Dishes: Part 1

A/N: This'll the first short I've finished in years. I'm also new to the horror genre. I was just reading Poe, Bradbury, and Lovecraft and got inspired, I suppose. Tear it to pieces!

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The sun illuminated Cameron's face. His skin sagged under its eyelid, swinging soft, like a low-hanging hammock, and then flaked away equally soft, like hammock threads.

“You can speed up.”

“You can slow down,” he retorted.

Suddenly the notebook slipped. He halted, slapping it against his prosthetic leg.

Like everything Cameron owned, he’d found in the closet. He’d been searching for his spare sneakers to give to his brother Ash. The cover was still intact then, and scrawled across it, his mother’s maiden name. Geneva Jennings. He remembered Father would call her “Jen-Jenny,” a nickname she abhorred, but the joke lost its humor around Nicole’s demise.

Cameron thumbed through the pages. Blank, save for a diary entry. In normal circumstances he’d be nauseated, but Jen-Jenny wasn’t Jen-Jenny anymore. She’d changed, along with her identity. Burned into the wind, like the photo albums, like Father’s possessions. We’re starting anew. Anew. Meaning, you’re erasing your past, and any hope for a future?

Jaw set, he'd entered the kitchen. Mother was scrubbing dishes. As her fingers flexed, bones and veins interlocked, chafing against her knuckles.

The door stood ajar.

“Mom—”

“I’m busy.” She leaned forward, into the dishwasher. “Go find someone else.”

“You’ve been washing those dishes all d—”

“Didn’t you just hear me, Cameron Moor?”

Cameron hadn’t responded. He’d run, and he’d kept running, until he’d collapsed. Leaves fanned across his vision. Jade, olive, tawny—all colors sang, thawed to the bone. Extending their wings, they sailed into the sky, into the sun and clouds and stars. Into Father...

So close, yet so far. The term didn’t possess meaning until then. With his hands he carved a path through the sky, a path along its spine. With his eyes he walked it, and when he reached the end, he simply continued into the feathers of cloud. Feather upon feather, wing upon wing he walked. They spread like phoenixes, crimson against the sun. But no matter how far he walked, heaven remained miles away, and he eventually tired and curled up by a tree.

Today his brother accompanied him. They shared blood, they shared a destination, but the similarities ended there. Ash stood tall, chin up, eyes crinkled with smile lines.

“There’s a party tonight at Jordan’s, hear?”

“Yeah.”

“Well...” Ash said, extending a hand. “Wanna go?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

Cameron didn’t hear him; they’d advanced into the grove. Music painted his airways, hummed across his eyes and face and limbs. He was singing.

Cameron Coppice, they called it, because it was Cameron who’d first discovered it and he who visited it most frequently. It folded into Springdale’s serenest corner. Ash helped Cameron through the brambles, and they plopped down at the base of their favorite oak, Cameron flipping open his notebook.

“Cam.”

Cameron gnawed on his pen. “Not now.”

“You should get out. Enjoy yourself.”

“I am out.” A smile unfurled across his face. “What is this all, a film set?"

Ash sighed. “You know what I—”

“Yeah, I do."

The silence pressed toward him, a dark shroud. He heard it unfold its limbs, slowly, then quickly, as if to surprise him.

“I just,” he persisted, “feel out of place. Everywhere I go, everyone’s staring at me, staring at my face.”

“Dude, you look great, even with the wounds.”

“Thanks.” The gratitude was genuine, the smile false. Ash didn’t understand. Cameron wasn’t unhappy, nor did he desire attention. No, he was happier when he was sad … if that made any sense.

Some dealt with it by stuffing their schedules. Ash. Others disassociated themselves from their past. Mother. But Cameron knew he couldn’t forget, not with his scars, not with his reflection. So he’d turned tactics; he emptied his schedule and paid frequent visits to his father’s bedroom, where he’d lie on the floor and write for hours on end. Sometimes he’d collect the glass of shattered pictures, dip them in crimson paint.

His father cut. Cameron remembered the scars, intertwining across his thighs, his shriveled arms. He’d never bothered to conceal them. They became infected, despite Jen-Jenny’s efforts. Then he cut too deep, and his screams still echoed through Cameron’s labyrinthine dreams. He’d wanted to die in the most agonizing way possible. And he’d received his wish.

It was less than a week after the accident, the accident that’d claimed Nicole’s life. She barely fought. Cameron read about heroic deaths, but hers was far from it. Father didn’t speak a word at the funeral; he’d handled the steering wheel. Sometimes Cameron wondered … if Father had received more wounds than he’d let show.

“Just once,” Ash pleaded.

“Just once.”

---

That evening, Cameron brought out the comb. He guided the teeth through specific directions, gelling back his hair as he went. The result startled him. Underneath the bangs, the filth and grime, he …

He leaned closer, into the broken glass. It was undeniable. His cheekbones protruded sharply, and silvers and golds garnished his irises, a medley of precious metals.

“Why are you taking so long?” Ash strutted into the bedroom. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt. “Jeez, you attending a wedding after this?”

They had to pass through the kitchen to exit the house. Mother stood at the sink, scrubbing dishes as usual. Her charcoal hair obscured her face.

“Hello.”

She offered a halfhearted “I’m busy.”

“We’re going out.”

No reply.

“You may want to think of getting something to eat.”

Still none.

“Alright. Love you.”

Ash improvised a shortcut through the woods. Cameron knew he was doing them a favor, but he couldn’t help feeling irritated, especially as sweat coated his neck. In a few minutes, both were breathing harshly.

“Why don't we—?”

Snap.

If it was daytime, Ash would’ve shrugged it off. But the sky gleamed purple. “You wanna go investigate, Cam?” he whispered.

Cameron was always the one to kill the spider. He smiled and turned. Just like old times.