Orifice

    The darkness cries out like a slave. Nothing echoes. Confined here, alone in this prison, crushed between the walls. They are closing in. The dust, like an insect, crawls on the filthy wooden floor. The hot air leaking in through the cracks becomes confined. It condenses on the cold metal pipes above. The darkness, wheezing, struggles to scream. It struggles to stand, to turn. The space is getting narrower. The walls still approach, all too steadily.
    A piece of plaster peels and crumbles, shattering to dust as it hits the splinters. The darkness is becoming. It strains its feeble bones to hold its fist up high, and, with all the strength of its nothing, strikes the wall. All in vain. The walls come crashing down.

    The boy, startled, pulled his head up from the pillow, and whipped it around hastily to see what had happened. He glanced down at the floor, to find that his nightstand had fallen and crashed through the wall next to his bed. The dust from the broken plaster fluttered freely throughout the air, irritating the boy's nose. He let out a sneeze.
    On the outside of the room, high heels could be heard coming up the stairs and through the hall, approaching the bedroom door. Then, the doorknob turned, and the face of a woman peeked in. The woman’s face did not reflect the conventional benign features expected of a mother. Her gray, soulless eyes, which held less color than the dark circles below them, moved from the bed, across the floor, to the hole in the wall. The woman's lips barely parted when she opened them to speak.
    "What happened?" she asked. The monotonous voice showed no concern.
    "It was an accident," the boy muttered, apologetically. "I pushed it over when I went to shut off the alarm."
    The woman continued to stare lifelessly at the wall. It seemed like an eternity before she spoke again.
    “I’ll call someone later. You should really get off to school.”
    With that, she exited the room, leaving the door ajar for the boy to make his way out. He flung the covers off of himself and sat up in bed. Yawning, he reached up and rubbed his eyes. Pulling his hands away from his face, he paused for a moment to look down at the hole. It seemed that something was escaping from it; dissolving into the air, along with the dust. For a moment, he considered moving closer for a better look. There wasn’t enough light reaching it for him to clearly make out what was on the other side of the wall.
    A hard rain was coming down. With an occasional gust of wind, the droplets tapped softly against the linoleum wall outside. The sound of a screeching tire splashing water up off the road brought the boy back to the harsh reality that it was indeed a school day, and he was running late. He quickly dressed and hurried out the door into the hallway, towards the stairs.
    He began to descend down the steps, when he noticed that the door to his parents’ bedroom stood wide open. Hesitantly, he turned his head, knowing what he would find. His father, wrapped in a full body cast, lay like a corpse awaiting an autopsy, sprawled across the top of the king-sized bed. Cautiously, the boy approached the corpse. With great difficulty, he tried his best to discern whether his father was awake or sleeping. With the man’s eyes wrapped in plaster, there was no way of telling this, except for the wheezing sound of his nose struggling to breathe through the small holes in the cast.
    “Bye dad,” the boy said, expecting no response.
    He turned and exited the room. The corpse on the bed let out a muffled moan that did not reach the boy before he proceeded down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the door. Half a dozen empty prescription pill containers rattled on the countertop as he swung the front door shut behind him.
    The tapping sound of the falling rain against the walls grew louder. The beaded droplets slid down the windows, scratching and clawing to break through.

    The clouds thickened and the daylight faded even more. The woman, standing at the window, took a sip from her wine glass and turned to face the bed.
    “It’s been raining for too long,” she spoke. “I don’t like it. It makes me sad.”
    The corpse on the bed lay still, as usual.
    “Don’t be like that,” the woman protested. “I’m doing my best. I’m going to the doctor. I’m taking the medicine.”
    She took another sip. The breathing coming from under the mask let out a frustrated cough. After a short pause, it continued at its regular pace. The woman walked to the wall and flicked the light switched. A dim light radiated from a single bulb on the ceiling.
    “Well, what do you expect? You’ve been incapacitated for over six months, now. I’m doing my best to keep things moving. It’s hard. It’s hard doing everything on my own around here.”
    The corpse didn’t respond, as usual.
    Disappointed, the woman set her glass down on the nightstand, and took a seat in the chair that was now permanently turned towards the bed. She buried her face in her hands, all-too-dramatically. Then, throwing her hair back over her shoulders, she sat up straight and rubbed her temples all too dramatically.
    “Jesus Christ,” she spoke, as though she had a right. “I don’t know if you heard the crash this morning. The kid knocked his nightstand through the goddamn wall.” She sighed. “I guess I should probably call someone to come fix it. I’ll do it this afternoon.”
    The corpse’s fingers curled slightly.
    “I don’t resent him. How could you even make that assumption? He’s our son. Of course I care about him.”
    The corpse lay still.
    “Stop that! I know you can respond! You’ve done it before! Why are you being like this?”
    The corpse lay still. The woman turned her head away and cried into her hands. The single light bulb above the bed flickered and popped. The woman quickly lifted her head. She looked up at the ceiling, her eyes wide and bloodshot, makeup running down her face. She stared at the light for a long time until she began to tremble.
    “What—”
    Just then, the string holding up the blind snapped, and the blind shot down, smacking hard against the windowsill. The woman covered her ears and let out a long, piercing scream. The wind outside howled and the walls pounded. The room grew darker, still.
    When she was at the end of her breath, the woman stopped screaming. She kept her eyes held tight, her teeth clenched, and her hands against her ears. For the next fifteen minutes, she sat motionless. The corpse lay still.
    “I think the walls are coming down.”

    When the boy arrived home from school, the collection of empty pill containers on the counter had grown larger. An empty wine bottle sat on the kitchen table, next to a freshly opened one.
    He asked his mother if she had ever done anything about the wall. She didn’t. She was going to do it tomorrow.
    The amount of wine in the new bottle was deteriorating by the second.
    “Did you feed the fish today?”
    “You’re going to have to make your own dinner.”
    “Clean up after yourself.”
    The level in the wine bottle went down.
    “Take out the trash.”
    “Do your homework.”
    “Take a shower.”
    It deteriorated, still.
    “Now go get ready for bed.”
    The hole remained the same. The wooden floor and the yellow insulation that covered the internal wall were now visible in the light reaching out from the lamp on the bedside table. The boy lay face up, with his head turned so that he could see the hole. He was still very curious of what was on the other side. He wanted to walk over and look in, but why bother getting out of bed?
    He turned his head and looked up at the ceiling. Suddenly, he realized that the walls were all around him. He could see through them. He could see the insulation, pipes, splinters, and dust. It frightened him. He didn’t know what was crawling, scratching, breathing above him. Or right next to him. He rolled over and turned the lamp off. With his eyes closed, he saw the last few drops of wine disintegrate off the bottom of the bottle.

    The next day, the sky was black. The rain came and went periodically, but the wind howled like never before. In the bedroom, the blind was still drawn, and the single light bulb in the ceiling was burning out. The corpse’s fingers had not moved from the curled position they had adjusted to the day before. The sound of its breathing could no longer be heard over the wind.
    The woman sat in the chair, hands folded. With her chin rested against her neck, she looked down at the floor.
    “I couldn’t have been more of mother.”
    No response. Not even in her mind. The woman picked her head up.
    “You look like a scarecrow. You know that? Just lie there all day, don’t say a word. May as well not even be alive. Maybe you aren’t. How would I even know?”
    The woman stood up and walked to the window. In one swift motion, she pulled the blind back up, uniting the dim, flickering light with the black world outside. The dark clouds blew swiftly across the sky, and the trees whipped back and forth in the wind.
    “I can hear it. The rain’s coming back.”
    The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a pill container. She removed the cap and let a single white pill roll out into the palm of her hand. The last pill. The end. She flung it into her mouth and swallowed it down with a single large gulp of wine.
    The corpse lay still.
    The woman turned and looked at its shapeless head. She held out her hands and clasped the face between them. She pressed into the plaster with her fingers. The corpse’s fingers tightened into a fist. It began to tremble.
    “Look at your head. Your face. You don’t even have a face. It’s all clay. Clay that I can touch and mold. Create expressions. Emotions. You are what I want you to be.”
    The corpse jolted and shook violently, causing the metal bedpost to slam against the wall.
    “Stop that! Don’t tell me I’m wrong! You are what I say you are!”
    The woman removed her hands and stood up straight, looking down at the bed. It was rocking back and forth sporadically. The bedpost pounded louder and louder against the wall. Bits and pieces of plaster tore off and fell to the floor.
    “Get up and run then! Get off the bed and run! You are so pathetic. You’re stuck here with me, now. You and your stupid fucking clay face. Talking to the walls.”
    The bed stopped shaking. The corpse lay still.
    The woman grinned, pleased with herself. She felt that she had won. The wind outside was dying down.
    “You think I don’t know? I know that you talk when I’m not around. This is all an act. You’re trying to shut me out. That’s all you’re doing. Why do you think I stay with you all day? I will not allow you to have that satisfaction. Sitting around all day, talking to the dust and the walls? I won’t have it.”
    The air outside the window was still, and the light bulb in the ceiling flickered and died. The woman sat down in the chair, holding the wine bottle. She was at peace, finally, in the silent darkness. Her eyes closed and she began to drift away.
    “They talk back, you know. At night. The walls talk back.”

    The wine from the broken bottle dripped off the edge of the kitchen table like blood from a wound. The empty pill containers were now scattered across the floor, with their designated caps lying elsewhere. The blinds were all drawn.
    On his way to bed, the boy had passed by his parents’ room. The door was open again. He could see his mother from behind, asleep in her chair. His father lay still, as usual. He didn’t bother saying goodnight to either of them. There was no point in waking them up, if either of them were truly asleep.
    The boy lay awake in bed as 11:59 turned to 12:00. The wind and the rain had stopped. It was hard to even imagine.
    The hole in the wall was the same as it had been for the past two days, although pieces of broken plaster were beginning to accumulate in the carpet around it. Restlessly gazing around the bedroom, the boy’s eyes wandered over the hole. He squinted, for he thought he saw something new disguised in the abstract darkness. Something different. He experimented, opening his eyes wide, and then squinting again, struggling to see past the hole.
    Defeated, he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. The walls still surrounded him. The pipes and dust watched like guardians. Voyeurs. He looked at the clock and let out a long sigh.
    The clouds outside were beginning to grow thinner. The storm was finally over, and the walls were still standing. Nothing had changed. The boy turned his head again to look at the hole. There was something there. He knew it. Finally, he sat up in bed and began to stand. The obscured shapes twirled and danced in the darkness.
    Then, the clouds parted at last, and the blue light of the moon poured in through the bedroom window, illuminating every dark corner.