BRAIN ROT

Will has just bought his dream home, but something infested is waiting for him when he moves in...

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I didn’t notice the mould, the day I decided to buy the house.

They had concealed it from me during the final viewing. It was creeping behind a bookshelf that was hinged onto the living room wall.

I spent my life savings on the deposit. After the moving van dropped all of my things off, my hallway and kitchen were decorated with the outpourings of my life. Dismantled furniture. Clothes in black bin bags. Scattered fragments waiting in the sojourn of what I expected to be my new beginning.

On the day I arrived, I took a long breath and stared into my living room. So pleased and proud of myself. That’s when I saw it.

The blotch had spread over the wall like an upturned smile. In the weeks I had spent packing up my old flat, some of the mould had grown around the shelf.

A small brown stain swirled at the bottom corner of the bookshelf, too. It was the kind of stain you might pass and not notice. At the right time of day, you could mistake it for dust, or a scuff mark.

The real problem was much worse.

I took a hammer out and prised the nails in wood free. I pulled in the cracks of the bookshelf and the wood came away piece by piece. Splinters fell in flecks and scattered on the floor.

I stood back and stared into the swirling pattern, tutting and running my fingers through the threads of my hair. It was encroaching underneath, speckled and glowing with an odd sheen that looked like sweat. I felt sick just looking at it.

I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my eye. Rage swelled in me at the betrayal. Then I laughed and thought about how it all seemed too good to be true. That I should have never trusted an estate agent. No surprise there.

I called my mother first.

‘My darling’ she said. In the background, I could hear a low buzzing sound and the tick of her living room clock.

‘You should have checked behind the shelves and picture frames. Always check.’

She told me she wished she could have helped to call a professional to deal with it, but with my father gone, her budget was specific. Restrictive. She also said she wanted to talk to me about something, but the line was breaking up.

I listened to the crackling and thought about my budget, how it had gone on the deposit. How I would need to save up to get this sorted. There was a minor pain in my arm, a vein running from my chest was twisting, aching for my mother. I loved her and missed her. She was so far away, I wanted her to be closer to help me fix this. She always knew how to fix things. Used to know, at least. She had been sounding more breathless whenever I called.

I dreamed of buying a house like this for so long. It was a townhouse that had been modernised. Beyond the moulding walls in the living room, there was a kitchen. Pristine cupboards that shone with refracting light. Double doors led onto a patio. Mosaic tiles decorated a small terrace. When I came over for each viewing, I imagined myself standing with the door open on a rainy night, drinking a glass of wine. There was a spiral staircase. A modest bedroom with a skylight and a gorgeous bathroom with a blue sink. It wasn’t perfect, and some decorating had to be done. Some corners that needed painting over. A new shower head. But the prospect of making the changes excited me. I pictured plants hanging over the double doors. Perfect pictures of me and my mother. I was even planning to save up to re-tile the bathroom.

I could relax. When work was done. My feet aching from my day at the hospital. An unrelenting maelstrom of sick patients, but I could come home to this. A work in progress, yes, but something I finally owned. Something that was entirely mine. My house.

On the first night, I slept on a mattress on the floor of the bedroom, readying myself to put the bed up the next day.

When I woke up on the first morning in my new home, my head was thudding. A splicing feeling, ripping at my temple. Holding the throbbing veins in my head, I made my way down the steps. Old floorboards scratched at my feet. The sound of the wood creaked and ripped through my skull.

At first, I thought it was a caffeine headache. Some kind of dehydration. I sipped my coffee and stared into the patch, wondering what I could do about it.

I tapped through webpages. Professional mould cleaners. Mould be gone. All prices are too high. If I wanted to get the budget right, it would have to wait until payday.

I opened a new page, the light glinting over my pupils. A thumping in my neck. I tapped into the keyboard. How to get rid of mould patches. I found a list of instructions, different equipment I would need that I didn’t have yet. Bleach and water seemed too simple.

I looked up at the patch after one article detailed the difference between black mould and toxic black mould. That the latter should not be cleaned as it would release some kind of spore into the air that would be detrimental to my health. I couldn’t resist laughing out loud at this, the living room coming back with the fracture of an echo.

A small creak of rage came back and rumbled inside me as I thought about the seller who had allowed me to go through to completion knowing about the mould. I looked up at the patch. A circle, some small dots. Then back to the article. I tried to decipher both, as if they were some strange code. A pattern into the root. A spot the difference puzzle.

I hovered my fingers over it, but I was too scared to touch it. My eyes swirled, and it seemed like it had become more round at the edges overnight, spreading out like the way I had seen rashes do on my patients between appointments.

The process was still unfinished. Boxes piled in the corridor. I wanted these days to be dedicated to unpacking before I went back to work, not figuring out this problem.

I pressed my fingers into the digits on the keyboard and called up the seller.

Three rings rolled into the living room. My coffee cup clinked onto the floor as I sat down underneath the patch. Staring into its glowing abyss.

‘Hello’ they answered. They were panting on the call. The sound of their running footsteps.

‘Hello it’s Will’ I said.

‘Will?’ They asked. I heard a small huff, the sound of a foot thudding onto mud. The drip of rain behind them.

‘The person who bought your old house’ I said.

‘Oh William, the buyer’

My head was getting worse. There was a strange taste in my mouth too. Like rust. I thought I must have burnt my tongue on the coffee.

‘Yeah I’m just getting in touch to ask a question about the house’

‘Go on’ they said. I could hear the squelch of their foot pudding through a puddle. A splash. They huffed, muttered Fuck under their breath. ‘Just out on a run’ they said as if it wasn’t already obvious. Exactly why they felt the need to tell me this, I wasn’t sure. It was obvious to me they were doing some kind of exercise, but I was quite aware that runners always felt the need to make the world around them they knew they were running. I thought about a man I had treated in hospital once who had fallen over a branch on a run. With my plastic glove over the exposed gash, straight though to the bone, it didn’t seem to bother him because he was a runner. He mentioned it ten times whilst he was getting stitched back up.

‘Did you know about the mould?’

‘Mould?’ They said, coughing. Hot breath seemed to empty through the line.

‘Behind the bookshelf’

‘Listen-’ they said. ‘I’m on a run and-‘

The sunlight pierced my eyes through the kitchen into the living room. Lines of light dripped over me and the patch of mould. I stared into it. In the light, it looked like an eye. The curve of the lid above it scattered dots of black into threads like ruptured veins in a cornea.

‘Don’t -‘ I said, unwilling to be dismissed. ‘You sold me the house’

‘Well actually it was my mums house’

‘Eh? I only knew you as the seller’

‘That’s because it was my mums house, I sold it after she died’

I had wanted to ask how she had died. I held it until it warped inside me and disappeared.

‘Listen - if you’ve got a problem’

I stared into the patch. The light was gone. The pattern of the eye I had been deciphering had gone.

‘I do have a problem’ I said.

‘Then take it up with the mortgage advisor. They only gave you my number as courtesy,’ they said. ‘William’ with a venom with vowels in my name.

The rudeness made me unable to speak ‘But-’ I stuttered.

‘Call them’ they said. I heard the last of their running feet and the line ended. The repeating beeps as I clenched my phone. I had wanted to throw it.

I called the advisor. Waited. After six rings reverberating through the living room, I gave up.

I screamed into my house. A reddened wave flooded over me. ‘Fucking hell’

I googled the closest shop on maps and stomped over there. My head was still thudding, but I thought the walk and some fresh air might do me good.

I bought some bleach and breakfast. Carried the bottle in one hand and a croissant in the other. Crumbs trailed behind me as I tore into it.

It was not the perfect start I had imagined.

Back in my kitchen, I poured hot water and some bleach into a bucket. I pulled out some gloves that I had taken from work and wrapped them around my fingers. My headache was almost gone. I was praying it wouldn’t come back.

When you’re a nurse, you become more attuned to your symptoms. More willing than the average person to not ignore them. The mould was a symptom. All I wanted to do was get rid of it. Cure it, if I could.

I carried the bucket into the living room. The heaviness of it cramped my arm. I found a scarf in a bin bag full of clothes and wrapped it over my mouth. Tied it at the back of my head.

I put the sponge in the water, the smell swallowing me. That perfect bleach penetrated through the cotton.

I stared up at the spot.

It had become more malformed and gaping. Less like an eye, but more like an open mouth. Some patterns turned into teeth. The tendrils became shaped into a wailing tongue.

I approached the spot with hesitation, my hand trembling over the white plaster. My instinct told me to start slow.

The curve around its edge was creeping close to the skirting board into my kitchen. Painted white, becoming blotchy and grey. The mould, like a strange black cloud, seemed to spread. My jaw and my arm clenched as pain radiated up into my neck.

The entrails of the blotch started seeping into the wood of the door frame. Rot moving fast.

I started to scrub, frantic. My hand pressed into the black. As I panted, there was a strange fizzling sound. Acid burning. I pulled back, hoping to find the black gone, swilled into the cloth I was holding.

From where I had been cleaning, there was steam rising from it. The smell was like burning rubber. Acrid and potent, like an open wound.

Then, I checked my fingers, the plastic of my gloves had melted. Some of the black had spread across the tips of my fingers like charcoal from a fire.

My instinct took over me, and I lent in to sniff it. My scarf blocked most of the fumes, but there was something sweet about the smell. Like vanilla or perfume.

I called up my mother again.

‘Mum, there’s something going on with this mold,’ I said. There was a strange buzzing down the end of the line, the faint clinking of a spoon against porcelain. My headache was returning. A strange thumping in the veins of my head.

‘Have you tried bleach?’ She said, a softness in her voice. I could hear the rasping through the phone. A heavy, slumping exhale as she fell onto her usual seat. I could picture it in my mind, the tattered sprayed edges, cotton frayed from the wear. For so many years, she sat there watching me play, studying with my textbooks, and then disappearing and reappearing through the doorway on my visits. Her head sometimes looked up as I was leaving. Other times, her eyes were so fixed on the television that she would barely blink.

‘Tried bleach, but something strange is happening when I try to clean it’

‘Strange how?’ I was shaking, and I felt the beginnings of a cold sweat as I stood up to go upstairs. The vein in my scalp was bulging. With my blackened fingers, I pressed into it and tried to rub my head where it was hurting. When I pulled my fingers away, the black on them was gone. There was a feeling in my stomach, like I had just swallowed water.

‘Steam is coming from it, a black kind of dust - is coming away’ I said, treading back up the staircase to my bathroom where I had placed my full-length mirror.

‘That’s odd. Sound serious-‘ she said, stopping.

As I thudded up the stairs, I focused my eyes on the light coming from the windows. The old wood glittered with yellow.

‘Listen-’ she said, letting out a wince, followed by a gulp.

There was silence on the line, a stuttering noise. An interference.

‘Something wrong?’ I asked, opening the door to my bathroom.

I could hear the sound of her putting her cup down on the coffee table. I was in front of my mirror, but it was facing the window. Light was reflecting in pools over the sill. A repeating tundra.

‘I went to the doctors this morning, Will.’

My stomach sank as I held the phone to my ear and turned the mirror to face me.

‘They want to bring me in for further tests’.

I didn’t know what to say. Down the line I could hear her crying. I so wanted to leave. Get away from the mould and comfort her in person.

I started to tell her that it was probably just routine, that the doctors and nurses probably just wanted to be sure. That it happens all the time at work. The line started breaking.

Then I saw myself in the reflection.

The dust had spread over the vein of my forehead where I had been pressing. The vein had become more bulging. A green throbbing from the side of my skull. It was visible but painless. It looked like a tentacle of some kind. Snaking over the temple.

I put my phone in the bathroom sink and I could hear my mother chanting my name, waiting for a reply.

I pressed into the black blotch. The bulging vein. Something strange oozed from it. A gunk, like my skin, was pushing out some kind of infection. Pressing in with my finger, the headache came back. A splitting across my skull. Then, I watched my eye. The thread veins pulsed. My white iris filled with black.

I pulled my phone from the sink and ended the call. I sent my mother a text, letters typing into the keyboard in abandon. The line is breaking up mum, please let me call you back. I love you.

I felt the skin all over my body prickle as I ran down the staircase, determined to rid the stain from my new house. I wasn’t sure what it was doing to my body, but it ached. 

I told myself that once I had bleached it clean, I would be going straight to the doctors. Without the scarf over my face and the remnants of the melted gloves, I faced the mould again. 

It seemed to be travelling slow, rejoining where I had severed its growth. 

I picked up the entire bucket of bleach water and threw it over the wall. I heard the splash hit the floorboards first and the fizzling sound got louder. Then it turned into a ruptured scream. 

I watched the mould recoil, its entrails turning in on itself, the strange black spilling into the water down and spreading over the floorboards and swirling into a puddle around my feet. The murky water swallowed the soles of my feet. My living room stunk of rotting flesh and bleach. 

I stepped back, stumbling and falling onto the base of my spine. I felt a sharp twinge when I hit the floorboards. It ripped up through my back. 

My headache seemed to be moving through my entire body as I tried to lift myself back up. I was soaked with it. 

I lifted my head and stared into the patch where the mould had been. The wall had broken away into chunks, plaster cracking and peeling onto the floor. 

Behind it there was a strange, bulbous boil looking thing that lived inside the wall. 

It pulsed and inflated. Tentacles slivered out of the plaster. Dismembered teeth grew from it, as it vibrated from the shadows beyond the hole. Veins sucked onto the bricks. I held my breath and waited for it to eat me. Swallow me whole. I tried to gasp at the air through my hot sweat and the pain in my body.

It just kept staring into me, waiting for some kind of answer I couldn’t give it. 

I got up, slowly. My bones cracked. Tendons pulling. 

Light seemed to disappear as the squelch of my own feet slipped over the murky water. The thing inside was watching me move, wheezing almost. Bubbles of flesh were breaking over it. Then I could hear a whisper through its scattered mouth and the empty of the deep wall. 

‘Help me’ I thought I heard it saying, as if it couldn’t catch its breath. 

How? I tried to ask but my voice came out empty, words crawled and died up my burning throat.

In my pocket, I could hear my mother ringing me again on my phone. 

I let it ring out and watched the strange mound of flesh in the wall. Transfixed, as the flesh inflated and deflated. 

‘Please,’ it whispered this time. ‘Help me’

My head was still thumping, but the closer I got to the hole in the wall, the more my pain subsided. 

The steam had dissipated, so I could see its full form. Somewhere inside of it, I thought there must be some kind of heart. A soul. A lung to thread in the air to make a throat. A mouth to whisper the words. 

I glanced down at my feet, they were coated in black smudge. It was an odd sensation, realising the closer I came to the infection, the less it hurt. 

I inched closer, peering into the flesh. Listen, it was saying this time. Listen.

In my pocket, my phone was still vibrating. I pulled it out, expecting it to be my mother. Eyes fluttering between the fleshy hole of the wall and at the unrecognisable digits.

I picked up the phone and heard my own growling voice coming through with a greeting. 

Thread veins had started traveling over the bones in my legs. Each tendril from the wall had started to wrap around my ankles, sloshed in the puddle. It felt safe, not pulling, not tearing. No struggle. Just a warm wrapping, like someone was hugging me.

‘It’s Maddie from Easy Living Estate Agents Calling’ 

‘Yes’ I said, spit dribbling down my chin. 

I waited. I thought about my mother waiting for me to call back. My veined fingers were brittle at their ends. Some of my bones were bulging out. A blood red filled my vision. The light outside blinded me. The small voice inside the wall grew louder. 

This house. It was infested. 

There was a pounding heart inside of it, flesh creaking through the bricks. Pulsing veins entering my insides and easing my headache. Closer to it, I started to feel less swallowed by my worries.

My pulse ruptured as I thought about all the years I had sweated to buy this place. All those years, I had ignored my mother’s phone calls when I had been on a shift at the hospital. 

‘Hi William. It’s good you’ve tried to get in touch,’ they said. ‘Before we speak to you about the problem you're having, we just need to ask…’

My mouth was a well of murky water. I was beholden to the beauty of the waste. My skin was no longer prickling. Boils were bulging out of me. Sweet smelling, bubbling. A new beginning. 

I let out a small wheeze. My dream home was etched into my skin. A pattern of mottled blotches travelled from my feet to my face. 

I dropped my phone into the puddle underneath me. Listened for its buzz as a small spark fizzed from the screen. Before my phone died, the sound of Maddie from the estate agents emptied through the living room in a bursted splinter.

 ‘We just need to ask,’ she said again. ‘Are you aware that your first mortgage payment has bounced?’

Help me, I said back into the hole as its teeth clasped together into a knowing smile.

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