All That The Light Touched Turned Putrid (Fiction)

    

 

 All That The Light Touched Turned Putrid

A Vignette By Nicholas David Diaz

    Chance had it, on a hazy September afternoon, I stumbled across the abandoned childhood home of my late mother.

    I walked in, the screen door shut behind me. In the foyer were two heaving hounds. One was an all-white sheep dog with a head and body twice the size of my own, with mate was at his side, a deep auburn hound of the same stature. When I walked towards the snarling beasts, small pins danced up and down my broad back. I tensed up, and then, with an inexplicable absence of self regard, I reached for The White Hound.

    Each time I grazed the beast nape I treated his fur with the care you’d give a freshly picked daisy. I worked my hand up his nape and towards the crown of his iron-hard head, in hopes to coax him down. The inside of my whole palm glided across him. After a few pets, pats, and audible Good Boys, The White Hound’s tail started to wag. His eyes closed and he plopped his rear to the ground. The Red Hound was a different story, the hairs on her neck had been upright since I walked inside. I locked eyes with her. She met my stare. One of her two eyes stared at me with unwavering conviction, while the other scanned the room, urgently, knocking around every corner of her eye socket, as if an assailant would charge us from any direction.

    Locked in, I set my sight on her singular, stationary eye. I did not waver, I did not blink. Her still pupil expanded, swallowing the retina, the iris, like a thunder cloud commandeering a clear blue sky. Her snarling swelled into a harsh, grueling howl. I’d have rather listened to a man hanging himself than endure her song, but she couldn’t tell. My eye contact did not wane. And as seconds turned to minutes, she decrescendo-ed into silence. She saw I would not kneel or cower. And so The Red Hound’s nape matted down and her flailing, wild eye corkscrewed calmly into place. Her tongue poked out, she panted with contentment, like she could finally settle in, and I told her Good Girl and she responded with a Good Boy of her own. With the hounds at bay I walked deeper into the dilapidated house, going down the moldy hallway, and passing through a pea green arch

    There were only two pieces of furniture left in the house, my grandparent’s lounge chairs, the only evidence that people ever lived here. One was a sullen brown-red leather armchair that my mother’s father had sat in for decades was still there. My grating travels had brought me to many unfamiliar places. For the first time in quite some time they’d brought me to a place all too familiar; I deserved a moment of rest.

    I sat in my Pop’s chair. Without fail it made that same grating creak it had always made. Either armrest’s leather was cracked. An orangish-reddish-tan color plumed out of the folds that came from the decades of lounging it’s allowed. The chapped leather crinkled and popped when I placed my arms atop them. It smelled like a cow’s hide and soot soiled sweat. Sitting in it, I felt a thin layer of grime caked the inside of my forearms. The gristle left faint, brown-black lines I winced and recoiled in disgust, deciding instead to take a rest on my Nan’s chair.

    It was a pale, eggshell white. When I sat in it, I felt the small imprint my grandmother had left from having sat in it for decades. She’d always been a small woman. There are so many non-threatening things in this world that would frighten her. I can see why she’d like this chair. It was softer than a sheep’s hide, warmer than a cup of coffee. I sat and I sat and I sat —I almost fell asleep— but then, without warning, the back of the chair turned to uncooked dough and I started sinking. The wood and cloth rocker gargled like a gaseous swamp. It lurched at my arms, trying to submerge me into the upholstery. Before it took too great a hold, I threw myself forward with all the strength I could muster. The damn thing wouldn’t let go. It held onto me as a starving lion would a water buffalo. The old, rickety piece had tenacity, though not enough to bind me. Setting myself free with one, mighty, thrust forward, I fumbled onto the floor. 

What won’t try and kill me?

I lay there, for a moment. I had to collect my thoughts, but my attempt to ground myself was interrupted by a violent, stomach wrenching shift in the room’s humidity. I looked up. All the natural light that had been pooling in from the windows turned to a hazy orange color. The air felt like it was laced with tin. Corroded brass filled my nostrils. All that the light touched turned putrid.

At the opposite end of the house, both hounds were standing at either end of a sliding glass door, guarding the sunroom, where the light was billowing out from. 

That’s when I felt vomit churning at the bottom of my belly.

I could hear them. The voice of every man and boy I ever was.

With the tongues I used to speak, they lacerated my fleshy vessel.

One Hound Sheep White and The Other a Harrowing Red,

Stood as sentries to the void.

My final voyage.

There is no one left to say farewell to.

The tin-copper glow swallowed me.

And as I unraveled, unfurled

I was being robbed.

My Absolution.