Tim Curran - The Devil Next Door

After that little exchange, Kathleen tried working outside, but, dear God, that sun was hot. It burned the skin from her muscles and bleached her eyes white and evaporated the blood from her veins. And she sweated, God, how she sweated, but not the good sweat of hard work but an acidic-smelling poison that was gray and pungent like the run-off from a sewer. That sun…that burning sun.

She prayed for darkness.

Finally, her head aching and her teeth chattering, she went inside and splashed water in her face, but that stink was still on her. She took a shower, trying to get that smell off with body wash and Camay and Steve’s Irish Spring, but the more she scrubbed and deodorized, the more that stink came off her in hot, rancid waves.

God, what was that smell?

She stood under the cool spray, gagging on the stench that reminded her of hospital waste and the juice dripping from infected abscesses. Her skin was rubbed pink, rubbed red, just raw and hurting and she kept thinking that it was inside her, that whatever it was, she had to cut it out, she had to slice it free like a tumor before it spread.

And then there she was, standing in the shower with her razor, slicing the blade down her arms and over her wrists and the blood ran and flowed and the smell of it…Christ, the black and putrescent smell of what was inside her.

With a cry, she tossed aside the razor and stepped out of the shower, seeing herself in the mirror, naked and wet and smeared with blood. But her mind was beyond shock by that point. She had to get back to work. She had to get outside and get some fresh air before her head flew apart.

So she did that.

And on her way to the stairs, she paused by the door to Mother Soames room, standing there and listening to the old woman breathe and thinking what it would be like to stop that breathing. For she hated the sound of it. Some nights she lay awake listening to it, that ragged and wheezing respiration. It came through the walls and got in her head and she waited, waited for the breathing to stop in the dead of night as they said it often did with old people. Yes, she waited, tensing, wanting it to stop. She hated herself for it, but deep down she wanted that old bitch to die in her sleep. That breathing, that perpetual hollow breathing, it was like…yes, it was like that story she’d read in school by Poe where that heart would not stop beating even after the old man was dead.

Kathleen actually reached for the tarnished brass doorknob of Mother Soames’ room…but she stopped herself. Made herself stop, even though that same whispering voice said, “Do it, Kathleen. Do it now.”

She yanked her hand away, eyes filled with tears, knowing that if she opened that door there would be no going back. For when that door was opened, something, whatever was whispering to her, it would take her, it would possess her and she would like it, she would surrender herself completely to the sweet violation of that other. She would smell the hot, sour perspiration of the old woman, the urine-smell, the age-smell, the medicine-smell, and it would sicken her. Then she would hear that rasping breathing and she would really have no choice but to squeeze the life out of that old, repellent slug.

Squeeze until the breathing stopped and those blanched eyes rolled shut and the foul juice ran from her mouth and ears.

Placing hands to her ears, Kathleen ran downstairs, unaware that she was naked or why such a thing would matter. She grabbed up rugs as she went, two and three and four, wrestling them out the door and standing on the porch, naked and bleeding and mad, beating dust out of them that had already been beaten out five or six times.

She stopped and sniffed herself.

She smelled like Camay and body wash. The fresh, clean scent of it made nausea roll in her belly. That was the problem. Chemicals. All those chemicals and preservatives, dyes and fragrances and artificial things they put in everything these days. It was all making her rot from the inside out.

She wanted that other smell back, the dark poison smell of what was inside her.

There was a garbage bag on the porch. Steve hadn’t brought it out to the cans yet.

She could smell the trash in it boiling, stewing.

It made her mouth water.

That’s what you need, Kathy. You need rotten and foul things, dirty things.

Yes, that was it. Going down on her hands and knees, she tore open the bag and scattered trash everywhere. Panting, drooling, sweating profusely…she grabbed up egg shells and banana peels, tuna tins and used tampons, stinking hamburger cartons with raw, graying meat still clinging to them, anything that stank or had gone over, and began rubbing it all over her skin. She scented herself between the legs with banana peels, loving the greasy sensation. She rubbed old meat and smelling juice over her breasts until her nipples stood erect. She greased her hair with fish oil and rubbed tampons under her arms and down her legs.

She was so excited by it all, feeling so free and so vital, that she slid a filthy finger into herself and brought herself to orgasm right there on the porch. Her body blazed with heat and her fingers vented it, let it all come flowing out.

Some kid was watching her.

Some teenage boy from down the street, watching her with his mouth hanging open. Kathleen knew he was there. She liked him watching. She wanted him to sense her heat, to recognize her scent by sniffing all her parts. She gasped and cried out and then it was over.

The silly boy looked terrified.

On her hands and knees, Kathy pulled her lips back from her teeth and hissed at him.

He ran.

Little worthless shit! He should have taken the bait! He should have come up on the porch and rutted with her! Then she would have had him! Then she would have sank her teeth in his throat and tasted what came splashing out, filling herself.

Kathy leaped down into the yard and crawled through the flowerbeds, tearing out azaleas and mums in handfuls. She ripped out hollyhocks and zinnias, decapitated bluebells and buttercups with her teeth. She flattened them all, rolling through the sweet, gagging, flowery wreckage she had created.

But it wasn’t enough.

She yanked flowers out by their roots until she reached the cool, moist black soil beneath and then she rubbed it on herself, digging through it, swimming in it, loving the earthy dank smell of dirt.

A worm had been disturbed and she snatched it up, threw it in her mouth and chewed it to a pulp.

She was feeling better than she had felt in weeks now.

If only that damn sun would go down.

Because when it did, when it did…the night would be like no night this miserable, stagnant, shit-grubbing town had ever seen before.

And Kathy knew it.

“ What the hell are you doing?”

It was Steve. Silly man, he’d missed her show on the porch, but now he saw her…dirty and bloody and stinking. He looked afraid. He looked confused. Kathleen ran up the porch steps on all fours and dove through the screen door. Steve fell over and she jumped on him, rubbed herself all over him as he fought against her…hitting her, scratching her, bringing delicious waves of pain. But then she had his head and she banged it off the floor until he went limp beneath her.

Panting and sexually aroused, Kathleen took his hand in her mouth, licking it and swooning with the taste of man-sweat. She bit down as hard as she could on his fingers until the flesh crushed and the bones snapped beneath. She worried and chewed until she got some good meat free to eat.

Then dragged him into the kitchen.

She used the carving knife.

She slit his throat, slashed open the carotid until hot, dark blood splashed over her breasts. She cut his clothes off, chewed at his throat and belly, leaving bloody punctures all the way down until she found what she was looking for between his legs.