Blinking open and looking up, he saw Lenore, naked and hugely swollen like a saturated sponge, looming over the bed. Her red hair was mostly gone, and her slanted eyes seemed like empty sockets. Dark blood overflowed from her mouth, streaming down her body and across the floor in rivulets.
The room was now empty except for humid air, but the walls were soaked, buckling and reeking of mildew. He got out of bed, naked himself, and pushed at Lenore’s bobbing balloon-like breasts. Rotten bilge poured out of her like a waterfall, submerging and drowning Todd.
He woke up, or thought he did. He lay flat on his back in a dry bed, but someone nearby, in bed beside him, was laughing. Gazing aside, he saw it was Clare. When did she come back, was she here all along and her absence had been a dream? She was in that old flimsy nightgown of hers from years ago, looking young and fresh as she did when he first knew her, but her eyes were all pupils and darting around, and her mouth was curved like the mask that represented comedy. Her laughter was mechanical, repetitive, coming from a windup device inside her. “Clare, what are you…” He tried to sit up but something heavy held him down, something around his neck. She laughed harder, tossing her head with merriment, eyes slit and entirely black, possessed.
“Clare, what is this thing on me? I can’t get up!”
She leaned down, her grinning deathmask face nearly pressed against his, and spoke in a low, mocking voice. “It’s a little corpse.”
He heard a scream and really woke up. He was in his rocking chair, near the TV. Clare was gone, there was no one. He must have screamed himself. The videocassette he’d been watching had run out, the VCR had shut off and the TV buzzed loudly.
Jesus, what the fuck brought that on? Wine, too much wine in one day. Wine and nothing to eat. He was seldom hungry anymore.
Shaken, he lifted the big open bottle of cheap-ass Rhine wine beside his chair on the floor and took a couple gulps. It was warm, and he choked a little getting it down. Rhino wine, that’s what Clare used to say, back in the days when she’d drink with him, back when she had a sense of humor, before she got all caught up in UFOs and fallen angels and Jesus and all that crazy shit. He’d stopped drinking wine and switched to beer for a while, for pretty much the first year after she’d left, because of sad associations. But he didn’t drink beer anymore, had switched back because wine didn’t give him that pain he’d get under his right rib cage as bad as beer did. Plus, he didn’t want to get a beer-belly again. Despite having no social life and no desire for one, he kind of liked the fact he was getting skinny like he’d been way back, though he also wondered if that meant he had cirrhosis of the liver or something. He never went out except to get more wine and cigarettes, and food, though mostly just microwave dinners. He dutifully ate one, or part of one, every day or so.
He yawned hard and long, almost hurting his jaw at its hinges, and snapped his mouth closed. He wondered what movie he’d been watching. He pressed the eject button on the VCR, and what came out was Tight Teen Twats 17. Okay, he remembered, he’d been watching that one again. It had some good scenes with one of his favorite girls in them, the young skinny one with long fluffy bottle-blonde hair growing out dark at the roots, and big mascaraed eyes, and who always whimpered, “Hrnt, Hrnt!” while she was getting fucked. She might have been saying, “hurts,” but you couldn’t tell. It couldn’t have been hurting too much because when the scenes ended, usually with a facial, she’d always have a big toothy smile. She looked about twenty years old, in a video from probably twenty years before. In the scant dialogue included, he’d noticed she couldn’t pronounce “r”s very well.
He had no idea who she was, there were always so many actresses’ names scrolling fast down the screen at the start, especially with the anthologies. That was what most of the porn videos they’d carried at the shop were, and he’d taken most of them when it closed. Hobie didn’t want them because he’d gone gay. Though he didn’t take the gay ones either, they got tossed out.
He pushed the cassette back in. When he did, it sputtered and made a brief grinding sound, then quit with a slam. It was stuck. “Shit,” he said. He hit eject again and, at that, it crunched loudly. “Aw, fuck.” It occurred to him this video had at least a couple of his favorite “Hrnt, Hrnt,” scenes on it.
He picked up the VCR and turned it upside down, shook it. No dice.
Reluctantly, he got up and stepped into the kitchen to get something to try and pry the cassette out with. He reminded himself to be careful, didn’t want to fuck up the VCR. Though it might actually be better to save the tape and ruin that, since he could get another machine, though he’d have to go to the fucking mall tomorrow to get one, and in the meantime, a few hours at least, wouldn’t be able to watch anything. Never find that tape again, though.
The kitchen, as usual, was a ghastly mess. He really should straighten it up one of these days.
He looked in the silverware drawer, found an old butcher knife. It was about the only thing left in the drawer besides butter knives because all the other utensils were in the sink, along with almost all the dishes, though he seldom used them anymore. A screwdriver might have been better, but he didn’t know where one was. He really needed to do the dishes. The sink was full of pretty foul stuff, including those frying pans he’d used earlier to cook up some of that worm shit for Shannon. He ran hot water into it, squirted some dish soap in, and let it fill up. That cut the smell some. Maybe he’d come back and do the dishes later if he felt up to it.
Back in the living room, he went to work on the VCR, trying to get the blade into the doored slot where the tape went in. It wouldn’t go in very far. He might have to take that damn little door off. Before he tried to do that, he remembered to unplug the thing. He yanked the cord, and it whipped out of the wall socket. Settling back into his chair to look at it more closely, he considered how to deal with it. Should he push the knife in at the narrow side of the slot? No, it wouldn’t fit. How about sideways across the top? Maybe there’s a tab there holding the tape in…
Frustrated, he pushed the knife in hard, and the tape shifted. He turned the VCR upside down, kept fishing with the knife until it jarred forward and bit into his hand, between the thumb and forefinger. It stung, and blood welled out. Fuck!
He threw the knife down and looked at his hand. It bled pretty badly. Aggravated, he set the machine down hard onto the floor and, somehow, that made the machine disgorge the tape, sending it skidding across the floor and under the sofa.
Christ! Well, he had to deal with his cut hand before he did anything else. He went into the bathroom to look for some Band-Aids.
Crumpled on the bathroom floor were the pants he’d been wearing yesterday, and for the last few days. He’d forgotten he’d left them there and now wore only a t-shirt. There was, he recalled, shit in the pants. As happened every once in a while these days, he’d thought he’d just had to pass some gas but what came out was a big dollop of turd, so he’d had to wriggle quickly out of the pants. He didn’t wear underwear very often, unless his balls were sore. There was a bunch of laundry to be done anyway, but he might want to wash the shit out of the pants in the bathtub first rather than contaminate his other clothes by just throwing them in the washer. Of course, that would slime up the bathtub as well. Life was just one damn chore after another.
He left the pants on the floor for the time being.
First, he needed a Band-Aid, and maybe some mercurochrome, if there was any. The cabinet in the bathroom was all full of expired bottles of Tylenol and tubes of backrub and jock itch ointment and stuff. No mercurochrome, but there was a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the cabinet with a little bit left in it. Rummaging through, he found a couple of Band-Aid boxes, one empty and the other with a few spot Band-Aids that wouldn’t be big enough at all. The cut still bled a little, blood streaking down his palm, so he went to the sink and held it under the cold water tap to stanch it. The blood reminded him of his dream, but he put it from his mind.