She is unseen. Hidden within the peeling wallpaper that your eyes glance over as they turn to stare out the window. She stares at you with the same intensity with which you track the football players running around in the television. You sure don’t observe the world around you with the level of detail expected from someone who makes a living depicting it.
She lives within the wallpaper, that crappy and deteriorated green mush you’ve grown accustomed too. You don’t even notice it now. The same way you got used to the smell of decay. You probably
forgot all about it, too. Last time you remembered was your brother’s first and last visit.
He was a mean one, your brother. With his black boots tracking mud onto the carpet, wet dark hair from the rain outside dripping all over the place, his eyes scanning over everything in the room, judging. Scrunched up his nose as he walked in, pulled a face. Asked what the hell was that smell.
You were confused, but she who lives in the wallpaper was a little embarrassed. Your brother just walked in and offered you that bottle of cheap wine under his arms. He had a crass air to him. Perhaps it was the deep grooves of his face that made him look eternally sullen. Or maybe it was his broken smile, seeming sarcastic, mocking. Either way, there was something off. She didn’t like him.
She had spent the last two days dusting the furniture you never dusted, washing some of the dishes left around your bedroom, even cleaning the windows. They had been thick with grime.
She had been so proud. She never was good at cleaning up (you were even worse) but she had tried her best.
You never noticed the small things she did to help you. How, when you slept, she’d crawl out of the wallpaper like a tickling centipede, click-click-clicking as she did the things you refused to. Taking out the trash. Removing the cobweb on the top corner of the stairs. Puffing the couch cushions. Getting rid of the rat infestation in the basement (what a crunchy, tasty treat they are).
She waits until you wake up and move into your painting room before she changes your sheets, though.
You always forget the doors open, the lights on. During the day she trails you and politely shuts, turns off, what you forgot. Maybe it’d be best for you in the long term if she didn’t, teach a man how to fish and whatnot, but she comes from a time where electricity was expensive and dirty, and people were nice to each other.
You drink too much. So she dumped the wine into the sink and left the empty bottle next to your brother’s bed. Your brother’s bed. He even got a bed. She didn’t want him to stay, but he gave no signs of leaving anytime soon. He had his own goddamn bed.
She feels good helping you. Even though the way you organize your fridge is confusing to say the least. Even though you let your dirty laundry pile high before washing anything. Even though sometimes you don’t get dressed immediately after coming out of the shower.
She didn’t even want gratitude. All she wanted was to be acknowledgment, even if indirectly. She wanted your brother to walk in and say, “Wow, what a nice wonderful home.”
Everything was fine until your brother woke up late at night while she was busy. Living in the wallpaper is great, don’t misunderstand, but she really enjoys stretching out every now and then. She likes it even more than she likes hiding behind the paintings you’ve hung up. Not that they’re any good— in fact, she thinks they’re pretentious, no Picasso— but they give her somewhere to peak from. She likes seeing you move around the house. She likes hiding behind paintings very, very much.
So she had a bad first impression of your brother. To make matters worse, he interrupted her ‘me-time.’ She decided you’d be better off without him.
She was never evil. Ominous, perhaps. Creepy, if you aren’t very open-minded. She was, however, a resident defending her home of what she thought was a highly unlikeable person. There were also a lot of mischievous ideas tumbling inside that crooked head of hers, like a hoard of tiny grey spiders waiting to break free from their confinement. Just waiting their turn.
But she didn’t want to scare you. The same way human children keep fish in a bowl, ants in an ant farm, she enjoyed coexisting with you.
She skittered off when your brother came down to get water. Skittered back behind the painting. Skit skit skit. She watched as he gulped down water, dribbling in his drunken haze.
It started out simple. Moving things, misplacing objects. A phone your brother just left charging on the bedside table, she’d put the phone on the kitchen table, coil and store the charger just the way he would. Over and over. So he’d put it to charge, and when he’d come check it’d be in the kitchen. He’d put it to charge, and when he’d come check it’d be in the kitchen. Over and over.
That by itself was entertaining, but got old quick.
Your brother… his face, though. Every time. Looked like he was going insane.
But she soon moved onto more exciting endeavors.
You gave your brother a set of keys to the house because you went out sometimes. “Sometimes” being generous. You barely left the house twice a fortnight.
She missed you on those two occasions. The house is quiet without your constant breathing.
Did you mean to trick your brother into thinking you were a somewhat functional person? He wasn’t one, either; you were both equally unimpressive.
The keys went missing. Not sometimes, but always. And you’d find it in the stupidest places too. You’d ask: “Can’t you even hold on to a pair of goddamn keys?” You’d think of just taking them back, but the house was always locked up during the night and sometimes you or your brother—never together— walked out in the woods. What if he got locked out? There were wolves, bears, out there. It was getting cold. Winter on full blast, everything constantly white and dead.
She’d switch your clothes in the closet too. The day he came downstairs wearing one of your shirts you flipped out. You asked why he was wearing your shirt and he said it was the only thing in his closet, it just appeared there. Lies. He must have taken your shirt. Your favorite shirt, too. When you went upstairs to check, his closet was full— of his clothes, exclusively— and yours was ransacked.
You never really trusted him after that.
She couldn’t help but keep one of your shirts, take it into the wallpaper. It smells of you.
But the best part was when your brother slept. That is, tried to sleep. She who lives in the wallpaper would crawl up next to him. Right before he managed to fall deep in slumber, she’d nudge him slightly. A sharp intake of breath and the widening of eyes for a moment. And then your brother would turn to the other side and close his eyes once again.
So she would wait for the slightly deeper breaths, the stillness of relaxing muscles, and then drag, softly, one of her crooked fingers up his arm. He’d wake up fully, startled. Click went the bright overhead lights. She would be in the wallpaper by then, or under the bed. Once inside the closet. Eventually, sometimes after a swig or two of that awful amber liquid kept in a bottle on the bedside table, your brother would try to sleep again.
This for the entire night. This for a week straight.
This sport became her full-time job. The housekeeping duties she’d unofficially taken through the years fell to the side, ignored. The house was decrepit to say the least. Curtains in shambles, floor caked with a thick layer of dirt. Foul smells all around. Even you couldn’t ignore it anymore, though you didn’t know what it was.
She had hid rat corpses under the floor planks near your brother’s bed.
She who lives in the wallpaper was entertained by her haunting but couldn’t wait until your brother was gone and things could go back to they way they always were. There was something comforting about it just being her and you, her taking care of your unwitting, below-average self.
Your brother would break down eventually. This she knew. He was progressively pushed towards the brink of sanity, fueled by sleeplessness and discomfiting slips of mind. So she decided to give it all she had, finish this. One last shove. Move on.
The next night, like a pig going into slaughter hopes for freedom, your dim-witted brother crawled into his filthy bed into what he, delusional, hoped would be a decent night’s sleep.
She who lives in the wallpaper gazed down at him right from above the headboard. He muttered something under his breath before turning to the side, as if he’d sensed her presence.
She rested on hand on his shoulder. He jumped, slightly startled. He touched her hand hesitantly, unsure. His pupils wide, he looked upwards in search of an answer. In the dark, your brother couldn’t see, but he could feel her warm, rotten breath bathing his face with the concentrated stench of the long-gone rats. His lungs filled with a soon to-be scream, but her knobby hands trapped it before it could make its way out.
She flexed her hand around his throat. The scream died a soft whimper.
She released right before he passed out, the first time in weeks he had been able to sleep. So much it was almost welcome. Almost. But not quite.
Next morning, before you even had your coffee, your brother rushed you the moment you stepped outside your room. You had locked it, or else he would have stormed in during the wee hours of dawn.
“We need to talk,” your brother said. His eyes had sunken into his skull, his hair was thin. The red blotches on his face seemed like small cranberries contrasting against his pale skin, which draped over his skull like a flag over a lowering coffin.
She watched from the slivers of unpeeling wallpaper as you approached him, held his shoulders and examined him.
“Have you been taking any drugs?” You asked. He ignored you.
“I have a bad feeling about this house,” he said. His voice was lowered, as if he were trying to prevent the walls from eavesdropping. “I’ve been having really vivid nightmares every night I’ve been here. But yesterday I feel like I nearly died.”
“Ecstasy? LSD?” After a moment, you added, “Please tell me not meth.”
“It felt like a cold hand closing around my neck. Maybe not a hand, more like a tree branch, with coarse, sharp random edges that I was sure would leave marks.”
He looked around, before leaning in and whispering, “I don’t think it was a nightmare. I think this place is haunted.”
He looked crazy. Paranoid. “The walls crawl. I swear I’ve seen it,” he said. His voice was building up. “Like there’s something under there, the wallpaper undulating like an ocean wave displaces it, if for a second.” He brought his voice down to a mutter. “Everything in here gives me the fantods.”
She suppressed a shiver. She could just eat him. One snap, like the rats in the basement. Crunchy. He’d disappear. You’d never know. But what if you found out? What if you left? She who lives in the wallpaper couldn’t risk it. What to do, what to do?
But there was no sympathy for him in your eyes. They were cold. Unmoving. No longer on your brother’s side.
“Stop. Just stop talking,” you said.
She stopped thinking too. She just watched.
You sighed. Pinched the bridge of your nose, took a deep breath. “Ever since you came the house just gets dirtier and dirtier. I never had to dust a single piece of furniture, but now,” you swept your finger over the table, “everything is covered in dirt.”
Your voice was soft, but grew rougher as you continued. “The bills in this house have skyrocketed. I don’t know what you’ve been doing with the lights, if you keep them all on or just use all the electronic devices at once. They were never like this. I’m not sure you know, but I am not made of money.”
You looked incredulous. “Now you bring all your drug problems to me and for what? To get me out of my house? The one I’ve lived in for over five years now? Spare me. ”
This was great. She watched you turn on your own brother, a tragedy laced with twisted humor and irony.
Your brother was wide-eyed. “I promise you, I’m not making this up, I woke up and there was a—” he said, but you interrupted him. He stared at your blaspheme palm, subdued. Gazing incredulously at the younger sibling who had never stood up to him.
“You’re crazy,” you said. You pronounced the word slowly, as if he were stupid. “Collapse into drug-fueled disaster if you’d like, but don’t drag me down with you. I want you out. I don’t care if you have nowhere to go. Leave before noon.” You waved him out. Turned your heels and went to your painting room.
She watched him leave the house with his bags. Smile, contorting her face into an eldritch figure.
She still lives in the wallpaper. It’s been over a year since your brother left. Just today you hung your most recent painting. Waves, warping surrealistically into wallpaper. It is mockery on your brother, not a hint of belief or wonder if it could ever be true.
Andy lived in a shoebox. Not literally, of course; it was just a little cabin in the middle of Nowhere, as she called it, the empty cold wasteland near an insignificant town in Iceland. The cabin itself was tiny, with just enough floor space for a bed and a deep icebox. Her belongings, stored in chests, hung from the ceiling, and the books crowded the shelves on the walls.
The sun was almost setting, and Andy was patiently waiting for nighttime as she started to prepare dinner. A snap of fingers and the spark ignited on the wood, which caught quickly and soon fire took over the bonfire. She then left her pan, with some meat to cook, over the fire as she moved onto her favorite spot.
Andy climbed the cabin’s outer wall easily, as if the wood were a ladder. She pulled herself up the roof and leaned back on it, glancing up at the stars flickering into existence, shaky and unsteady, as if shy. Night always came fast, and soon she would have all the constellations to gaze at. And everything was fine.
Until her peace was disturbed by a sound, a faint tickling in her ears, really, that stood out from the lands’ beautiful silence. Even her flames danced silently, the wind was the only one that howled. Andy assumed it was an animal; wouldn’t be the first time a lone wolf trotted over, lured by the smell of cooking meat. So she rolled over the side of the roof to watch over the food and shoo away the scavenger. Couldn’t lose her dinner, not even for the stars and the peace.
She was surprised to see not a wolf, not a fox, but a small child. It was stood about the size of a small tree stump, still in the age blessed with androgynous innocence. Andy blinked, thinking, before saying, “Shoo.”
The child looked up at her and smiled, showing off two white front teeth and pink gums. Andy guessed children were different from wild animals after all but oh well, it was worth the shot. She jumped down the roof and landed, like a cat, in front of the little thing. It fell on its bum, surprised, as it looked up at the towering figure. And when Andy thought it was about to cry, it started laughing.
She crouched down to be at its eye level. “And who might you be?” She asked. Her voice was small, low, weaker than she hoped, almost dusty with disuse. It just looked at her with sharp blue eyes framed by long, blond infant eyelashes. She noticed it was wrapped in a single layer of wool, and its lips had taken a bluish tone.
Andy pitied the child. It seemed abandoned. Once, many winters ago, she had been filled with maternal instincts. Before the fire, before she was in hiding. These instincts seemed to stir deep inside her, awakening like a ravenous bear after a long winter.
She had eaten a couple of children, or so the stories went. Mothers in the town told cautionary tales about her, the witch, so their children would not stray too far into the forest. Bitter lies. And yet this child in front of her gazed into her eyes with no fear, just mild curiosity.
“Can you talk?” She asked.
It nodded.
“Are you hungry?” She asked again.
It gave another nod.
Andy scanned the horizons for any idea of the child’s origins, but she found none. So she fed the child, halving the portion she had prepared and then serving seconds. She gave it a blanket and set it near the fire. It fed without complaints, thankfully, as she didn’t know how she would have done to get it to eat otherwise. Andy sat besides it, leaving a good distance between them, but it didn’t matter. The child soon crawled onto her lap and sat there until it was finished with its meal.
It gazed into her eyes and she saw shards of the stars up above.
Which reminded her, it was night already. So she smiled at the little thing with her sharp white teeth, and said, “You will love this.” She stood up and so did it. She glanced down, and it looked up, outreaching its hands, asking to be picked up. She complied, and as she held it against her torso, her arms remembered how to handle a child better than her brain, the action pulling something ingrained in her instincts, something deep within her back to the surface. And this child snuggled close to her boson, just like her child once had. After gazing at it for a moment, Andy looked at the stars and pointed one long, crooked finger up above.
Green light, like flowing wildfire, flew from her fingertips into the night sky, trailing like a snake as it moved, as if with life of its own. It flowed with increasing velocity up towards the cloudless stars, and then slowed down. Then it was a fluttering green scarf, mixed with the occasional blue, dipping in towards Earth before pulling back up again.
The child looked on in awe.
“It’s like magic,” it said with marvel, slowly, as if the words were hard. Andy was surprised it could even talk. She didn’t answer, but the child gave her a kiss on the cheek. She almost
This child, free from all prejudice and full of marvel, smiled up at her like no one but her own son had ever done. It was right then Andy realized she could not let this child go, ever.
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