The corner house looks empty, but I know it is not. By day the boards at its windows give nothing away, but at night I see flickers of light that dance through the cracks.
The corner house had a garden once, long before I moved to the street. Now the fence is down, its rotting feather edges scattered like a smashed piano across wet paving slabs. Metal barriers have gone up in its place. It wouldn’t be hard to squeeze through, I often think as I pass by. I would stand in the yard, where an archipelago of bricks is scattered across a sea of old plastic dust sheets. I would stand by the derelict outhouse with its sprawling buddleia bush, and look up.
The house has come to life since the lights started dancing and soon I want nothing else but to be inside it, to be where I know he is. I go to work, where I sit behind a till in a supermarket, swiping barcodes, escaping to my private realm. Normality melts away. People notice I am distant, vague, and they ask me if I’m okay. I tell them yes, I’m okay. I don’t tell them I feel great, I feel better than I have ever felt, I feel alive, more alive than they will ever understand. I keep that secret. It isn’t their fault their lives aren’t as blessed as mine.
I have him now. And before long, nothing else matters. During the day I feel he is with me, although he never leaves the corner house. I sense that he is the one making all the colours brighter, even the colours in the supermarket. He’s the one making songs come on the radio. He is what makes me inhabit my name. Naomi, I say to myself. Naomi.
At night I stand outside the corner house and look up at the windows from the pavement. I watch as the light moves from room to room, enticing me. I barely notice buses swish past or people walking their dogs. I stand there in the darkness, night after night, in the rain even, and when the cold weather hits, I stand wrapped in a coat until I realise how frozen I am and have to force myself to return home. I stand there when the trees drop their leaves, and when they come back into bud. The evenings grow lighter and I have to stay out later so I can see the beautiful glow that comes from the house when dusk falls. The lights make me cry, and I stand there feeling inexplicably lost. I sense a growing ache that starts in my chest and radiates outwards as my eyes follow the source of my enchantment from room to room.
I try to continue with my daily routine. A breakfast of tea and toast, then the walk to work. A morning of vague and meaningless chat with customers, punctuated by the swiping of groceries, and requests for change or more carrier bags. A hasty lunch, then the long afternoon and home to an empty house and a ready meal for dinner. But as the months progress I find I only want tea in the morning, with sugar. I skip breakfast, then lunch, and now I don’t eat much at all. I feel sick and lightheaded. I am distracted at work. I lose all the weight I wanted to lose, and then I lose more weight.
Soon almost a year has passed. One night an old woman out with her dog asks if I am alright. She tells me she often passes me. I do not recognise her.
I am as skinny as one of those models in the magazines. People at work start to show more concern. They take me to one side, look me in the eye, speak to me in lowered tones. I tell them I’ve been feeling ‘a bit out of sorts.’ That much is true. I feel possessed. I feel the light from the corner house has seeped into my soul, where it dances gently through the day.
One day I faint at work, and I ask for sugar water when I come round.
‘Something sweet, that should do it…’ the supervisor says, urging me to put my feet up in the restroom. She brings me tea, two sugars, and leaves me to recover. I sip at it, noticing how my tongue curls over the rim of the mug. It looks darker. But when I have finished my drink and I check myself in the mirror, my tongue is pink. It is normal. I am wasting away around it. My eyes are hollow and bright. I have never felt so happy.
•
In the yard, a breeze catches the buddleia bush in a swell of warm air, great floral cones nodding like white horses’ heads. It is a warm summer evening and the air is drenched with a sweet, heavy perfume. I want to get closer, to bury my head in the blooms. I feel a hunger unlike any I have felt before. I want to touch cracked, ancient bark and drink from honey-scented hearts.
I feel lighter than I have ever felt. The wind blows me about like a leaf. I look up at the window of the corner house. The light is faint, then brighter as its source moves to right behind the boards. It seems to hover in expectation, in welcome. I think I hear a far-off whirring of wings. I close my eyes. When I open them I am level with the window. I go to reach out my hand to touch the roughness of the wooden boards. I find that I can’t. I look down. I am above the roof of the outhouse, rotten joists forming a carcass in the moonlight. Slates hang like broken teeth, and beyond the outhouse there is the top of the buddleia. I realise I am thirsty. The flowers dance, and I go to them on the breeze and drink deeply.
I return to the upstairs window and hover, looking for a way through to the light. There is a crack in one corner of the frame where the hoarding isn’t fixed. It is just wide enough for me to squeeze through. I have to be careful not to tear my wings as I fold them above my body and creep inside.
My feet hit rotten floorboards on the other side, my arms flailing out at the wall for something to grab. I am scared I will go through into the room below, but they hold and a cloud of dust is sent up as I land. I cough and rub my eyes with my hands, then peer into the half-lit darkness. There is a figure on the other side of the room, a man with dark, tangled hair. His skin glows. His eyes are black. He smiles, head on one side. A grey mist leaks from his mouth and curls towards me. I want to touch him, but the floor is giving way and I am scared of falling. He is moving now, and I see how he drifts like a shadow, shifting and indistinct. The light seems to move with him. He throws it around the room. My senses are confused. He is wearing a cloak. He is a cloak. He is dark wings and dust. His face appears from shadows, into light. His face is close to mine. He kisses me. I am light again and my wings pass close to the flame of the candle which glows bright, then dim. I draw back and feel my feet on wet concrete. I have lost my shoes.
•
The nurse is changing my feeding tube. I notice how it is coiled in its packaging, and how it unfurls as she removes it from its plastic wrapping.
Louise Palfreyman lives in Birmingham, England, with her son and a very patient man. She has been published by The View from Here, The London School of Liberal Arts, and Best British Short Stories 2014 (Salt Publishing). She is part of a thriving community of writers in Birmingham called PowWow. The group meets weekly at a local pub and holds an annual literary festival.
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