Party Tricks

He shut the door behind him and studied the darkness. Midday melted through the doorway across the hall. Steam rose from the seams in the floorboards, and the air hung thick.

He raked his fingers through it. A cluster of light-needles spun upward. Scratched his eyes. Dragged a thin line of pain into his nostrils.

Ammonia.

He gulped air through his sleeve, sealed his palate to the roof of his mouth to hold it, then moved toward the doorway.

The floor curled beneath him, squelching like some great tongue, and he braced against the wall. He burst the pustules in the paint, cold water seeped through his fingers.

He got halfway. A dark slit gaped to his right, stairs climbing into the void.

“Anyone?” he called. The o swelled, humming back in his face.

Dead quiet. A television sprayed cerulean across the upper floor.

He took another gulp of air and reached the doorway to the inner patio.

A phosphorus day burned, seamless from the lime walls to a single sheet of cloud pressed against the firmament, cupping the heavens entirely.

The dark skeleton of a plum tree cleaved the white. It climbed along the wall, holding its spiked crown high. A clothesline ran from the trunk to a nail on the wall, underwear hanging dead.

He looked across the yard. A second doorway. He stepped toward it, flashing silica across the pavement.

It stood open. Soot clawed from the frame like black fingers. Chlorine warped the air. He entered.

A woman sat in a wheelchair. Her mouth hung unzipped. Her head tilted sideways, hair spilling over her companion like ocean foam.

He was staring at a dripping faucet. Puckering his lips in rhythm with the drops. Pupils sunk deep in folded sockets. His nose drooped past a white mustache. Pale legs bare.

He looked around them. The walls were crimson. The ceiling darkened. The plastic flooring, wood-patterned, trapped moisture and fed it to the black mold growing in the corners. A heavy curtain hung behind them.

A sudden snore. She slept.

“Anyone I can talk to, sir?” he asked, crouching in front of them. No answer.

He tugged the blanket over the man's legs and stood, turning to her. “A shame you don’t talk in your sleep, madam.”

He watched the soot trail crossing the ceiling, stood, and found an old stove and some firewood. “Look. At the end of the rainbow,” he said.

He lit a fire. It warmed and crackled. The shadows fled their faces, dancing in the curtain behind.

“I’ll find someone out back, I guess.”

He parted the long curtains and stepped through.

His echo rolled long across the room. His eyes adjusted. A pile of clothes soaked the wet floor, steaming at its peak in the slit of light from a boarded window. The furniture sank into the house’s rot.

Twenty-three people sat on couches crammed together, shoehorned around a black-and-white television that flickered through a hole in the ceiling. Their bodies swamped beneath discoloured blankets. Above, their heads bobbed like buoys.

A thin voice rose above the murmur.

“Oh, hello, young man.”

A grinning face, from one end of the couch line.

“Come over here,” she said.

He walked over. His shoes spat streaks of water across the sodden rug. He was sinking slightly.

“Sit here, honey.”

Her face hung on the cheekbones. Air hissed from the cushion as he sat, and dust curled upward. Heads turned, lolling with smiles. He guessed the room’s teeth had doubled since he arrived. They turned and their faces dissolved into the mist, flickered by the screen, rising and vanishing through the ceiling like an offering.

“I came for the Christmas party,” he said.

“In October?” She laughed, fanning her blue hand between them. “Well, dear, we keep that ad in the paper all year.” Her dentures lagged behind her words. “How else do we find good people?”

“Smart,” he said.

Rats raced across the upper floor, circling the ceiling hole. Dust sifted down.

“Does anyone look after this place? Looks like it’ll fall on you any minute.”

“Don’t worry, dear.”

“You could move elsewhere, maybe.”

She smiled and raised her finger. “Put not old wine in a new skin, lest both be undone.”

She pointed to the far corner, where the floorboards had caved in.

“I played in that very hole when I was a girl. It was wonderful.”

All heads turned to her. Wide, black smiles splitting their faces from end to end.

“This house won’t get any older than this.”

“Anything I can do for you?”

“Will you trade your company for the knowledge of your elders, young man?”

“Yes… I suppose I am.”

“Aren’t you a treat. Well, that’s all we can give you, really.”

She held his hand with a cool grip, and they watched the television. Old cartoons in black and white, a horizontal black line rolling up the screen.

“Are you single?” she asked.

“I had a girlfriend. She actually used to visit rest homes.”

“Bring her over.”

“We’re taking a break.”

“Sorry, dear.”

“It’s fine. She needed it, i suppose.”

Ahead, a man turned wide-eyed. “Go the hell away.” Then his head rolled back into sleep.

“Don’t mind him. I think you still like her.”

“Oh no? Why?”

“A volunteer in rest homes? Don’t be shy. You’ll find her, I say.”

“Thanks, madam.”

“Mean it. Sometimes you lose your mate. He was the couch for thirty years.”

A few laughs and snores rose from the chairs.

“We you married yourself?”

“A long time. He didn’t say ‘I love you’ much, but he’d swat flies off my toast. That sufficed.” She pinched her eyes dry, rose, and limped behind the couch. “We’re playing Secret Santa now,” she said, handing him a dirty box. “My turn to gift the guest.”

“You can’t speak before we do,” a pale man protested across from them.

“Do you accept it?” she asked.

“But I brought nothing.”

“Don’t mind that. Open it. Please.”

“Now?”

Heads nodded.

He unwrapped the soaked box. Inside: brown-stained underwear with a hole. He looked at her.

“Don’t mind the look,” she said. “They’re special.”

“Special?”

“They time-travel.”

“What?”

“They’re time machines. Come.” She led him back to the kitchen curtain. “Go inside. Put them on.”

He slit the curtain and entered. The old couple still sat. Sky burned copper.

“Come on, take them out,” she said through the curtain. “No stalling.”

“All right.” He dropped his pants. “I’m keeping my own underwear on, thank you.”

No answer. He put them on.

“How do I start it?”

“There ain't a lot of ways to start a machine like that one,” she said.

He found a brown smear on the front. He pressed it.

His heart dropped down his ribs. His knees buckled. Then black.

In the dark, his breath turned wet and clogged. Feet buzzed like crawling ants. Hands gone cold.

After a while, crimson bled into his vision. He forced his hand to his face, pried his eyelids apart.

He was flat on his belly. Couldn't lift his head at all. Turned it over the chin and rolled his eyes around.

His hair seemed plastered to the flooring. It was grey. He peeled it free, rolled onto his back, elbowed himself to sit.

He took a breath. Coughed. Touched his kneecaps and they slid loose.

Skin looked like white drapes over bone, a map full of brown spots and blue veins. Fingers thin. Knuckles like knots in old wood. There was a lightness to him.

“New wine in an old skin,” his hostess said behind him.

She leaned in from behind and hauled him up, her red hair all over his face, his head swaying as she dragged him across the damp floor. He couldn't speak.

“Let’s find you a seat, sir.”

She sat him down with the others, covered his bare body, and smiled at him. Her features were young. Those eyes, maybe he knew them.

“Your girlfriend,” she said, “maybe you lost her to the sofa.”

He scraped his tongue along his gums and over-shut his jaw.

“You know what,” she said, “let me give you another gift.”

She opened his mouth and slipped in her dentures. They were loose. He spat them out. The television flickered and drew his eyes.

She walked away, tossed his clothes onto the pile, and disappeared behind the curtains.

He felt his head floating a wave, a pulse rising and falling through the ceiling hole, swelling and receding, a breath not his own. He blacked out and fell into a round dream. Inside it, the murmur of conversation. He watched himself talking to her.

“Go the hell away,” he screamed.