Trembling With Fear 9-15-24

Outside Her, by Mave L. Goren

The grandfather clock in the parlor always chimes at midnight. Sometimes I think it’s older than the house itself. Somehow, we remain: the clock, the house and I. It gets lonely in these halls, staring at the window, watching cars move by. People have come and gone and yet I remain, watching street fights, marriage proposals, buskers, the music of city life. And I stand there, my hand on the windowsill, in the gloom of my brownstone townhouse looking out at the bustling cityscape below me. Coldness and isolation are twins. Outside air creeps through the shutters, chilling my blood. Evil thoughts swarm, black and icy as the sidewalk.
When I try to go to sleep, the house stirs, creaks and whispers secrets, thoughts I have no earthly business hearing. And the chandelier in the parlor creates tentacled shadows on my wall in the bone-white moonlight, swaying its glassy tendrils in every direction. I wake up bleary-eyed, sick to my stomach, like there is something in my chest dying to emerge, pulsating faster than my heart. If a dark hooded figure would beckon to me, promising a great reward, I’d follow like a puppy.

I long for what is out there, yet I harbor a poison resentment at the same time. To converse, to love, to be loved, to be touched, would be sublime. I have heard rumors of parties and gatherings, friendships and camaraderie but they slip from my grasp like they’re slicked in oil. There’s something that’s been haunting me, touching me in a way I can’t articulate. An evil that runs deeper than my guts collapsing in on themselves, an evil that festers, rots inside me, blooming like a flower made of guts and viscera. And yet I must escape that urge, that desire to let it bloom—and if I do, then perhaps I could interact with others. Sometimes, things are easier on paper than they are in execution.

###

I’m invited to a party by someone by the name of Alison. I can’t say how I heard about it, maybe through a friend or a friend of a friend. I tend to view friends the same way I view ghosts; they are those haunting things, which thrive on irreality.  It was a couple of blocks away from my townhouse, it may be a good way for me to break from my solitude. To be in someone’s hands instead of in my thoughts.

The party is in a house on a street in the bowels of downtown, where cars creep bumper-to-bumper in crawling lanes like centipedes of locomotion. I shuffle my feet on the icy concrete, taking intentional steps so I won’t slip. The wind spits icy strands, reddening my cheeks. I hold my scarf tight against my face, huddling my coat for warmth. Something inside me keeps beating, breathing in and out, in and out. Muffled music escapes from the walls, drooling down from the stony eaves. I climb up the steps and give three raps on the door.

A young woman’s face greets me. “Marcia?”

“Yes,” I said, “It is I.”

“Welcome,” she says, “Make yourself at home, the party is just getting started.”

From another room, loud music thumps, shaking the very foundations of the house. In corners, women explore their bodies, grinding to the rhythm of the song.

The host gives me a bottle of beer. I sip it, staring with intent at two women feeling themselves up through their shirts. The beer rots on my tongue and dissolves in my mouth. I hate alcohol. Someone taps my shoulder.

I turn around.

“I didn’t scare you, did I?” A woman with shoulder-length brown hair is staring at me, smiling. Her face is wide, her cheeks high up. Dare I say, she’s cute. She waves to me. “Hi, I’m Gabby, what’s your name?”

“Hi,” I say, taking furtive glances around the room. “I’m Marcia.”

“Cute name,”

“Thanks,” I say, “it’s mine.”

She gives a little laugh and leans closer towards me, placing her manicured hand on my shoulder.

“What brings you here?” she asks,

“I heard about it. Through the air.”

“Through the air? I mean, who told you, silly!” She gently pushes me on the shoulder.

“Oh, Alison told me about this. She said she wanted me to go out more.”

“Don’t go out much?”

“No, not really.” I say, chuckling in spare coughs. “This is my first time. I live alone.”

“Busy with work?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you do?”

“I told you. I live alone. Don’t get out much.”

“That’s too bad, Alison’s parties are the best.”

“I should go to more of them then!” If I drink more of this beer maybe I could forget this conversation, drown myself in a bubbly haze.

Gabby stares at me for a second and then laughs. “So, Marcia,” She says, “Not to be too forward or anything but… you’re cute.”

I laugh a little.

“Thank you.”

“I was wondering,” Gabby says, “if you’d want to go somewhere private.”

I stare into her eyes for a second and then realize what that entails.  “Oh.” A blush blooms across my cheeks. “I’d love to,” My gut is churning, my stomach tightening.

###

We make our tryst in the bathroom. A dirty mirror rests atop the grime-encoated sink. Muffled bass thumps against the bathroom door, as Gabby takes me to the toilet and starts unbuttoning my top.

This is what I wanted right? A sense of dread pierces me, from my head to my tailbone. I would be unlocking an empty house, haunted by strange beings left to fester like toys in the attic. As she melts her mouth into mine I’m assailed with thoughts of vine-strangled towers and witch-haunted forests. As if prying a box of lost lore open, she unbuttons my shirt, moving her hands closer to my breasts.

A red flash of lightning, visions I wish to banish. Our lips are intertwined, and I just want to forget it all. Another flash.  Those fingers of dread crawl, inching all over me, my body threatening to break out in cold sweats. I lean in closer. Gabby pulls back from me.

Her jaw drops open. Revulsion, as if she had bitten into a pile of vomit congealing on the floor.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, Maybe she is feeling the same emotions that I do. Those flashes of lightning. Those visions of times long past. That same sense of a horrible thing becoming uncaged.

“It’s just,” she says, “I need to go.”

“Alright.” I say, “Talk to you later okay?” and she rushes out of the bathroom.  

Slumped back on the toilet, I reel as music thumps in the back and the lights flicker overhead, revealing every inch of the mirror’s grime. A vision overwhelms me.

There is a woman, alone and afraid, digging her fingers into her shoulder blades. There is a cavernous wound in the center of her chest, caked with cracked pus and dried blood. Terraced fields of flesh boring deep; descending into the gut. A flower of flesh and guts blooms from her bowels, breathing back and forth, back and forth.

I am staring in the mirror.