Play nice, p.23
Play Nice, page 23
part #1 of 2025 Series
“Are you okay?” he asks. “Is this a bad time?”
I blink at him. “No.”
“No?” He rests his arm against the doorframe. I haven’t invited him in yet.
“You want to sit out here?” he asks, gesturing to the front steps.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, thinking about all the paper scattered around that I don’t want him to see, all the questions I don’t want him to ask. “Let me go get something first. I’ll meet you, just a sec.”
I run upstairs and grab the vodka. There’s less than I remember.
Austin sits with his hands on his knees. He accepts the bottle when I pass it to him, but he doesn’t drink. He reaches over and pulls one of my curls straight.
I’m hyperaware of my appearance. I want to shrink. I want the sun to set faster. I want darkness. I want shadow. I want to black out the world. I should have held on to that Sharpie.
I don’t want him to look at me the way he’s looking at me. With what might be concern or pity or fear.
I reach for the vodka and take a gulp.
“I watched your stories,” he says. “That’s how I knew you were here.”
“What?” I ask.
“Your stories. The pictures you posted.”
“What pictures?”
“Are you…” He laughs. “I can’t tell if you’re messing with me.”
“Why would I ever do a thing like that?”
“Well,” he says, and I recognize something sour in his tone.
“Well?”
He stands and steps down to the walkway. “I’m kind of worried about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem…”
“What? I seem what, Austin?” I say, suddenly on offense. He’s judging me. I knew he would.
He looks down at his Vans, runs his hands through his hair.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” I tell him. “I don’t need you to worry about me. That’s not what this is.”
“I thought…” He looks at me again. He expects something from me. He’s waiting for me to intuit what he wants to hear, and then for me to say those words and to be pretty while I say them.
So I say nothing.
Because what I want, what I need, is for him to just be here and not want or need anything from me.
I take another swig from the bottle.
A minute passes. He sighs and says, “I can’t tell if it’s me or if you’re dealing with…”
“Dealing with what? I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient that I don’t just exist to forget you.”
His mouth falls open. He laughs. “What?”
“Never mind.”
“You can talk to me. About stuff. I’m not just here to hook up.”
“You don’t want to hear about my problems.”
“That’s…that’s not true. At all.”
“It is,” I say. “You’re here because I’m fun and because this isn’t serious. I start crying to you about my feelings, then I’m not fun anymore. Then I’ll be too much. And then you’ll go find fun someplace else, and then I’ll be alone and all messed-up. So let’s just quit while we’re ahead. It’s for the best. Because where was this really going, anyway? I work in the city. I live in the city. And you live out here. In your mother’s basement.”
He adjusts the thin chain around his neck, bites his lip, nods. “For what it’s worth, you’re already alone and messed-up.”
He starts to cross the lawn, walk away.
“For what it’s worth,” I say, “only douchebags wear chains like that.”
“It was my dad’s,” he says without turning around.
* * *
—
I sit on the front steps until Austin is out of view. Until he is gone. I take another sip from the bottle. Another. When I finally manage to stand, I teeter on rubbery legs, stumbling as I turn to go into the house. I left the front door open, and a breeze comes through, pushing it all the way back against the wall. It’s like the house is welcoming me in.
The door slams itself shut behind me.
I crawl up the stairs on all fours, my balance off from the alcohol. I haven’t had anything to eat today except a few fries and a single shrimp. There’s no food in the house.
The sheet of paper on the dining table remains blank. As does the one on the coffee table. In the kitchen. In Leda and Daphne’s room. In Mom’s room. In my room.
“What? Now you’re shy?” I ask.
I eye the opening to the attic again, return upstairs for the ladder. But it’s too heavy, and I’m not coordinated enough right now to maneuver it down to my room. Or to climb it.
I’m alone and messed-up.
In the dark.
The sun has set, and I engage in my new routine, turning on every light in this house.
I sit on the couch and wait for something to happen.
When the nothing becomes intolerable, I get up for my phone. Austin said something about my Instagram stories, didn’t he? I don’t remember posting anything to my stories.
I swear I left my phone on the dining table, but maybe I didn’t, because it isn’t there.
The book is.
This stupid book. This funhouse mirror fiction.
But what’s the harm in finishing it now?
What more damage can it do?
How badly do I want to find out?
* * *
“Why would you say that?” I asked her.
“Everyone dies, Mom,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“We’re not dying in this house,” I told her. “Say it.”
“Whatever.” She returned to her drawing. She would no longer engage with me.
I asked her if she wanted a glass of water. She didn’t respond.
I went into the kitchen, and Roy met me there.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The demon’s hold on this house is strong.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why this house?”
What I was really asking was: Why me?
Why had I, all my life, come up against such adversity? Would I never know peace? Was I cursed? What had I done to deserve my father? Or these cruel men I seemed to gravitate toward. The cruelty of my own body and the attention it garnered—so often unwanted. The restlessness of my mind. The ruthlessness of motherhood. What had I done to deserve these demons?
“It’s been here for a very long time. Even before this house was built. It lived in the woods. This is its home. Demons aren’t eager for change. That may sound surprising, since often they’re depicted in the media as entities keen to take possession of new bodies. Children, mostly. Corrupting innocence. An easy sell in Hollywood. For the Catholic Church, God forgive me.”
“I’m telling Father Bernard,” I said.
He smiled, and it was the first and only happiness I felt that day. “Tattletale.”
I mimed zipping my lips. Locking. Throwing away the key.
“Most of the demons I’ve encountered, I compare them to channel surfers. They stay in one spot, watching. If they get bored, they might sleep, hibernate. If they aren’t tired and they don’t like what they see—or, depending on their personality, if they like what they see—they might intervene. Communicate. Engage. Attach. They’ve been around for so long that they don’t understand or don’t care about the degree to which they affect us. They don’t have empathy.”
“Is this your way of telling me it’s hopeless? That it won’t leave?”
“It’s not hopeless. But it won’t be easy. It likes your channel.”
“That makes one of us,” I said. “So, what’s next? I move?”
“You could try. But you may not be able to sell the house. Not if it doesn’t want you to leave.”
* * *
—
I turn to the next page, and there’s a word scribbled in giant letters, in red Sharpie, rendering the text beneath it unreadable.
HOME
My phone rings somewhere in the house, throwing me for a second.
I look up to see that it’s right in front of me. It’s on the coffee table. I set the book aside and reach for it. Veronica’s calling me.
I hit ignore.
So many missed calls. Messages. Notifications.
Pressing my thumb down, unlocking, opening Instagram; I do it all with this calm detachment. When I watch my stories, one with the photo of the cigarettes and vodka and sketchpads on the dining table, a dozen others with the pictures I took of my childhood house drawings, I don’t panic. Why panic when it’s already too late? People have already seen them.
The last two stories feature photos I must have taken by accident. One of the closet, more specifically, the opening to the attic inside my closet. And finally, a blurry selfie of me smiling, my eyes bloodshot, mascara streaming down my dirty face, hair a mess, snake charm dangling toward the camera.
It takes so much to build an image. It takes next to nothing to destroy one.
There’s a thud. The sound tears through my body like an electrocution.
Heat surges, sweat pours, and then I’m empty. I’m freezing.
It’s terror and it’s relief. And it’s here. It’s here. It’s home.
“Hello,” I say, keeping my gaze straight ahead.
Another thud.
A moment of quiet. And then the dragging. The floorboards squealing underneath a creeping, ambiguous weight.
There’s a faint clink—contact with glass, followed by the abrupt arrival of pain.
Something just hit the back of my head.
The hot pink lighter. It’s landed on my shoulder, slid down to my lap. It rests now at the heel of my right hand.
“Hello,” says a voice. A disorienting, incomprehensibly foul voice.
My thoughts go sticky with fear, cling together, scream over each other. What do I do? Turn around. Look. Don’t look. Don’t move. No. Run. I’m cold. I’m so cold. I’m sweating. I’m ruining this beautiful dress. It’s ruined. You’re ruining your beautiful life. It’s ruined. It’s been ruined. You ruined it. You want to feel something. You feel too much. You. You hate everything you feel. You need to feel something different. Something louder.
You should light yourself on fire.
The lighter is already in my hand. The flame is yellow with a dark core. It drifts. Dances. I watch it. All the different shapes it makes.
Mom in my head. It hurts right now, but by the time we get home, you won’t feel it.
I am home. And I don’t feel it.
That foul voice at my back. It will feel like nothing.
The flame meets my skin, my scar, my old burn. And I feel nothing.
But the smell.
The smell.
My gasp echoes through the house as I understand what I’m doing, as my skin smokes. I turn around and pitch the lighter into the living room. The lights have gone out in the hall, which stretches back like an open throat. Laughter rumbles out from it.
The door to Leda and Daphne’s room slowly closes itself, hinges singing at an earsplitting pitch.
As soon as it shuts, the pounding starts.
Whatever’s behind it, it bangs against the door.
Mom in my head again. I will bleed you out! I will bleed you out!
“Stop!” I cover my ears. Close my eyes. “Stop!”
My hands only muffle the sound. The hinges. The dragging.
I think about Jed. His headphones. Bleeding out of his ears.
Made up. Not true. Not real.
I let my hands fall. Open my eyes just in time to see a flash of something vanish downstairs, a shadow in darkness.
Not real. Not true. Made up.
There’s one person who could validate what actually happened. Who might be able to help me. Who will believe me. I don’t know if I can trust him, if I can trust a single word that comes out of his mouth, but he’s all I have.
I’m here for you, Clio. You and your sisters. If you ever need anything.
It’s time I take Roy up on his offer.
30
I don’t sleep. I chug water to sober up.
My burn has blistered yellow. It would be convenient if there were a nurse who lived down the street who didn’t now hate me.
What did I do?
What have I done?
I gather up the blank sheets of paper and Sharpies, leave them on the dining table, sad remnants of a failed experiment. It did communicate with me, but not my way. Its way. On its terms. The way it wanted to communicate.
It doesn’t need to play nice. I have nowhere else to go.
Nowhere I want to be, at least.
When Dad calls, I concede to him coming to get me.
I meet him outside.
“Goodness, Clio! What happened?”
I catch my reflection in the car window. I look psychotic. And I’m just now realizing, I forgot to put on shoes.
“Can you take me to get something to eat,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“Clio, sweetie,” Dad says, pulling me in for a hug. I lean my head against his shoulder. He smells like smoke. After what he did, burning the book, maybe he’ll forever smell like smoke to me. I want to forgive him, to be at peace, to be happy in his embrace. I want it to feel like it used to. I want to be who I used to be. Before Mom died. Before ugly truths. Before any of this.
“What’s this?” he says, noticing the burn.
I consider confronting him about how he manipulated my sisters into a lie that estranged us from our mother. That did irreparable damage. But I just don’t have the energy right now. “I hurt myself.”
“How?” he asks, the distress in his expression eliciting in me a strange mix of guilt and satisfaction. He still loves me.
“Working in the house,” I say. “Dad. Please. Can we go? I’m starving.”
“You need shoes,” he says. He goes into the house and comes back out a second later with my heels.
He opens the car door for me, hands me my shoes, then goes around to the driver’s side. He starts the car, we back out into the cul-de-sac, and then he says, “You smell like cigarettes. And alcohol.”
I almost tell him that he smells like smoke, almost tell him that he smells like fascism, almost ask him if, after libraries, he plans on taking his flamethrower to the museums. I almost tell him how close I am to hating him. But my throat is sore, and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open.
“Clio. You’re making me worry. You’re making everyone worry.”
What does he want me to say? Does he expect me to apologize? Everyone in my life wants me to behave in a very specific way that’s beneficial to them, and as soon as I deviate from their expectations, it’s an issue. As soon as I act out of whatever role they cast me in in their lives, it’s somehow my fault.
“This pattern of behavior is concerning to me,” he says sternly. “I’ve seen it before.”
“What, with Mom? You and Leda like to throw that in my face. But I’m nothing like Mom,” I say, playing with my snake charm. “The only thing I have in common with her is great hair and a haunted house.”
“It’s that book. And spending time there by yourself.”
“Why can’t you even entertain the idea that she was right? That I’m right? Why can’t the house be haunted by a demon?”
“Because that’s crazy. Don’t you hear yourself?”
“Why is it crazy? If I was a son and not your daughter, would you assume I was crazy?”
“Not everything is misogyny, Clio,” he says, taking a sharp turn. “What happened to your arm?”
Now I can’t resist, can’t hold my tongue lest it shred the inside of my mouth. “It was Mom. She did it. Right? Right, Dad? She hurt me.”
“Clio Louise.”
“Phoo. Can we just get breakfast? Please? Please.”
He sighs. “Okay.”
We go to a diner—a different one than Austin took me to, though it still reminds me of him—and eat in silence.
Dad pays the check and then we go back to his house. Amy’s not around.
“I’m going to sleep,” I tell him.
“When you wake up, we’re going to have a talk about what comes next.”
“Ominous,” I mumble. I climb the stairs to my room. I fall into bed, fall asleep in an instant.
* * *
—
When I wake up, it’s the middle of the night.
Yawning, I turn over and reach for my phone, wondering if Roy has gotten back to me.
I could have asked Helen for his number but wasn’t keen on swallowing my pride after our last conversation, forcing my return to the tragically archaic website of the New England Occultist Collective. It was outside of business hours, but I called the contact number anyway, figuring there was a chance that Occultist Collectives might not maintain traditional business hours or whatever. I left a voicemail stating my name and requesting a callback from Roy. I said he’d know what it was about.
But even if he did call, I wouldn’t know since apparently my phone is dead, RIP. Its absence aches like a phantom limb. I plug it into the charger and steep in my thoughts. I have to pee, which means I have to get out of bed—something that doesn’t really appeal to me.
I groan and kick off the sheets, swing my legs over the side of the mattress. Shuffle out the door and down the hall to the bathroom.
The lights are too bright. I squint, still sleep drunk as I sit on the toilet, wipe, flush, wash my hands.
It’s the hurt of my burn that pulls me into full consciousness. I turn off the faucet and lift my arm closer to my face, water dripping off my fingers.
The burn is pretty disgusting. Pink and yellow and shiny—the blister on the verge of eruption. Now would be a good time to have a charged phone, to Google how to treat a burn, something I should have done last night if I had been in my right mind.
