Tins shudder in the cupboards when the leech mooch taps her lined knuckles on my door, walls so thin the bumps carry in the plaster, making flakes on my shit, the dinky possessions I’ve squirrelled to box up and seldom unpack, mostly, because I only live here in fits, but she notices when I’m moving around, so I stay still to hinder her interest, even though she preternaturally attunes to my body and any motions it dares, any squeaks expelled as spiders act surprised when I freak at them falling on some part of me, always a different part, picked up and so she’ll unlock her door down the hallway from my door and I’ll hear her making her way along the floorboards, buckling valiantly, a strong old building, the carpet flooring the residents’ communal areas weaved together with spite, post-war resilience, flattened into some new consistency suggesting a dogged indestructibility.
The skin on her face winces at everyone who exists to her, a Playmobil smile on a geriatric, can’t guess her age, she’s always looked the same, these twelve years I’ve been here, when I moved in on strictly temporary illusions, and her door was the first to open, and kept opening, with niceties at first, diamond rough offers of assistance, but her shuffling gait insulated against me ever taking her up on any of it, and she knew that, dressed in a flowery apron, no waist, her torso straight up and down, like it had morphed to fit perfectly through her doorway, part of the building, oozing along the hallway, sneezing, muttering, hacking coughs in the winter, sniffing all the warm days, runny eyes, forever droopy, bagged enough to shelf a fly, shiner circles, liver spotted.
Rough her hands on my door, creaky voice calls me Valerie, Valerie, it’s no use ignoring her, she never backs off, I tested her once and she went and got her knitting and sat outside until I opened up, glint in her eye, knowing I’d never win the game, and now she’s getting more frequent, tapping all hours, wanting a token, doesn’t seem to matter what, when at first it was food, which I didn’t have a lot of, so refused in the beginning, but she kept knocking for it, saying she was wasting away, could I just give a biscuit, could I spare a pea to save this old woman from the grave, could I donate some crumbs to her resurrection campaign, so I caved and fed her a Jammie Dodger, which seemed to work as I didn’t see her for a few days, quiet, relieving, until she returned and banged harder and harder, saying this time a great tragedy had befallen her and her last living relative had been killed by dangerous dog suffocation.
Bite down on the windpipe.
Sachets and freebies pile my shelves now, collected from cafés where I can steal a cheap coffee with vouchers, and come away with ketchup, or vinegar, salad cream, brown sauce she especially likes, Demerara sugar, sugar cubes, or I save the wrapped biscuit included with the drink, all stowed away to the flat to wait for her tap and she is so grateful, swatting whatever gift I present, long manicured nails painted brown swiping the item before she turns slowly, always inspecting what I’ve delivered, though my selections are very seldom a surprise, pressing down her hair, flat with oil against her head, darker grey high on the scalp, getting lighter towards flyaway ends, stooping and stepping back to her door, to close it gradually, tense until the click, when I know she’s inside, with her items from me, keeping her alive, so she says.
I walked through the park to take a shortcut and she was there, with the dog she owns now, a chihuahua crossed with a cartoon chihuahua, one of its eyes bulging out of the socket, it follows her along the pavements, barks at her legs, she doesn’t seem to have any control over it, apart from when she sees me and waves her arm, pointing at her ears as if to say she’s deaf and I should pause because she’s missed what I’ve just said, but I haven’t said anything, it’s another one of her control tricks, and she puts her fingers around my forearm, sitting me down on the nearest bench, when the chihuahua, Speck, runs off and returns minutes later with a family-sized packet of garlic bread flavor crisps hanging from its mouth, dog slobber all over it as its tongue doesn’t fit with its jaw, and she says Speck, what’ve you got there, have you been stealing again, so she tells me she has a kleptomaniac dog, like she didn’t train the poor thing to thieve from the local shops.
Speck is with her when she knocks now, pushes its head against the door as I open up, as if to stop me from shutting it on them both, never comes in though, sits with its front paws sticking over the threshold, staring up at me while the leech sings about how bare her cupboards are, and sometimes I hand the sachets to Speck, and he gently closes his teeth on them and trots off, following his bulging eye to her door, her shuffling after him, calling good Speck, good Speck.
These recent visits have seen a change in her, especially her voice, always pneumatic but now phlegmy with mucus, Speck losing fur everywhere, mangy patches, her conversation losing rationality, she repeating her skirts are getting fumigated, her skirts are getting fumigated, until I surrender and hand over the whole pack of Jammie Dodgers.
Now she’s on the floor in the hallway, having fallen probably, impossible to get up, and I can’t bring myself to help her, with her skin without clothes, thick with sweaty slime, her toothless mouth opening and closing in a creepy rhythmic way, a sucker fluxing between her bum cheeks, raising her head occasionally and rotating like she’s caught the scent of something, her torso wavering in response, waiting on strange vibrations, anxious to detect the signs of touch, to attach parasitically, sense the blood.
Speck appears at her doorway, whimpering, and I say stay back and that I’ve called an ambulance and Speck acts like he understands, sits and shakes.
The ambulance people arrive and are trained so hard they don’t hesitate despite the sight before them, and the mucus goes into overdrive, secreting in liters all over them, suckers extending and clinging on, infusing their anticoagulants, and causing the men to seize, helpless, dissolving, blood flowing, one of them feeling her mouth start to take him in, ingesting slowly, swallowed whole.
I wave a sachet at Speck who legs it to me, and I grab him and run to the elevator and run along the street, and even faster out of that town, where it has become obvious to me now I’ve stayed too long.
— Rebecca Gransden lives on an island. She is published at X-R-A-Y, Burning House Press, Expat Press, Bruiser, BULL, and Ligeia, among others. A new edition of the novella Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group is available via Tangerine Press.