By Aaron Romano
i.
Grace and Susan believed they lived alone in their house. There’d also been Rex, the orange tabby they’d moved in with, but he was gone after a week. The realtor, all spray tan and veneers, had warned foxes had been reported in the neighboring woods. Then there were the birds, parakeets Grace brought home after work as a surprise—sisters born from the same clutch, one yellow and one blue. Susan named them Thursday and Friday. Three days later, when Grace was up at five preparing for work (Susan still snoring softly), she went to check on the birds and the gore she found at the bottom of the cage was obscene. It had seeped through the newspaper lining and dripped a puddle dried black on the carpet. She wouldn’t have guessed such small birds could hold so much blood in them. After that they decided to live alone. Just the two of them.
The house was small, old but charming, a starter home. The front door opened on a living room, behind which was their bedroom, the bathroom and the spare room Susan used as an office. Hook a left when walking in the front and there’s the kitchen—white tile and old copper fixtures with a dining nook tucked in a bow window and a door to the basement at the far end. The basement was unfinished and the earthen floor, along with the well in the corner that had serviced the house’s original residents in the old days, endowed the dim room with a smell like oncoming rain. They put the Christmas decorations down there and otherwise had little use to visit the basement. On the occasions when she did, Susan could never help but to shine the flashlight of her phone down into the well to try and catch a glimpse of the dark waters far beneath.
ii.
It began, as far as Grace noticed, with her keys. In fact, it had been going on for some time, in the minute ways the brain never notices. Pocket change vanishing from pockets. Chipping on the edges of ceramic dishes. Fruit going bad before it should. But Grace always hung her keys on the peg by the front door. Every time she got home, no matter from where, no matter the hour, no matter how intoxicated, always the keys on the peg by the front door, just under the light switch. Their being absent was an inescapable anomaly. Grace stood, dwelling on the unused peg, turning over unwelcome hypochondriacal thoughts of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Then she tied back her dark hair and turned over the house as quietly as possible to avoid waking Susan.
She felt between couch cushions, looked under tables, opened every drawer and cabinet, turned out the pockets of yesterday’s jeans, even checked the refrigerator to see if she’d put them back with the deli meat after packing her lunch. Finally, an act of desperation, she opened the linen closet. It smelled stuffy in the closet, sort of like Rex’s breath when he used to prop his front paws on her shoulders and meow in her face. She missed that little bastard. The keys were resting atop a stack of pillowcases as if arranged that way just for her to find. She couldn’t think about it, or didn’t want to. She snatched them up and left. She was late.
Did she envy Susan the privilege of her talent? She couldn’t be sure. To stay home and provide by writing stories, essays, reviews and opinion pieces seemed like a dream compared to waking up at five in the morning. But when she was up to her elbows in cool soil, nurturing life at the garden store, and she considered Susan toiling over an article on the behavioral dynamics of heterosexual men between such and such age groups, she thought perhaps it was Susan who should envy her. Regardless of internal debate she was still frequently tired when she got home, working ten-hour shifts four days a week. Susan always had dinner ready for her though; that made it worth it.
Grace came home that night to the smell of simmering marinara and toasting garlic bread. Susan had noodles boiling and a glass of red was keeping her company while she chopped onions for the sauce.
“Looks good, hon.” Grace said.
“Thanks; got some garlic bread in the oven, too.”
“I can smell it—you finish the article?”
“Yep, all turned in, goes online Friday.”
Dinner talk was light. There had been very little action at the garden store, and they’d already discussed Susan’s essay to death while she was researching it. Neither minded particularly. Simply being, too, can be an act of love. After dinner they brought the remainder of the wine with them into the living room and passed the bottle back and forth as they nestled close on the couch and watched a film: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Susan loved it, but Grace fell asleep in the middle. Shortly after they went to bed.
The next morning Grace’s keys were missing again.
iii.
On Friday Susan’s essay, criticizing the misogynistic culture rampant in the fanbase of a popular billionaire tech mogul, was published. She had expected that not everyone would like her conclusions, would, in some cases, react with hostility—but she’d grossly underestimated the degree. ‘Not all men,’ it seemed, could handle a lesbian’s analysis on their behavior. By the time Grace got home, Susan’s email was flooded with hundreds of messages, their number only growing. She hadn’t started dinner, so absorbed had she been with message after message calling her every name there was, wishing homelessness on her, demanding she commit suicide, threatening to rape her, to beat her, to kill her in a myriad of creative ways. She showed Grace the most recent death threat and Grace just hugged her, led her away from the computer, sat her down on the couch and called in an order of Chinese take-out. Over General Tso’s and fried rice that night they watched Susan’s favorite movie: All About Eve. Susan didn’t laugh during the parts where she usually laughed, didn’t quote along like usual; after the movie she went straight to bed with a look on her face that made Grace uneasy.
iv.
The hate was unrelenting. Every day more piled on. Emails flooded in, her social media accounts were mobbed. Accounts became dedicated solely to mocking her. Multiple YouTube videos filled with bright colors intended to appeal to pubescent target audiences were made by young men presenting her as the definition of female idiocy. She felt violated, being used to breed a new generation of teenaged misogynists. The magazine retracted the article and in a private email stated her work would, going forward, be accepted on a case-by-case basis only. She expected similar messages to come, delicately worded, tiptoeing around the elephant: “We love the work but worry if your name isn’t a little too volatile just now,” etc. She found it hard to work, to eat, to bathe. She rarely left her office.
Grace didn’t know what to do about anything. She went to bed confused and sick. The nightly vanishing act played by her keys continued—and her wallet had joined in on the fun. It seemed a cup or dish broke every day, but never while she was in the room. Sometimes she would open the silverware drawer and find the knives and forks and spoons all bent to unusable angles and she’d need a hammer to set them to rights. She’d find partially eaten food lying wherever it had been dropped; in one case a banana, unpeeled, with a bite taken out right through the skin. She knew it was Susan, walking around in her fog. She wondered if she was aware of what she was doing. She could only guess. She saw so little of her after Susan started sleeping in the office.
v.
“I didn’t do any of that, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Why would I hide my own keys?”
“I didn’t say you did, why would I hide them? Or your wallet? Or any of that stuff?”
“I don’t know, Susan. I just know I’m not doing it. You’re home all the time, you haven’t been sleeping or acting like yourself. Yesterday I got home and all the pictures in the living room were facing the wall.”
“This is crazy, you’re crazy.” Susan tried to turn away.
Grace blinked, feeling like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. Then rage, black like oil. She lunged forward and shoved Susan to the ground, stood over her and shouted. “You’re the one who’s crazy. Look at this place, look at this fucking place! You’ve been in here a month, and it stinks. You stink, your hair’s half grease, you’re disgusting—you disgust me!”
Susan stared up at her in shock and, to Grace’s surprise, burst into tears. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You don’t know what it’s like having so many people hate you.”
Grace knelt and wrapped her arms around her. “I know. We’ll get through this.” She pulled Susan to her feet and to the bathroom where she started the shower. When the water was right, she helped Susan out of her stained clothes and over the porcelain lip of the old clawfoot tub. “I’ll get you some fresh clothes.”
Susan closed the curtain around her and luxuriated in the hot water. The light was soft here, filtered on all sides by the translucent periwinkle shower curtain. The rising steam relaxed muscles wearied by tension. While she was fighting the knots in her hair, eyes closed against stinging conditioner, she heard the door open and close. “Grace?”
There was no response. She rinsed the conditioner away from her face and opened her eyes in time to see a shadow fall on the other side of the curtain. She peeked her head out. “Grace, why didn’t you—”
The room was empty. The door shut. Nothing disturbed. No clean clothes laid out for her. She pulled her head back behind the curtain, unnerved, like a child hiding beneath the covers. She was certain she’d seen a shadow, that someone had been in the room. But there was nothing and nowhere to hide in the bathroom. Then, as she washed the conditioner out of her hair, watching the suds spiral down the drain, she felt a chill despite the hot water as she recalled the five inches of space between the floor and the basin of the tub. It’s right beneath me, she thought; and then, no, it’s too narrow, nothing could cast a shadow that big and fit under there. Ah, interrupted memories of research on the history of metropolitan sanitation, but cannot the rat collapse its ribs to fit in tight spaces? There are such marvels among nature’s grotesqueries.
She screamed when the door opened (again?) but laughed when Grace walked in with a clean white tee shirt, fresh underwear, and the fuzzy socks she liked.
vi.
That night was the first time in two weeks they slept in the same bed. Susan, curled up little spoon in Grace’s arms, was soon gently snoring and Grace, breathing in the clean smell of Susan’s shampoo, wasn’t far behind. Shortly after three a.m. Grace jerked awake.
By the tension in her frame she could tell Susan was awake too. She whispered, unsure why, “Suze–”
“Shhhhh,” Susan whispered back. “Listen.”
Grace strained her ears in the quiet dark. She heard nothing but caught an odor she recognized. It took a moment for her groggy mind to dredge the memory up from the Proustian depths. She’d smelled it in the linen closet when she’d first found her keys there. Then, there it was, a furtive shambling—damp, somehow, and reticent. Grace willed her body to be stone. There was a sound like a drawer being opened and its contents rifled. This was too much. As smoothly as possible Grace swung an arm out in a wide arc, catching the chain of the bedside lamp and yanking it, filling the room with buttery light. The diminutive form rooting in her sock drawer recoiled and dashed from the room so quickly Grace barely registered it.
“Was that a child?” Susan, sitting up in bed.
“If so, it’s one only a mother could love,” Grace, leaping to her feet.
Grace chased after the figure, snapping on lights as she went, in time only to catch blurred glimpses of the intruder entering the next room. A child certainly, by the size, naked and filthy. In the living room it ignored the front door and skidded into the kitchen before plunging into the basement. Turning on her phone’s flashlight, Grace dove after it. She ran down the stairs, chasing the shuddering beam of her flashlight, joined by a second beam as Susan followed. She stumbled off the last step, staggered upright, swung the light around to catch her bearings. Then both beams collided, merged into one as they fell like a spotlight on the thing, caught in the act of swinging one leg over the edge of the well. It froze in the light, no human child.
It seemed so frail, a body of eggshell, its rib cage jutting out over a distended little potbelly with strange male genitals shriveled between stick thin legs. The skin, smooth and mottled gray and white, was nearly translucent and the delicate tracery of veins was visible beneath. Its feet and complicated hands, flexing with tendons, each ended in six webbed digits that tapered into the talons with which it clutched at the rim of the well. The head, froglike and hairless as the rest of its body, was flat and spade shaped with two widely set eyes, bulbous and milky. Its enormous lipless mouth, stretching the full width of its head beneath a pair of flattened, wet, quivering nostrils, opened wide when they approached to reveal twin rows of teeth, sharp and thin as needles. It reared and hissed at them.
“Jesus Christ.” Grace took a step forward, curious and horrified in equal measure, gasping in shock when the hiss deepened into a growl.
“What the fuck is–” Susan got out before it lunged from its perch and landed on all fours, scrambling towards them with remarkable speed.
“Go! Go! Go!” Grace jerked back, pushing Susan up the stairs and stumbling after her as it followed, snapping and hissing. It made such perfect sense. They’d chased and cornered a wild thing. Fight or flight. The basic mechanics of nature.
They fell into the kitchen and ran for the front door. Grace knew before they got there that the car keys would be gone. She wasn’t disappointed. They could get out of the house but with no car and two miles to the nearest neighbor there wasn’t much escape.
Susan yelled, “Find the keys—I’ll keep it back!” Grace nodded and ran for the linen closet while Susan returned to the kitchen in time to see the creature emerge from the stairwell.
It bounded towards her, leapt through the air and wrapped its limbs around her body like a chimp before sinking its needlelike teeth into the soft meat of her bicep. She cried out in pain and disbelief and disgust, thrashing in its grip—surprisingly strong and capable for its emaciated frame. She beat against its face with her one free hand, plunging her thumb into one of its eyes and tearing it out in a horrible glut of crimson. Undeterred, its face slick with the gore spilling from its eye socket, severed optic nerve dangling lifelessly, it clamped its jaws tighter. She knew she was losing time, much more pressure and the bone in her arm would be crushed.
She swung out with her free hand in desperation, rapping her knuckles painfully on the cast iron skillet hanging from the rack above the stove. She seized onto it, pulling it to her, dragging the whole rack down in the process as she yanked it free. She raised it in the air, selecting the edge of the pan as her weapon, and brought it down on the creature’s head with all of her strength. The bone in her arm snapped. The sound of it in the room, to her, was like a gunshot. She screamed in white hot agony, tears spilling from her eyes, urine dripping down her leg as she brought the skillet down again. This time the creature’s jaw slackened, and it tumbled to the floor. She fell upon it and struck it a third time and a fourth so that its head was crushed and broken, lifeblood seeping from the wounds. She staggered to her feet, injured arm dangling limp and at her side, her body crisscrossed with bleeding scratches from the thing’s talons.
Grace ran in with the keys. “Got ‘em! They were in the sock drawer.”
“Good,” Susan panted. “Because I need to go to the fucking hospital.”
Grace pointed to the dead thing on the ground between them. “What do we do with that?”
After bandaging Susan’s arm to stop the bleeding they rolled the creature in a sheet and used it as a stretcher to carry it downstairs. It was a clumsy operation with Susan’s one arm, but the creature weighed little and they were still running on adrenaline. They dumped it, sheet and all, back down the well. Susan leaned her head on Grace’s shoulder and listened in exhaustion as the splash faded into silence. They’d not yet mounted the stairs when another sound reverberated up out of the well to shatter their peace—a cry of fury no human throat could reproduce; a sound perhaps never before heard by human ears. But Susan recognized it immediately. It was unmistakable. The primordial wail of maternal grief.
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Aaron Romano (they/them) was born in New Orleans, LA and has been obsessed with all things horror since they were about 5 years old. They have been published in multiple anthologies and magazines, most recently We Can Always Tell: an Anthology of Trans Horror from the Laughing Man House Publishing. Aaron currently resides in western North Carolina with their partner and their two cats. Aaron can be located on Bluesky via their handle @alromano.bsky.social.
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