Tell Me I'm Worthless(15)

On the evening of December 3rd, 1998, he walked, without thinking, to the window that looked down from his flat, across the dark expanse of the road, towards the House. It wasn’t visible tonight. There was a thick fog in the air. When cars and trucks shot passed, down the road, their headlights looked like the eyes of ghosts.

He felt drunk, although he had not had any alcohol, not for over a year now. But the world rushed around him. There was a stairwell beneath his feet, his footsteps heavy. Then the cold air, the fog all around, cloaking the streetlights, cloaking everything, wet and cold on his skin. He stumbled forwards, in the direction of the House. Come to me. He couldn’t hear it, of course. It had no real voice. But still. It sat there, in the dark on the other side of the road, calling for him. He was so confused and so intent on trying to get to the House, that he never saw the National Express coach which ploughed straight into him as he tried to cross the road, leaving a wet, bloody mangled mess behind it that looked nothing at all like Jeremy. They had to wash him off of the street.

That block of flats has the highest-percentage death rate of any block in the city. Nobody knows this, or, if they do, they are not the sort of person to care. Pets go missing from the flats there more than anywhere else, especially cats. The cats… it was inexplicable. They’ll be there one day, mewing and beloved, but the next they’re gone, with no clear sign of where they went. Cats vanish. It’s a simple fact. Something that everybody who owns one has to deal with, sooner or later. Not every cat, of course. But cats, in general, are not like dogs, they don’t stay at your side loyally. They vanish. They have secret lives that you will never know about. Somebody a few flats over might say they thought they saw the cat heading towards the House, over the road, and the owner is anxious that the cat was run over, just like that man, Jeremy, had been only the other week, but they can’t find any evidence of that. However much they love their cat, they do not look for it in the House. Sometimes, the House wants them to. But, if they are in their right mind, they do not follow the trail of breadcrumbs that leads through its broken doorway and up its dark stairs into its throat which is crimson and wet, dripping with decay. No, if the cat went to the House then it will never be seen again. That is a fact of life for those that live here. The owners can hope and pray that instead, it might have run into the forest, to live on a diet of field mice and shrews, but who can say, really.

There are a number of unexplained suicides in the flats. People killing themselves, without ever having shown signs of mental illness previously. Of course, people do not have to show symptoms to be struggling, but... don’t you think it’s strange that all these working-class people, single mums, second generation immigrants, will walk to their windows, and look down at the House, a splintered but welcoming visage, the House looking up at them, wormwood eating through its guts…. don’t you think it’s strange that they all decide, then and there, to take their own lives?

Haunted houses are rarely neat. If the House was truly haunted, then that haunting spilled out of its broken or boarded up windows, soaking into the fertile earth around it. The trees still grow, but the squirrels in their branches often feel the sudden need to bite each other in the eyes. Even if the cats from the block of flats made it safely into the trees, they may not be safe. But despite all of this, people still choose to live in those flats. They still hike in the woods. There are some who immediately feel safer, knowing that the House is there, and there are some who do not. For someone to be comfortable, another has to be uncomfortable. For someone to feel safe, another has to be unsafe. And the one who is safe may not even be safe, they may just feel safe, up until the moment they don’t. For someone, the majority, to prosper, another has to… well. I think you understand what I am saying, and why. For a house to be built another has to be knocked down, converted, the occupants flushed out into the wilderness with nothing to hold on to.

For one live organism to continue to exist, another live organism must stop existing all together.

The House sat, waiting for its girls.





Alice


Last night I dreamt I went to work again. Lying on the bathroom floor I fell asleep, my head ripe and throbbing with pain. I remember falling to the floor, my head resting on a towel. The lights were still on above me. Then I was gone. In the recesses of unconsciousness, I dreamt I went to work again.

Again? I don’t work. Not really. I don’t really have a job. Sometimes, men give me money to watch me do things around the flat, cleaning, dressing, eating, that sort of thing. Sex work is work, I guess, but I don’t know if what I do is really even sex work. The other day I tried to clean my flat, which is work, and I set up my laptop’s webcam to look at me while I did it. I’ve done this before, many times. I’m always shocked when I look back at the grainy video. The way my body moves is weird. I don’t know if it moves differently because I know there’s a camera there… maybe I always have that particular fake feminine sway to my hip, or maybe I’m putting it on.

The other thing men pay for is me talking to the camera, brainwashing them. “Look at me,” I say, focusing on my lips, dry and cracked but in the pixelated image they look deep red and ripe. “Look at me. Are you ready? I want you to imagine that you are out, after dark, in the deep neon pink lights of a gay club. Now, I know, I know. You’re not gay, are you? You’re not a faggot. I know that. You’ve told me many times, that you aren’t gay.” When they pay me, the men will send me what they need from the video. A lot of the time they go to great lengths to explain that no, they’re not gay, they’re not trans either. They just. They just need this, okay? “You aren’t gay. You came to the gay club because you’re comfortable in your masculinity. You don’t mind if a muscular gay man hits on you, do you? Because you know you aren’t gay. You know you like tits. You love to hold tits in your hands, put them in your mouth, suck on the sensitive nipples. But you were okay there, in the gay club. It’s just that straight men are programmed to be a little on edge around gay men. That’s all. You aren’t homophobic, right?”