because it too was trying to run away from this house. I was here when her parents were hanging it, it had a pattern of little yellow birds sitting on delicately painted branches. She had picked it out, she liked that the little birds couldn’t fly away when they saw her watching. That was only a couple weeks ago, it’s a wonder how quick the rot spread.
It started on the little bird walls, it wasn’t noticeable until they noticed the smell, and the little black dots. Mold, her dad told us. Came out of nowhere. No matter what they did the little black dots wouldn’t go away, they just got bigger.
After a while I stopped seeing her mom come outside to tend to the pansies that lined the path to their front door. Their petals turned from red to black and decorated their lawn, a sad kind of confetti. I stopped seeing her dad at Margie’s on Saturday morning eating two eggs over easy and drinking coffee that was mostly milk. I thought maybe her mom gave up on the pansies because that big oak in their yard took all the sun, and maybe Margie’s was too far out of the way now that they moved across town, but that didn’t explain why I stopped seeing her.
Mama always told me girls change when they get to high school, but she meant that girls start doing stupid things for boys with floppy hair and crooked smiles. She meant that girls cut their own bangs and cry in the bathroom all night, that they argue with their parents about washing the dishes longer than it would take to actually wash them. Surely she didn’t mean that high school girls move into haunted houses and start talking to little birds on the walls instead of their best friend. But that’s what Ellie did.
Her lips looked so dry now I wondered if she’d been talking to anyone at all. The rest of her looked like it was trying to be normal, but her skin wasn’t sitting right, it stretched oddly over her elbows and knees like it was going to split and expose her bones. It was gray, just slightly, but enough. Her fingernails had grown out too long and the tips had turned black, maybe from scratching at the mold, maybe she was trying to fix things, to get back the little yellow birds.
Her lips, though, were redder than they should’ve been, like all of her blood had pooled there. They were stuck together, and there was a film of dead skin right where they met. The red, like the pansies used to be, stood out like a stain on her face. Jack used to tell me about the boo hags, and how their whole body was bright red raw meat with veins twisting and pulsing through it. They had no skin. He told me that they’d come steal mine as I slept if I didn’t listen to Mama. I told him they oughtta steal his for being a mean older brother.
Is that what Ellie was now?
Would her skin peel back like the wallpaper, leaving her all red? Her eyes would fall from her skull, leaving little sunken pits like the parts of the wall that had rotted through. Her spine would curve and stick up beneath her exposed muscles, hunching her over and spilling strands of that blonde hair over where her face used to be. She’d slip in through windows cracked open at night, crouch on the chests of sleeping children. She’d run those black fingernails over their skin, her skin.
When I took a step forward her eyes snapped away from where the birds used to be on the wall and were suddenly on me. Her right eyelid twitched. There was no recognition in her gaze. I was a little yellow bird to her now, and she was hungry for something that couldn’t fly away.
“Ellie?”
Her mouth opened, the dead skin that connected her lips slowly pulled apart. She used to have one of those laughs that looked like she was gasping for air. I’d tell her it’s a wonder anyone’s mouth could open that wide. I wondered if she’d start laughing now, if her parents would pop out from the kitchen, say the whole thing was a joke. I waited for the corners of her lips to tug upwards, for her nose to crinkle and snort and for her to tell me how stupid my face looked. I waited for the laugh. It never came.
Red lips pulled back to reveal gray teeth. It kept opening, too wide, pitch black inside. A cave. I almost expected to see little bats clinging to the jagged rocks that were her teeth. The air in the room grew heavy, hot. The kind of heat that discouraged movement. My joints ached; my vision darkened in spots. Ellie’s mouth opened wider. Her skin tried to stretch but it couldn’t anymore. I could see it cracking. I could see the red underneath. Maybe Ellie wasn’t in there anymore, maybe she was just a shell with rotten insides. Still, I tried to find her, I tried to think of the yellow birds and how she used to be.
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