7 DAY STORY WRITING CHALLENGE #9 WINNER

Prize: £500

Best in Genre:

Satire: Lisa H. Owens

Surrealist Fiction: Finnian Burnett

Literary Fairy Tale: Claire Lindsey

Gothic: Tracy Roe, Robert Burns

Western: Julie Bissell

Crime: Rebecca Eastwell, Eugenie Jordan

Dystopian: Heather Haigh, P. R. Woods

High Fantasy: Julie Dron, Tom Hollow

Horror: M.W. Irving

Humour: Nancy Graham Holm, Mollie B. Rodgers, Daniel Staesser

Magical Realism: Alice Shaw, Raeesah Chandlay

Thriller: Mary McNeilly Jones 

Finalists:

Paul J. Urbania, Emily Renk Hawthorne, James Hancock, Tinamarie Cox, Christie Davies, Hannah McGrath, Felipe Orlans, Creshea Hilton, Chloe Murphy and Lucy Murphy, Jay Maxwell Kranicz McKenzie, Ann Marie Struck, Nadine Chang, Hannah Brown, Alex Clare, Fhionna Mac, Linda Crowley, Nadia Momtaz, Shiv Sastry, Em Arata-Berkel, Irina Turovich, Rose Lux, Deryn Pittar.

and the winner is…

M.W. Irving

OUR TREASONOUS BODIES

(HORROR)

Insomnia moved into my first apartment with me. It wasn’t complete sleeplessness, not always. I’d get a couple hours a night. Never enough to recover from idling my engines, kicking boxes around, swapping pictures out of frames, or savaging cushions. Every sentient thing needs sleep, extended periods soaked in reality isn’t healthy. Some are more sensitive to it than others. Those unfortunate folks tend towards drugs, drink, meditation, art, sex, and usually end up miserable. Insomnia is reality poisoning and your brain knows it. When a week goes by with maybe six hours in the tank the ol cerebrum only lets existence through in snaps and spasms.

The half-life of sleeplessness is made worse by the constant advice. 

Articles from friends, family, restaurant staff, foisted upon me like I haven’t spent those hours between late night and early morning pouring myself into cures. It’s an unexpected circle of insomnia Hell. Sleep hygiene, melatonin, yoga, masturbation, exercise, diet, shrooms, moon cycles. Good intentions flicking my open eyeballs. Sometimes I almost have to gnaw my arm off to keep it still, but I’ve mastered keeping it together.

In the depths of a bad patch – an hour a night for a week, then fifty hours of nothing - I noticed the rattling. I recognized it straight off, it was the hotel-room sound of a chain lock, followed by a door shaking in its frame. I checked the clock on the microwave. The digital sticks, glowing blue, read 2:52.

Clack and rattle. I found nothing through my door’s peephole except the bulging hallway. The sound came from the unit at the end. 207. My apartment looked at 207 down the barrel of the hallway. A floor of worn green carpet wrinkled between us. One coat of discount lavender paint. The noises stopped.

The skeletal man in 207 was ancient. He lurked the lobby, having grumpy conversations with whoever he could. A lady wearing a green fleece vest with a gold governmental patch did welfare checks on him Tuesdays and Thursdays. She had to shout to be understood. 97 – had nobody checking on him – bought the place new in ’72 – intended to die in it. He’d list medical woes until a polite retreat was made. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

A couple weeks later I came in and a crouching delivery guy was sticking a Missed You note to my mailbox. Once they were in the building they usually just left packages at my door and emailed a photo. Mine’s the bottom left in a grid of 118. Little three inch square I hated stooping for.

“Hey, that’s me,” I said, startling him from behind. I apologized.

He grinned it off and asked for ID. As I fumbled with my wallet I noticed my neighbour from 207, clad in an undershirt, boxers, and a blue waffle terrycloth robe, patrolling the lobby. Matching slippers cupped his toes and slapped his soles. He glared. In the dim lobby light the dark circles under his eyes looked like hollow sockets. He paced and stared death into the delivery guy and me.

“You can just drop it at my door next time,” I said. I think I skirted being a dick, but I can’t always tell.

“I was going to, but your neighbour there stopped me,” he gestured to geriatric 207. “He told me your apartment’s been vacant for years. He was pretty adamant about it.”

I looked over and found 207 gone.

“I’ve been here just over a year.”

He gave a shrug and we exchanged knowing nods. Time to introduce myself to 207. The thought seemed stupid, a bubble. I couldn’t have him telling any more delivery people my place was vacant though. I desperately didn’t want to. My grandfather, insipid in his last days, popped into my head as I took the stairs. The rarity of my visits. The glacial conversation. Not the cigar smoking, stubbled man of wit and wisdom I had known my whole life.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Even before dinner I knew the restless feeling in me was going to sink deep and turn me inside out as I lay in bed. It’s bad when I can feel it that early. The thoughts of Papa in assisted living probably triggered it. Wanting family. The hallway rattle came again at ten to four in the morning. I had escorted my pillow and blanket to my couch hoping a change of venue would lull me. It did on rare occasions. I was half waiting for the sound, so when it came adrenaline lit me up. 

I slid into some jammy bottoms, put on a tight T, stepped out into the hallway. If we’re both awake, now’s as good a time as any I figured. I should have known it wasn’t as good a time as any. If I’d given it a moment’s thought I would have realized introducing yourself to someone who’s nearly one hundred at ten to four in the morning because you hear him fucking around with his locks is not as good a moment as, say, in the elevator.

Three steps into the hallway I heard my door latch shut behind me. Closed and locked. I knew my pockets were empty, I patted them anyways. 

I’ll call- no, my phone’s inside. Shit. I tried my door and got the result I knew was coming. It was the middle of the night, there was nobody to let me in. The building caretaker had a master key but my phone was inside and I didn’t remember which apartment was hers and it was the middle of the bloody night! I shook clawed fingers, silently screamed, and considered kicking my door in. Then came the rattle of chain and door from apartment 207.

“Erik?”

It was muffled, his voice barely conquering the barrier.

“Hello.”

“Erik?”

“Um.”

Rattle, shake. 

“Hello,” I said.

The door swung open. Thin, wearing his lobby attire, he lurched out and leaned heavily.

“Come on then, no sense fartin’ around.” 

He turned and shuffled in, door left wide. I weighed my options and followed. The waft from inside wasn’t what I expected. Not the smell of neglected seniors, I’ve known that desperate aroma before. This was slight, a wet dog’s pelt. Inside the door locks were thick – industrial. I left it open.

“I knew you’d come,” he said. 

His fingertips played across every surface on his way to the kitchen. Touches and strokes all over. His fingers came to his nose, double sniff, then onto another surface. He reached high into a cupboard and groaned with the stretch.

“Can I help?” I lifted a finger.

He fetched a bottle of amber whisky and two mugs. One mug was labeled with a garbage brand of beer, the other was a poorly formed lump of clay – preteen handiwork by my eye. He poured into both, enough to get a double choking chug from the whisky bottle. He took the drinks into his living room and waved with the beer logo for me to follow. I was given the lumpy mug before he lowered himself into a weathered armchair. The only other seat was a thing closer to the tree it came from than furniture. It wobbled when I sat and I spilled my drink a bit.

“I should have told you, should have asked first.” 

He rummaged my eyes.

Pictures on the walls, some framed most not, showed a family growing larger as the photos aged and curled. Weddings. Graduations. Gaps of decades. 

I drank. A flush through my neck in a first kiss sort of way. Not bad.

“I can’t do it any more, ever since you.” he said, hand up and wet eyed.

“What can’t you do?”

“Change.”

“What do you need changed?” 

He looked confused. It felt like this was going badly. “Do you have a phone I could use? I’m locked out.”

“Erik you listen. I- You shouldn’t have- I mean I shouldn’t.”

“I’m not Erik.”

“Not what?”

He drank from his mug. I told him my name.

“No, no. You’re not listening. I can feel it starting, still have to lock myself in some nights, you know. But I won’t flip. I need to feel it in my blood again. Feel struggling between my teeth.”

His leg gyrated in the chair’s time-squashed thickness.

“You don’t have a phone?”

“Later, later, I need you to listen now. I haven’t been able to switch since you, Erik. Since I killed you.”

“You didn’t kill anyone.” I realized I couldn’t know that.

“But I did, I did. I tore your throat, my own boy, with my teeth I did it. I’m sorry.”

The dog smell intensified. He squinted hard across at me. Plum liver spots on his face grew hairs I couldn’t look away from. There were open lesions on the shins jutting from his boxers.

“Erik?”

“Yeah.”

A pause, long and agitated.

“I used to keep them for days until I turned, Erik. Tape ‘em up, you know. I would hunger for their flesh even before the moon would burn me inside out. Sometimes I picked them out days or weeks ahead, made them helpless so- then they were all you, and I couldn’t any more. I’m so sorry. Their faces, glorious with their hot blood, are still here,” gnarled knuckle on his temple “still yours.”

The threads of his muscles undulated under papery skin.

“They visit me. All the time they do, accusing me, but I still want the change. Damn it to Hell I want it.” 

Fingers elongated. He kept making fists and scratching at his knuckles.

“Erik. You smell different,” he said, voice thin.

His grip shook the armrests. I stood and stepped backwards.

There was a great wet pop when his knee inverted. He let out a throaty moan. Wrinkled skin pooled where his kneecap had been, his teeth pointed. He stood and stumbled; one leg didn’t match the other. His inverted leg grew thicker, kicked once, I stepped out of his living room before it could kick again.

As I fled there came a howling, withered and feral.

Adrenaline whisked me into the hallway. Out of the living room he burst as though shot from a cannon. He slid across the yellowed hardwood, slipped, and drove his neck into the wall. He became a folded up heap of limbs and joints. A smear of blood bulls-eyed the deep divot in the asbestos drywall. The transformation in him melted away. His bones didn’t knit properly. A shrinking finger nearly reached the door’s arch. I approached, stood over him, and closed 207’s door.

In jammy bottoms, a t-shirt, and bare feet I walked downstairs and out of the lobby. The cold soaked into my doughy bits first. I pictured his inverted knee, avoided thinking of my Papa. Footsore and keeping pace with my fluctuating body heat I walked until people began leaving for work; my Sunday night becoming their Monday morning. I stepped in through the door before it closed behind someone. The caretaker was in her office, her overalls reeking of cigarette breaks.

“Hey Anna, I locked myself out.”

She nodded and made a sighing show of getting the master key.

I slept when I got in.

At the wellness check on Tuesday all was not well in 207. I heard green vest telling a uniform about the deceased’s son, Erik. She gave a phone number. 

Erik appeared the next day through my peep hole. He sniffed the air and looked over his shoulder at me through the door. I glimpsed a raised, purple scar across his neck. As his sniffs hissed the hall instinct told me to bolt. 

Erik came to me that night, a silhouette in my bedroom door. I was awake and half expecting him.

“He made you into this?” I asked. 

Silence. The silhouette’s posture changed, elongated, and he flipped in an instant.

“I think he wanted your forgiveness, in the end.”

Erik’s teeth replied, and my life began anew.

Author’s note: I would like to dedicate this story’s success to a neighbour whose passing inspired it. He was horrible to me, and to everyone, and I knew from the instant I beheld him he’d end up in one of my stories some day.