Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Alexander's outline in the window. He looks down and waves. Wants to know if I need to go up yet. I wave back and sway from side to side.

That's my answer. The rain doesn't bother me. I'd even like it to become stronger.

Alexander disappears. He’ll come and pick me up before dinner, plenty of time for me to change clothes then. For now I'm content.

I think back to that one time I was sitting here. It was raining then as well, and harder too. The steps were shiny black, and water was running down the wheelchair ramp in rivulets. I was thinking about something. Or maybe dozing off. Can't tell for certain. Rain, sun, wind; they all impart strength. So I sat and waited for it to soak into me to the last drop, to the point of translucency. Once sated, I decided to go back. I didn't go up right away, but took a ride along the first floor instead.

And right there, in the hallway, there they were. Standing side by side. This fat fire-breathing woman, a regular human volcano. Red coat, black hat. Crocodile leather bag. Lips like an open wound. Cheeks like slices of bologna. Teardrop earrings. There was a puddle at her feet, from all the water that had dripped down, she was shuffling in it and stewing silently. And the man next to her. Pale and pasty like a mealworm. A snout for a nose, lips pursed. Tortoiseshell glasses. Pity the tortoise! Pity the crocodile! I wouldn't want to be in their place.

Also they had a snit of a girl, about fourteen. Gangly, blondish, red albino eyes. Also in a red coat. And a boy of about ten. Spitting image of his father. Clearly the pet of the family. Piggy eyes, snout nose, lips coming to a point—all there. Coat—red-and-gray check. Obviously. The entire brood was flashing way too much red.

And a little apart from them, leaning against the wall, stood Scarlet Dragon. The only really red one in the whole gang. Red is a tricky color. Deceitful. You can wear it and put it on your face all you want, and only become even grayer. It is the color of conjurers, clowns, and killers. I like it, but not always and not everywhere.

I am Tabaqui, dispenser of nicks at first sight. Godfather for scores upon scores. In every incarnation the master of tales, the royal fool, and the keeper of Time. And I can always tell a dragon from a person. Dragons are not evil. Just different. If I saw him alone first, not surrounded by his family, I might not have spotted him right away. But this was easy.

He was thin and covered in freckles. Old battered jacket, patched-up homemade sweater, jeans fraying at the knees. His eyes contained a whole different world in them. An entire abandoned planet. Long, slender fingers gnawed raw.

I looked at the hands of the others. Short, stubby sausages. Rings biting into the flesh. Big hands, small hands, all of them the same. He was of another blood. Different hands, different eyes, different body. He also was the only one wearing old clothes, so old that they were now as familiar with him as he was with them, enveloping and caressing him.

I smiled. I can't remember the last time I liked someone that much from just one look. He tried to return the smile. Imperceptibly, with just a corner of his mouth.

Then Shark came out. The woman let out a stream of excited babble and stepped forward to meet him, trailing mud. The man tagged along, holding the youngest by the hand. Those family pets do have a knack for getting lost. And getting into trouble. You might say they’re born with this talent. The girl, scratching at a zit on her cheek, was looking sideways at Scarlet One. I wondered how he was feeling. He stood there somber and silent.

Shark put all of his teeth on display and invited them to the office. They all filed inside. Except for him. Once the door slammed after them I wheeled over to it, took out the plug, which is only allowed in the most dire of circumstances, and proceeded to watch them. I'm always curious about parents. Especially of that kind.

The woman was bawling. Making crunching noises into her handkerchief, smearing lipstick with it, licking the snot off her lips, and grabbing at her face. Robustly and affirmatively. The man perspired demurely. The coat he had on was really heavy. The children pinched each other. Shark nodded thoughtfully.

“Our house has gone to hell! To hell, you hear?” the woman proclaimed, interspersing this information with incessant sobs.

Shark nodded. Yes, he heard. The House he spent his time in wasn't much better, in fact, so could they maybe get to the point?

“He is killing us,” the woman explained. “Slowly. Day after day. He is tormenting and humiliating us. He's a murderer! A sadistic killer!”

“You wouldn't know, looking at him,” Shark said politely.

This statement made the woman in the red coat explode.

“Of course!” she shrieked. “Of course! Why do you think we brought him here? No one believes us! No one!”

Shark had seen some really strange people in his life, but this was a bit too much even for him.

“We do not accept youths with criminal tendencies,” he said sternly. “This is not a penal facility.”

“He's not criminal,” the man interjected. “That's not what we meant.”

“You see,” the woman said, realizing she'd gone overboard. She switched from crying to an intimate whisper. “He always knows everything. About everybody. It's horrible. He is one of them ...” She winced, searching for the right word.

“Savants?” Shark prompted, intrigued.

“If only! Worse, much worse! All kinds of things happen when he's around. Things appearing out of nowhere. Technology breaking. Televisions... one, then another. And the cat's gone mad! The poor creature couldn't take it anymore.”

She went on, but Shark lost interest. He didn't like crazies. His face clearly showed that he'd tuned out somewhere around the bit about the cat.

“Are you sure?” he asked perfunctorily when the woman paused. Just to be polite.

“Yes! Anyone in my place would be sure.”

And she trotted out a litany of ironclad proofs, prominently featuring her own little kids. Those underage piranhas. Apparently “they would not let pass a single word that wasn't true.”

“Tell this nice gentleman if Mommy's telling the truth.”

The truth detectors, busy shoving and pinching each other behind her back, took a short break from their activities and eagerly nodded a couple of times.

“And those baldies are tagging after him,” the boy added. “They're like completely nuts. They pee in our building by the elevator. They’ll keep coming until we get him out of there. Or until they throw us all out.”

Shark goggled, but didn't pursue it further. Apparently, though, the love of truth had its limits, because this contribution earned the boy a whack upside the head from his mommy, and he shut up.

“We are decent people, you know,” she said proudly. “We'd never invent something like this. We've never had any deviations on my side of the family, thank you very much.”

The man cringed guiltily. On his side of the family they clearly did.

“We showed him to the best specialists,” the woman said, dabbing the corner of her eye. “But he pretended to be normal. Made fools of us. One time they even said that it's us who needed to be checked. The indignity of it! The humiliation!”

Crunch, sniffle, snort.

Shark scratched his head.

“I don't see how we could be of help. Our specialization is children with diminished physical capacity. You might be better served by ...”

“He's epileptic since age ten,” the woman interrupted. “A horrible sight. Just horrible. Would that work for you?”

“Well, not exactly, that's a different area altogether ...”

This is where I stopped listening. It was clear enough. The administration was going to pump them for money and then accept the newbie. The house is full of healthy people with scary stuff in their medical histories. And others who are written up for something completely different from what they have. Boring. The Scarlet One was still by the wall. Now I knew what made him special. So I wheeled over to him.