Part 1
June 17
Janice removed another cigarette from the case she had discovered wedged behind a radiator. Until she found it, she hadn’t smoked since college, a good fifteen years ago.
Come to think of it, that’s the last time she’d had this body as well. It was strange. She’d always been a nervous eater, packing on the pounds when life threw her for a loop. But here, the sleepless nights, the growing sense of dread and confusion, and the suspicion her mind was unraveling bit by bit, all seemed to be doing wonders for her figure. Her breasts, always the first to go when she did manage to drop a few pounds, seemed - if anything – fuller than they had ever been. Her waist had slimmed, and unaided by a single sit up, she had developed a firm, flat stomach. Her legs would stop traffic and you could bounce a penny off her ass.
It’s the stairs. All the up and down the stairs, the painting, the hauling, there’s no mystery there. And if there is, I’m not interested in exploring it.
Janice was going out.
She was going to the most crowded bar she could find. She was going to wear that timeless little red number that hadn’t fit for at least five years. She was going to find some young stud with something to prove and she was going back to his place to feel a real man’s touch. To work whatever this freak, pre-menopausal hormone storm was, out of her system.
The dress fit like a glove and her hair was doing exactly what she wanted. Janice was elated. It felt so good to be leaving, getting out, going somewhere other than the supermarket. She leaned in toward the mirror, pulling down gently on her lower lid to apply liner-
And cried out at the sight of a gloved hand coming toward her face.
Your hand. It’s your hand. Chill, just wiping away some sweat.
Sweat? What am I doing?
She was on her knees, sandpaper in hand, working furiously at the small details in the bannister too delicate for the orbital sander. Which, she saw now, was plugged in beside her on the second landing. Blood pounding in her ears, dread and disorientation filling her, she turned her head slowly, eyes widening with shock as she looked down the staircase and saw that in her wake the battered old varnish had been stripped away revealing lovely, fresh wood ready for the rejuvenating kiss of linseed oil.
That’s twenty-eight steps and the first landing. How long have I been here?
Janice began to shake.
July 4
Sitting on the side porch, the sound of fireworks in the distance somehow only intensifying her sense of isolation, Janice flicked open the cigarette case and helped herself to another Marlboro.
She’d had to repaint the mold patch in the room again. Despite the repeated application of paint guaranteed to cover such stains, every three or four days it began to seep through. She didn’t know how she was still upright. What passed for sleep these days was more like a repetitive hallucinogenic nightmare. Her nights were spent in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets. When she woke, her memories were a jumble of craving and horror.
Yet, she went on. Despite the persistence of the stain in her bedroom, progress was moving at a pace she couldn’t have imagined six weeks ago. She was like a machine, her exhaustion no hindrance to her body’s function when it came to the house.
Only the house.
Twice more she had attempted to go out for a night on the town. The first, she’d been blow-drying her hair, blinked, and she was holding a heat gun to the glazing on a window, scraper in the other hand, midway through removing the pane for reglazing. The second, she’d decided while she was at the grocery store, that she would not – in fact – go home. She would go to a hotel instead. She had opened the trunk to place the groceries inside, blinked, and found herself kneeling before a dress trunk in the attic, lid up, kid gloves on her hands, and an exquisite and ancient silk evening gown held to her chest as if to see how it would look.
The house – or what was in it - wanted her to restore it and that’s what she would do. There were times she wanted to stop but she could sense disagreement in the very air and she kept working. She didn’t like the lost time and she didn’t dare do anything that would bring it on again. She worked until her hands were raw, sometimes blistered to the point of bleeding. Sometimes, in her haste or a moment of distraction, she injured herself. It didn’t matter.
In the night, he would come to her, filling her with shame, fear, longing, and himself; in the morning she would be again without blemish. He let her see him now, and she was unsurprised to recognize him: James McDougan, Master of the House.
My master as well, now.
Author's Note
I took the photo accompanying this piece while running electrical for the home in which my family and I now reside. The confusion was real: What on earth was a handkerchief doing stuffed into the brick behind a finished plaster wall? This story is the result of my wild ponderings of that question. The handkerchief remains untouched.
Just in case...
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