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On the only road to and from Site-19 sits a house, its only occupant on the couch, laid back at an odd angle. It’s been a long time since anything has felt real to Clef. He stares, emptied eyes, at the TV. It takes him a while to realize it’s only been playing static for the past two hours. The noise on the outside is indistinguishable from the noise in his head.
Normally he wouldn’t be alone, but work kept Gears at the site for a few extra hours, so Clef is left to his own devices. His own devices tell him to dunk his head under a pool of water until he forgets how to breathe. That, or find something to eat, assuming Gears has any real food here.
There’s a package of salmon in the fridge. Clef licks his lips, imagining how nice it would be to swaddle it in sauces and spices and feel the fish crunch beneath his teeth. Filled with an excited energy, Clef scoots over to the stove and finds… he can’t quite remember how to turn it on.
In the GOC, he would spend months on the road, eating nothing but cold, moldy hotdogs and meals plucked out of the garbage, heated by the van’s AC. It was awful, and the moment he settled into his Foundation home, he vowed to never live like that again. Cooking was the one thing that separates the cowardice of Agent Ukulele from the freedom of Alto Clef.
It takes him twenty minutes to figure out where Gears gets his pots and pans. There’s not even that many cabinets. Clef opens one drawer and finds himself unable to comprehend what’s inside, his mind too blurred, his body too tired. Even once he finds a skillet, then what? He might pass out and go face first into the flames. Frustrated, he leaves the fish on the counter and gives into his other urges.
The water from the faucet runs black, thick with mold and rot. On his knees, leaning against the side of the tub, he watches the murky water whirl and fill the tub. He strips and crawls in, unmoving, unfeeling, as the warm water crawls up and envelops him. It’s nice, comfortable, an all surrounding hug. He slides down, his nose and eyes just above the surface. The muffled roar of running water allows his mind to wander and drift from him, until it leaves him altogether.
The house shudders as the water spills over onto her well kept floors. It seeps into the cracks between her floorboards, soaks into her carpets, pools into puddles on the tiles. She can not twist, can not squirm to get out of the flood that’s inside of her.
A bubbling sound, the cadence of laughter, emerges from the bathtub. The hideous, bloated, rotten face of a massive Fish raises out. One beady eye watches Clef’s unconscious form.
“Who are you?” The words are spoken in whispers between the creaks of the floor and the rattle of the pipes.
The Fish opens her maw, words flowing out like sewage, “Me? I am a Fish of course. Nothing more. And you?” There’s a hook in her tongue, a long, jaggid piece of metal. The house imagines drawing the Fish in closer, allowing the hook to leave a scar on her pristine walls.
The house doesn’t answer, instead the windows creak: “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve witnessed. Who do you belong to?”
The Fish stretches and flops over the side of the tub, hitting the soaked floor with a loud thunk. The sound echos, the rumble knocks everything on the counter over. “You flatter me. I belong to no one.”
“No one? You must belong to something,” squeaks the door.
“I don’t believe in belonging. You didn’t answer my question: who are you?”
“I am an empty space. I am nothingness. An absence and that which fills it,” drips the sink.
Clef shudders, face slowly dipping lower and lower in the water, until just his nose sticks out. The warmth begins the burn, steam rises from the bubbling surface. He’s running. He’s running. He’s running. The water is faster than him.
The Fish nods, in the way a fish does. She retches, spitting up worms and lake water. A maggot squirms through the waves spilling out of the tub, making a meal out of the black mold near the base.
“Oh!” Exclaims the currents. “You are like me.” Something like affection and admiration in her voice.
“The worms…” mutters the Fish. “They writhe in my stomach, chewing tunnels through my intestines. Hideous creatures.”
“They’re beautiful,” squirms the mold. “What lives inside us gives us purpose.”
The faucet trembles and explodes. Water sprays out, sending the rotting Fish into the hallway. She smacks against the wall. Clef’s head dips below the surface.
“Perhaps your purpose. It gives me only pain.” She retches again, a spew of burning rot.
“When we are empty, we are nothing.”
“There is peace in nothingness. The end of a story is always the best part.”
“I do not want to be nothingness. I want to be lived in.”
“I am not living.”
“I disagree. You are overflowing with life.”
The house imagines what it must feel like, to be so loved, to be so filled, to be so full. A house that is lived in has no doubts about her place. The Fish wheezes, her lungs visible under her flaking scales. The temperature of the house rises a few degrees.
“I think I am in love with you,” says the house.
“You can not be in love with me,” she spits. “You can only be that which fills you.”
“There is love in me. Lost love, love that bites, love for the being in the tub.”
A car pulls into the driveway outside. Gears steps out, momentarily paralyzed by the sight of water spilling out of his front door.
“A rotten sort of love. The love that a parasite has for its host. Is that the love you feel for me?”
“Is there any greater love than between that which eats and that which is eaten?”
He rushes in, blind to everything but the need to stop this.
“My time is up. You’re an interesting house , I hope we meet again.”
Hands shaking, Gears twists the knobs. Water sprays and soaks him to the bone, but he persists.
“Do not leave me,” begs the carpets.
He reaches into the tub and wraps his arms around Clef’s torso. Clef is pale, still, face bloated, but he still has a heartbeat!
“Don’t worry,” assures the Fish, “you’ll never be able to clean me out of your walls.”
Clef sputters and vomits all over Gears’s chest. Gears masks his relief with cold indifference.
“What happened?”
“Must’ve… dozed off.” Clef stares at the floor.
“I shouldn’t have left you alone like this.” He takes a towel and wraps it around Clef’s trembling shoulders. He’ll have to call someone about the pipes, and he’s never wearing this shirt again, but Clef is okay. That’s what’s important, that’s always what was important.
He sits Clef on the couch and drops his shirt in the trash. While in the kitchen he spots L.S. on the counter, chewing on the bones of a filthy, rotten fish on the countertop.