To everyone else, 6 Breaker street was just another terraced house. A simple 3 up 2 down, red brick house.
The neighbours might grumble about the overgrown garden, the moss in the gutters, the just noticeable lack of pride in its appearance. Someone who didn’t live in the street wouldn’t give it a second glance, it was simply just one of many.
To Gary the house squatted there, oozing a deep sadness and dark energy. He could see it as thick ropes of tar that dripped down the walls, bleeding into the front garden, staining the pavement in front. The windows glared, watchful eyes that gave no privacy to those inside or out. The front door, peeling blue paint, was a mouth that chewed up those who entered.
It had been his home for twenty years.
No, that wasn’t right. Home was where you laughed, where you lived. A place of memories you would choose to recall.
He had never lived in number 6, he had existed there. Had slept and eaten there. He had never been allowed to live there.
It wasn’t home, it was the place he had escaped from.
Resting his hand on the weathered and broken wall in front of the house, Gary wondered if this was worth it. He could just pay people to clear it out. To remove the last vestiges of her.
Vanessa had told him that he didn’t owe this to anyone. That he should only do this if it wanted to. The feeling of obligation he felt was the last echo of her, her wants and needs. The things that had made him so unhappy. Vanessa told him that she would support him if he really wanted to do this, but he should only do this for himself. He didn’t owe it to anyone.
Gary told her that he wanted to, but he was lying to himself. That last bit of her still tugged at him. Telling him that a Good Son would see to this, wouldn’t leave her things to strangers. And he had been a Bad Son, he had abandoned her when she needed him and now see what happened.
His fingers gripped the wall, feeling some of the brick crumble under them.
This was a house of disease, a place of infection. Leaking its poison into everyone who came by. Happiness was intolerable, misery was king.
He could feel it on the wall, a sticky, oily feeling.
Gary jerked his hand away and rubbed it on his trousers. There was nothing on his hand except some crumbs of brick. Nothing cold and slimy. It was all in his head.
He should walk away, ring the company Vanessa had found, pay the money and forget about the house until it sold.
He should, he didn’t need this.
The key was in the lock.
Walk away. Forget this place. Let time paper over the chasms in his life until some good memories could surface.
He couldn’t make himself leave. Even now he still felt the guilt of being a Bad Son.
Gary opened the door.
His senses overloaded the instant the door swung inwards.
His nose recoiled from the stench, stale alcohol, piss, vomit, rotting food.
His eyes couldn’t find purchase on a single object, too many empty bottles and cans littered the floor. Empty takeaway containers piled in place of furniture. Broken things, twisted things. The remain of something burnt. What had been the lounge was a rubbish tip.
His tongue tasted burning, filth, sickly sweet.
His ears heard the buzzing of flies, a horde of them in constant movement from one piece of filth to another.
His skin felt the warmth and sticky sensation of decay settle on it.
Gary leapt back into the garden, retching. His stomach churned and he battled hard against the urge to vomit.
Hands on knees he sucked in clean air, keeping his face turned away from the house and its emanations.
His whole body rebelled against the encounter, tears flowed from his eyes. Were they in reaction to what had assaulted them or did them come from a place of sadness that she had come to this? Gary couldn’t tell. Sadness filled him, but he didn’t know exactly what it was he was sad about. His emotions refused to be clean, to be understandable. The house had infected him already, twisting things that had been so clean and clear for over twenty years.
Long, slow, deep breaths and a refusal to think about what was inside the house was the only way Gary could find equilibrium again. Some people may have passed him, he didn’t know or care. His eyes were fixed on the sickly grass beneath him.
His stomach settled. His eyes stopped leaking. Some trace of the stench remained imbedded in his nostrils and he forced himself to only breathe through his mouth.
The house needed a good airing out before he could even think about trying to sort through what remained of her things.
Gary left the front door open and walked away from the house, heading for the alley behind the row of houses to access to back garden. He wasn’t worried about thieves, any opportunistic crook was welcome to anything they could grab before the filth of the house drove them away. Any of them that could stand to putrescence inside to grab any valuables that might remain deeper in the house deserved them for their fortitude.
Six foot tall wooden fences had replaced the short and rusty chain link ones that had been there during his time at number 6. There was no chance she had taken it upon herself to do it, Gary suspected the neighbours had finally tired of seeing her when they wanted to enjoy their gardens. A solid wall to block her view of them, to drive down the verbals and mocking laughter.
He couldn’t blame them, hadn’t he done something similar, in a metaphorical way? Built his fences so high that she couldn’t see him and what he was doing?
He was glad the fences were there. It meant the neighbours couldn’t see the state of the garden, clearly uncared for for years. Weeds and patches of dirt were visible in the places not covered by waste. Empty bottles, cans, bones, junked items covered so much that there was no clear path through.
Gary was forced to pick his way carefully, each step considered and planned. He felt sure that a scratch from anything out here would lead to tetanus almost instantly. Probably some super form of it, mutated and made powerful by the house itself.
This time he stepped aside as he opened the door, avoiding the punch of filth from inside.
For a moment he thought he saw a shimmer in the air as the wave of decay raced out and was that a sigh of release coming from the house? Probably not, but he could imagine the building relieved at finally breathing clean air.
Gary waited in the garden for fifteen minutes, letting the air flow through, hoping to clear out the worst of the atmosphere. He had risked a peek into the kitchen and was horrified by the state of it. A black cloud of flies covered the ceiling above mounds of rubbish. The lounge looked easier to walk through, not quite as much filth, but that meant picking his way back through the garden which seemed infinitely more dangerous.
He heard Vanessa in his head telling him that this wasn’t worth it. Leave it to the professionals and their protective gear.
Head-Vanessa was probably correct, this was too big a job for him alone to do in a day or even a month. But he was here now, he could make a start, clear some room for them to actually work. At the same time, he didn’t know if he could do that. Could he let someone else see how she had lived at the end? Was it from embarrassment for her of embarrassed by her?
Gulping a deep breath of the fresh air, Gary stepped into the kitchen.
Almost immediately he was sure this was a mistake. His thigh brushed a bottle neck and he was forced to leap away from an avalanche of empty whisky and vodka bottles. Had she thrown any away since he had left? He didn’t think so.
Where to start? There was a fresh roll of bin bags in the car, but even using all 30 wasn’t going to make a dent in this. He needed heavy duty gloves to safely touch anything in the kitchen and he didn’t have any.
“Nothing wrong with a drink, darlin’. Sets you up for the day.”
Her words, her favourite saying. Usually followed by a long swig straight out of the bottle.
It had been her life ever since he was old enough to remember.
“Go on, try a bit. It’ll help you sleep.”
He felt the burning taste of vodka on his tongue from his first sips as a 9 year old. It had become an old familiar friend until Vanessa had helped, but that first burn came back to him now. The choking, the crying at not being allowed to spit it out and waste any.
For a moment his balance slipped and there was a memory flash of being a drunk child again.
Then it was gone and his feet were under his control again.
The buzzing of the flies intensified as they swarmed for the back door. They didn’t leave, instead they settled and flew around it, a vortex gate that would need to be passed through to leave. Gary hadn’t planned on going back out yet, but now he was repulsed by that exit.
Too much, this was too much. He needed to leave the kitchen, to see if there was anything salvageable in the lounge.
It was only as he passed through the doorway that connected them that he saw the door had been ripped from its hinges long ago. He wondered if it was buried in the house or out in the garden.
The three piece suite was gone, the set his grandparents had bought her when she moved in. The cream leather he wasn’t allowed to sit on in case he made it dirty as a child. The ones that had become their place as he became a teenager. Their place that now made him shudder to think about some of the things said and done there.
She had loved it, had been the one thing she had always maintained and cared for, better than she had done for him most of the time.
Now it was gone.
How bad had things got for her that the suite was gone? A simple camping chair was by the coffee table, a downgrade so obvious, but still not enough for her to change.
He didn’t fee the tears now, this was the clearest example of what Vanessa had spent years trying to make him see. That she wouldn’t change, didn’t want to change.
The TV was gone too, just a little CD player/radio to fill the emptiness with something other than the shifting sounds of her mess.
The rotting smell of leftover food was baked into the walls, he was sure of it.
Over in the corner there, was that?
It was.
Too lazy, drunk or depressed to go upstairs to the bathroom, she’d just squatted in that corner and…
“Unbelievable.” He muttered.
His voice, even low, sounded loud in the house and now he felt it. The emptiness, the lack of anyone home. It hadn’t registered before, hadn’t sunk in, but this was a house without a soul to it anymore. The soul may have wallowed and leeched the goodness from those it encountered, but it had been here. Now there was nothing.
He should open the windows, help the air clear the place out, but he couldn’t reach them without literally climbing on an unsteady pile of waste. Maybe the ones upstairs would be easier to reach.
“I kept your room, I kept it just right.”
Those words sounded old but also new. That wasn’t what she had said the last time they had spoken. She had told him that she would keep his room, ready for when he left “His little slapper.”
There was a clear path through the lounge to the stairs, at least she’d had enough sense to keep something clear. Gary wondered how many times she had fallen asleep in that camping chair, how much pain her back had been in on those days when she woke up.
He saw the carpet around the chair was covered in burn marks and dropped cigarettes. How close had she come to burning the house down, how many times?
Gary wanted to feel sad for her, but there was only a tiny ember of pity. She had never been this bad when he was here, had it been him leaving that drove her to this?
One side of the stairs was littered with more rubbish, this time only a few bottles, mostly fag packets, baccy packs, crisp packets and other junk food wrappers. Booze had obviously been too important to carry up the stairs open, too much chance it cold get dropped or spilled.
The noise of the flies followed him and when Gary looked down the stairs he saw them buzzing about the bottom step.
For a moment he had the horrible thought that they were following him, but quickly shook it off. He had disturbed enough stuff on his passage through, despite his best efforts, that he must have revealed a forgotten or missed food source.
He opened the door to the bathroom as it was at the top of the stairs, gagged at he stench of stale vomit and whatever else it was before slamming the door shut. That room he would definitely leave for the professionals.
The landing was mostly devoid of rubbish, just a few packets of half eaten crisps and more takeaway boxes. Elsewhere this would have been the most disgusting place in any house, here it was the cleanest he had seen so far.
The spare bedroom door was wedged open by bottles and wouldn’t open at all when he pushed on it. The rubbish inside must have fallen and tried to wedge it closed.
Which room to check next? There was only his and hers left.
His was a memory he could not yet face, the place of that final screaming argument as he packed what he needed.
It could wait until he saw how she had slept, though he could imagine it. Standing in front of the closed door, he took a deep breath of the stale air, fearing what had been trapped inside. In one fast movement he depressed the handle and pushed the door.
He had been right.
Nearly all of the furniture was gone. Her antique chest of drawers, the mirrors her grandmother had passed down to her. Just a flimsy wardrobe, half open displaying a few shirts and a mattress on the floor with two pillows, one thin blanket and no sheet on it. She had even sold or gotten rid of her bed.
His eyes danced around the piles of mouldy clothes, skipping over more empty bottles, over the bed and to the ever present colony of flies making their noisy way around the room.
He snapped his view back to the bed, for an instant he had seen her lying there, shivering under the blanket. But it wasn’t her, the blanket was simply ruffled. But it did move slightly.
The windows were shut, so there was no breeze to move it. Had an animal crept in?
Gary kicked the mattress to encourage whatever was under there to come out and was rewarded with a black explosion of flies. Thousands, millions. An incomprehensible amount for such a small space.
He shrieked and leapt out of the room, slamming the door shut against the vile tide which flowed towards him.
Pounding his fist against the wall he yelled out his curses, his disappointment, his guilt. That it had come to this, that he had allowed it, that she had allowed it.
It was his fault.
It was her fault.
It was damnation and sadness.
Now he was crying, finally overwhelmed by emotions he had long repressed in regards to her.
“Leave, just leave. Or burn it down. Just leave.” Gary told himself. Knowing that he had to see his room, knowing that he shouldn’t do it to himself.
If he left now, he would never know if she had kept his room waiting for him and he should be fine with that. It shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
But it did matter.
He wasn’t going to come back here, never again. If he didn’t look now, that nagging question would always tug at him. He had to know, but he didn’t want to.
Something brushed the nape of his neck, soft and ticklish.
Gary swiped at it, yelping at the shock.
Spinning around he saw nothing. Nothing but the spiderwebs which covered the ceiling and trailed down. The webs were empty of life. No spiders, no cocooned flies, no flies trapped and desperate for escape.
“I kept it for you.”
Did he hear those words or did he remember them?
He couldn’t leave, he had to see. He had to know if she had kept faith, even after two decades, that he was still going to come running back to her.
Gary opened the door to his childhood bedroom and sobbed.
It was near pristine.
No flies, no cobwebs. A light coating of dust, but only enough to have formed since she died.
His bed was made, his posters of Thierry Henry and Pulp Fiction still adorned the walls. His clothes hanging in the wardrobe, still missing the doors.
His desk, with a notebook and pen ready for him to note down his thoughts and beside that…
Beside that was a clean glass and an unopened bottle of Smirnoff.
Just waiting for him.
Unconsciously licking his lips, Gary stepped into his room.
That was the bottle she had taken from him two days before he left.
The bottle which had been the pebble to shake loose the boulders, creating the avalanche which separated them forever.
Gary ran his fingers over the bottle, daring it to be fake. It was real.
“Hello, old friend.” he murmured, not hearing the slight slur in his voice.
He was licking his lips still, the ghost of the burn and taste on his tongue.
“Have a drink to your Mum.”
Gary shook his head “No, it was have a drink with your Mum.”
But he could, couldn’t he? Have a drink to her, remember her one last time with the thing they had shared?
Head-Vanessa was trying to speak, telling him that this was a bad idea. Head-Vanessa should stop being such a killjoy.
One drink wouldn’t hurt.
Just the one.
Gary spun the lid off and heard a sigh of pleasure. He didn’t member making it, but he must have.
He poured a dribble into the glass, enough to taste, not enough to be a real drink.
“Is that it? Be a man.”
Her voice or his? Either way, they were right.
He poured a generous measure and raised the glass.
“To you, Mum.” He swigged the lot in one gulp. He hadn’t meant to do that.
His neck was tickled again and this time it was familiar. Her fingers stroking his nape. Brushing the lower edge of his hair.
“To me.”
Gary poured another and drank it straight down.
“To us.”
He heard the double slam as the front and back doors closed.
“Must be the wind.” He slurred, drunker faster than he remembered.
“Just the wind.” The fingers brushed through his hair.
“One for the road.” He laughed, swigging from the bottle.
Her arms wrapped around him “No road this time. Stay with me, baby boy.”
Vanessa was chewing her nails. It was the first time in years she had reverted to the habit. It took a surprising amount of focused will to pull her hand away and stop doing it.
It had been easy to find Gary’s car, parked outside of number 18. That should have made her mind ease off on the worry, but it hadn’t.
The black sacks were still on the back seat, as were the two cardboard boxes he brought in case there was anything worth salvaging from the house in terms of memories.
Her own car was parked a few streets away as there had been no other spaces in Breaker Street. It was starting to get dark and Gary wasn’t answering his phone.
He must have gone into Lisa’s house but what could he be doing in there without the supplies he had brought to empty it out? More importantly, why wasn’t he answering his phone? It wasn’t a dead battery, that would have sent her straight to voicemail. Instead it was ringing and ringing until it went to voicemail. Had he lost it? It couldn’t have been stolen, any smart thief would have had the SIM card out or turned it off as fast as they could.
He had left before lunch, determined to see how his mother had been living before she died. The police had given him the keys.
Vanessa hadn’t wanted him to go, for her that house was nothing but a reminder of the black hole of selfishness that Lisa had embodied and how the gravitational pull of her selfish, self destructive ways had kept Gary trapped.
The difference between the sweet man she knew on their dates and the drunken arsehole he became there was night and day.
The house had always smelled off, whenever she went there, but Gary insisted it wasn’t like that all the time. Vanessa had come to conclude that Lisa was doing something or not doing something there to drive her off. It had nearly worked too. She had dumped him, told him that while she could stand him when he drank while they were out with friends, she couldn’t bear the man he was when he and Lisa drank together.
Vanessa had meant every word of it, she was done with him. Six months was enough time to know that she cared for the man he was when he wasn’t there, but he always went back.
It had been a week later that he had turned up at her front door, one backpack and one duffel bag full of clothes and a few of his journals. He had sobbed in her arms, told her that his eyes had been opened. He never did say what the final straw had been, Vanessa hadn’t even known he was close to a last straw.
She had taken him inside, let him sober up in the kitchen of her flat while her roommate gave Gary side-eye and warned her to be careful.
After a week she had let him move into her room and they rebuilt what they had on stronger foundations.
Now, twenty years later, he was back in that house for the first time and he wasn’t answering his phone.
Her rational mind, the one that protected her said his grief may have knocked him cold, that letting him go alone had been a bad idea.
Her emotional mind said that something was very wrong.
For a change, she trusted her emotional mind.
Walking back to number 6, she found herself biting her nails again. She slapped her leg with that hand, forcing it to do something different.
Reaching the crumbling wall, she couldn’t help but tut at the state of the garden. It hadn’t got that bad in the week since Lisa had died. The state it was in took months. She really must have stopped caring before the end, she’d been a vain woman and that had extended to the house. Couldn’t let the neighbours think she was any less than they were.
Vanessa had to give it to Lisa, she had always presented herself well whenever she was out of the house. Tasteful, minimalist make-up, the kind that blokes thought meant she wasn’t wearing any. Stylish clothes, friendly to everyone.
Except for her, and as Gary told it, any other girls he ever showed any interest in.
Vanessa knew people changed with age, but she had trouble believing Lisa had changed that much. She always had an angle to play, something to pull on people’s sympathies or expectations.
Perhaps all the booze had really got to her in the end, perhaps it was something else.
As Vanessa approached the house she could hear something buzzing inside. All of the lights were off, but there was the sound of something moving.
And, was that singing?
She knocked on the door, the doorbell was missing.
She knocked again, calling out for Gary this time.
Still no response.
Vanessa rang Gary’ phone and pushed open the letterbox so she could hear if it rang in the house.
A swarm of flies exploded through the letterbox and smacked her in the face. She recoiled, flailing at the ever moving blanket that tried to wrap itself around her. Some got in her mouth and others crawled up her nose.
Vanessa fell back from the door, coughing and choking, trying to get them out of her.
The letterbox snapped shut and the flies dispersed into the evening sky.
The buzzing had almost entirely drowned out the world as she was swarmed, but for a second she was sure she had heard Freddie Mercury singing “I want to ride my bicycle.”
Bicycle Race, Gary’s ring tone for her. An old joke that neither of hem fully remembered the cause of.
Picking herself up off of the floor, Vanessa banged on the door, yelling loudly this time.
“Gary, I heard your phone. I know you are in there. Come on, honey. Let me in. Don’t go through this alone.”
She pounded and yelled, not caring what anyone else thought. If they tried to shut her up, she’d make them help her break down the door.
Gary couldn’t have properly closed the door because after a minute of pounding it suddenly clicked open.
Rational brain Must have not quite caught on the latch.
Emotional brain Funny how it only opened when we started being loud enough to embarrass her.
Vanessa wasn’t sure how to process her emotional brain’s thought, but filed it away for later study.
The door opening let out a punch of stench that sent her reeling. Vanessa recognised the smell of rotten food, but there was more mixed into it she couldn’t place.
She pulled a scarf from her coat pocket and wrapped it over her nose and mouth to filter the stench. It helped a little, but breathing the air in the house was still making her nauseous.
Her immediate thought was that Gary had been overcome by the smell and whatever noxious gasses might have built up inside the house due to the waste she could see. Before stepping inside, she rang his phone again.
The opening of Bicycle Race played from upstairs.
The buzzing was louder now the door was open and Vanessa had a horrible feeling that it was more flies. How could the woman she had known let her house get into this state?
She found the light switch and turned the lounge light on and was immediately disgusted by the sight before her. She realised that Lisa’s pride and joy, the only thing she valued more than Gary was gone. The missing three piece suite was more of a shock than the piles of bottles and discarded rubbish covering the floor.
Vanessa couldn’t find pity in her heart for the woman though, they had given her chances and offered her more help than she deserved. Every single one of them had been scorned because they wouldn’t give in to her demands that if they were going to be a couple they should move in with her.
With the lounge light on she could see the switch for the stairs and landing light. She picked her way over carefully and turned it on.
The sight of more rubbish on the stairs didn’t surprise her now. Not that she had time to wonder at the state of the house, Gary could be unconscious upstairs. Her husband needed her help.
Running up the stairs she called out for him.
There was no reply, just the increased buzzing sound.
On the landing she saw the wedged open spare room and the glint of bottles through the crack, she discounted it immediately.
Ringing his phone again she heard Bicycle Race come from Gary’s old room.
Calling his name, she opened the door.
The buzzing sound was everywhere, but the window was blacked out, she could see nothing.
Through the buzzing, she heard noises, human sounds. A moan and a gasp.
Vanessa turned the light on and instantly recoiled at the sight before her. Her brain took a snapshot to analyse as she turned away from the room, eyes filled with tears of horror and sorrow.
It wasn’t curtains blocking the window, it was a wall of flies.
Gary lay on his old bed, looking sick. A nearly empty bottle of vodka in his right hand which dangled off the bed.
His being so drunk would have been enough to break her heart, but what terrified her was the thing beside him.
It was the shape of a person, made from a million flies. As Gary lay, drunk, moaning and belching, this thing was softly stroking his hair, tenderly, with fingers made of flies.
Her memory showed her another image then, an old one. Gary, drunk on his bed, Lisa laying beside him, cooing at his state and smiling in victory at Vanessa.
“No.” Vanessa told herself, “That can’t be.”
She looked again, this time seeing features in the swarming face. Seeing the sly smile. Hearing the buzzing coo.
It was. The fly thing was Lisa.
“Gary, wake up.” Vanessa called from the doorway, unwilling to get close to Fly-Lisa.
“Wassat?” Grumbled Gary, blearily looking in her direction. “Oh, hey Miss Moderation.”
That hurt, a deep wound reopened. That was the name Lisa had coined for her because she refused to get as drunk as they would. The name Gary never used unless he was drunk with his mother. The one he swore to never say again.
“Get up, Gary. Come to me.”
“Nah, s‘comfy ‘ere. ‘Ave a drinking-poo wiv us.” He waved the bottle at her.
Fly-Lisa smiled and then, horrors, it spoke. Her voice modulated by the buzzing of flies, Vanessa wanted to be sick.
“She won’t join us. She’s no fun.” Fly-Lisa smiled, it was predatory.
“Yeah, you’s nafun. ‘Ave drink.” Gary gave her his drunk seduction smile, the one that made him look happily constipated. She hated that smile.
“Gary, don’t let her do this to you. Not again.” Vanessa couldn’t process this situation any other way than to fall into an old pattern. She knew what came next, wanted to leave this behind and not face it. But that meant leaving Gary to this, thing. She couldn’t do that, wouldn’t let Lisa destroy it all now that they were finally, truly free.
“Oh piss off. You hate me ‘avin’ fun. Borin’ bitch. Fugovaddavit.” Gary screamed.
How many times had she left at this point? How many nights had she let this happen?
“Yes, Miss Prim and Sober. Go find a boring man. You don’t deserve my Gary.” Fly-Lisa buzz-sneered, its hand stroking Gary’s chin, tenderly.
Rational brain – Don’t attack. That’s the hard part. Don’t let her bait you into fighting, that’s when she wins.
Emotional brain – Remember, her anger. Remember he loves you.
“I’ll stay. I’ll help out while you two have fun.” She had to be the reasonable one. But she could prod the bitch a little. “Maybe I can tidy up a bit.”
“Yeah, love. That be nice.” Gary smiled at her, a genuine one this time.
“Tidy? Tidy what?” Ah, there was that tinge of anger she wanted from the bitch.
“Oh, just a couple of bits out of place. Couple of cups I could wash up.” Vanessa forced the sweet sincerity she barely remembered from the last time into her voice.
“See, Mum, she jus’ wantsta ‘elp’”
“She’s calling me messy! How dare you? How fucking dare you?” Fly-Lisa yelled, speaking her lines flawlessly. Vanessa tried to keep the smile off of her face. The spirit of Gary’s mother didn’t remember how this went last time.
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to give you two more time to have fun.”
“Yeah, we’s ‘avin’ fun. Intwe?” Gary ‘s voice was happy, but his face was confused, was he remembering? She could only hope.
“I know what you want, you bitch. You want to take my Gary away from me.”
“I just want Gary to be happy.”
“You want me to be miserable.” The fly thing screamed, losing the coherence of its form for a second. Vanessa saw Gary’s face drop as the reality of what as stroking his face was made real to him.
“I don’t want you miserable at all.” Now she was going to do it, Vanessa pre-flinched.
She didn’t know where the bottle came from, it wasn’t the one Gary still held.
Fly-Lisa threw the empty vodka bottle at her and Vanessa forced herself not to duck, to let it hit her again.
It smashed into her forehead again, opening a wound along the old, faded scar.
Vanessa allowed herself a shriek and fell back, clutching her face, hoping that this time it would heal faster.
“You bitch.” Screamed Fly-Lisa, finally remembering what had happened, but inadvertently making her own cause worse.
“Mum!” Yelled Gary, finding a moment of sobriety and diving off the bed to catch her, leaving the bottle of vodka to drop and spill.
Once the first drops of vodka hit the floor, the bottle vanished.
“You’re stealing him again!” Fly-Lisa scream-buzzed, her voice losing its human quality.
“She’s not stealing anything.” Gary yelled back, his voice noticeably clearer.
The fly-thing sobbed, tears of flies running down its shifting cheeks “She stole you from me before. Took you away. Stopped you coming home. Its all her fault.”
Gary pulled the scarf away from Vanessa’s face, twisted it into a bandage and wrapped her head. Then he gave her a small smile and mouthed “Thank you.”
He tuned back to the thing that had been his mother “She didn’t stop me. I stopped me. You stopped me.”
The fly thing screamed and exploded into a shapeless form.
Vanessa stayed quiet as the swarm reformed into his mother. Gary was thankful for that, she knew this had to end by his words. She was his strength and he could never thank her enough for that. But the last of his mother had to be dealt with by his own words. She had to finally understand that all these years had been down to what strength of his own he had managed to find.
The swarm flew in intricate patterns, buzzing and screaming.
“Stop that. Your tantrums don’t work any more.”
The swarm settled back into the shape of his mother.
“She took you away from me.” it sobbed.
“She didn’t take me. I’m not property. I left you. I chose that.” It was hard to keep his voice firm, to fight back against the guilt.
“She made you do it. Made you ignore me.”
“No, Mum. That was my choice because you wouldn’t even be civil to her.”
“Why should I be civil to the bitch that stole you away?” The buzzing wails increased.
“Stole me away? Listen to yourself. I was your son, not your husband.” Anger now, rage that she still couldn’t understand that she was wrong. “I’m supposed to go out and find someone for me if I want. I’m sorry Dad left you before I was born. I’m sorry he made you go through that. But I was not meant to be his replacement.”
“You weren’t!”
“Yes, I was. You made me a replacement husband and drinking buddy. You were either my friend or my wife. You were never a mother.”
“I fed you! Housed you! Bathed you!” The thing squealed.
Now the rage was righteous and white hot “That’s what you are supposed to do! That’s what being a parent is, at its most basic level. Feed the kids, water them, keep them relatively clean and give them somewhere to sleep. Keeping your kids alive is the most basic function of being a parent and you barely managed that.”
“I was a good mother.” It wailed.
“You weren’t. You were a drunk. I had to make my own dinners, lunches and snacks from when I was five. Then one day you’d be sober enough to cook and demand a fucking standing ovation like that wasn’t your responsibility anyway.”
“I…was a good mother.” The buzzing dulled, dimmed, started to fade.
“You were demanding, controlling. You were lonely and wanted me all to yourself forever and always. I thought I felt sorry for you, but really, I was sorry for me. For all the things I missed out on because I had to be with you.” Gary let his voice fall to a calm volume. She wasn’t worth the energy of shouting.
“You left me to become this.” The thing gestured at itself, at the house, the mess.
“No. I left you. You became this. What you did was of your own doing.” Vanessa touched his hand, held it, gripped it. She fed him strength.
“Your fault.” It whispered.
“Yours. Always yours.”
“I was sick.”
“We offered you help. You said no.”
“The wrong help.”
“No, Mum.”
The fly-thing that looked like his Mum vibrated, the buzzing fading in and out. It was her, then it was shapeless, then her again. Its focus was fading.
“We gave you every chance. Vanessa took more abuse from you than I would have let anyone else get close to giving her. But she let you scream and shout, lie and berate for years.”
The flies coalesced and pointed at Vanessa, screeching “Her fault. Her fault. Her fault!”
The rage came back “Not her fault! Your fault! You threw the bottle back then.” He pointed at his beautiful, strong, amazing wife “You crossed the line then. And look now, you had me, I was under whatever spell you wove and you had me. All you had to do was not attack my wife! If you had done that, you’d have won. But you couldn’t and now its done.” Gary sighed, feeling completely drained “You’ve done this to yourself, Mum. You’ve done it all to yourself.”
The thing buzzed, swarmed, folded in on itself, then let out a wail and all the sound stopped. For an instant the swarm hung in the air before all of the flies dropped dead to the ground. Their bodies raining a drumbeat on the hard surfaces.
Gary offered his hand to Vanessa and helped her to her feet. They embraced and he buried his head in her shoulder. Before he could stop it, the sobs came. Deep wracking ones which drew all the energy from his legs. The pair of them fell to their knees, finding comfort and strength in each other.
Outside, Gary locked the front door and put the keys in his pocket.
“You were right.” He told Vanessa.
“I usually am.” She replied with a smile, entwining her fingers through his “What was I right about in particular?”
“One roll of black sacks was not enough.” He said, laughing.
Vanessa squeezed him tight and they left the house behind.
© Robert Spalding 2020
Ghost Stories by Robert Spalding 