The House They Couldn't Build

By B. Mamatha

"Mamatha’s skill at summing up situations through arresting images ground her flights of fancy in a world both real and tangible." - Publisher's Weekly.

Strange fiction, altered realities. Six short stories inspired by notions of ‘home’ - disorienting, comic and uniquely memorable.

Bleakly comic and uniquely memorable, The House They Couldn't Build presents beautifully crafted and seemingly recognisable worlds in which the unlikely meets the impossible head-on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Goldman Press
• Release date: Jan 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9780992939441

B. Mamatha

B. Mamatha is the author of novella Keeping Lastly and short story collection The House They Couldn't Build. She lives in the North of England, and was a winner of the 2014 Booktrack Halloween flash fiction prize. Latest releases: www.thegoldmanpress.co.uk

Book preview

THE HOUSE THEY

COULDN’T BUILD

~ short stories by B. Mamatha ~

Copyright 2014 The Goldman Press

Smashwords Edition

Contents

Pork Chop

The Gunnard Ultimatum

The Mirror Trick

The Smoke

Symbiosis

A Game of Invention

About the Author

Copyright

Pork Chop

The evening started with an argument over a pork chop – or, at least, that’s how I remember it. My younger brother Benny swore for years it was because of an unflushed toilet (my father was a details man and minutiae often pushed him over the edge, so it seems believable). But for years afterwards, even in hulking adulthood, Benny used to sleep with the lights on, so fractured was his imagination. I don’t believe his version of events is seamless.

No, the evening started with an argument over a pork chop – something we enjoyed as a rarity in those days. There were five of us crowded around a table built for four – Sam, too small to count, balanced on the corner of the sideboard. The table was the kind with the fold-down eaves; during the day it huddled against the wall because we ate in the front room. We opened it up in the evenings, Pops jammed in behind the door, belly and all, and my mother squeezed in at the other end beside the blank-faced TV – we rarely switched it on. The sudden boom and glare might draw attention, and everywhere folk lived quietly, around the edges, trying not to be noticed.

This was back when we lived in a block of flats near the railway line; both are long gone. There were two blocks of flats separated by an anorexic strip of land – a communal garden, which typically meant any combination of: primroses, daffodils, fallen cherry blossom, pram wheels, paint tins. Each flat had an identical layout mirrored across the sibling blocks – dark hallway, crummy bathroom, dining/living room, kitchenette across the way, two bedrooms at the arse-end.

The argument about the pork chop – which was only the beginning of the evening – took place in winter. I remember because we ate earlier than usual that day – it was a Tuesday, and that was an evening that Pops went out. I also remember because, later on, I saw powdered snow on the caps of their boots, and cold, hard skin and steel; and because it seems unbelievable that things like this happen in spring, or summer, or on your birthday, or on the first day of school in hand-me-down shoes. I mostly remember because it was early, but it was already dark outside – and inside – and under a dim light I could see our darker selves mouthing and miming our actions in the reflections in the window.

Then my father had come thundering in, hair slicked down, thumping around in his socks, reeking of dangerous pomade and Old Spice. He snapped the shades down.

When I tell you. To close the curtains. When it gets dark. That’s what I fucking mean.

He was a big man, my dad. My mother glanced over, like a rabbit running away through long grass – she knew how to tread softly, stay out of trouble. Every man for himself.

I don’t recall how we ended up with a pork chop apiece – and on a Tuesday – but there they were, mounded and glistening and speckled all over with jewelled, molten fat. We wrapped them in buttered slices of white bread, bloodied smear of tomato sauce seeping out around the edges, and ate quietly, murmuring about the day and its misdemeanours while threats and retribution came dark and hushed across the table, all the more terrifying for their whispered way.

We had a pork chop apiece, and one left over in a Pyrex dish gently steaming over – that was for Pops, because he’d be hungry when he came home, and usually more foul-mouthed.

I don’t know why – I thought it would be funny to slide the last chop into Benny’s plate while Pops was out of the room. Benny laughed and punched me on the arm, hard, and flipped it back over the table. I batted it away and it landed on the dirty table cloth with a wet plop. Doubled over with silent giggles we flipped the chop faster and faster, back and forth across the table – piggy in the middle, hot potato. It was brilliant and skillful – until we heard the toilet flush, and slow footsteps in the hall.

Then Pops pushed the door open and loomed over us four, the pork chop oiling up the dirty cloth between us. No one said anything. Finally he spoke, and we felt our insides recoil.

Who left the outside light on?

We stared down at the slowly congealing chop and said nothing.

Benny. Pops came up behind Benny’s chair and whispered, Did you turn the light off, boy?

A slow flush blazed up Benny’s neck, grabbed his ears, wouldn’t let go.

It weren’t me, Benny muttered. Benny was a small boy, I could have softened the blow for him, but I didn’t. Every man for himself.

Fucking liar! You was last one in, I hissed.

Pops took a step closer and Benny shrank in his chair.

Both of you. All of you. You listen to me. When I tell you. To keep the fucking light off. You do it. He had his hand on Benny’s scalp; my mother had Sam on her lap, one hand over his mouth. Pops jerked Benny’s head in time to an unheard tune. Why don’t you. Light a fucking beacon. Invite every murderous bastard in a 10-mile radius. That what you want?

And just then, as if in answer to the invitation, a single knock rang out from the front door.

No one moved. No one breathed.

The knock came again, persistently, insistently. My mother dully put the chop back in its Pyrex dish and edged the lid on, as if all our movement could be contained and dampened under the steamed-up dome. A playful voice slid around the door and into the gloom of the hallway.

Knock, knock!

My dad breathed out slowly: Fucking hell. I’m sure he paled a little, the big man himself. I felt fear-giggle brewing in my guts.

I’ll huff and I’ll puff ... sang the voice in the dark.

I opened my mouth but Pops shot me a black, frightening look.

Shut. It.

Someone kicked at the front door and it rattled pathetically in its frame. Then several feet were hammering at the door, kicking up dust and fuss. My mother looked up at Pops with large, swollen eyes.

No one. Fucking. Move. he snarled.

Summink smells good! barked the voice in the dark. ‘ere,  you gonna invite us in, or you telling us to piss off? Cos that would be rude. Wouldn’t it?

Another series of kicks rang out against the door, warping the frame and teasing the straining chain. Inside, we five sat and watched the Pyrex dish.

Silence, when it came once more, seemed all the more terrifying. Then, with a shocked, neat snap, the door splintered and crashed open against the hall wall, sending a crack creeping up in the plaster in the living room like a distress code.

We heard them moving through the hall softly then, a slow sinister march of boots and weight and dark intent. They opened the doors as they went, peering into each recess, mapping the flat from the inside out.

We waited and waited, not daring to look up, not even when the door to the living room swung open and the Dolf Wolf poked his snout around the door frame.

The Wolf was lanky under his out-sized clothes but somehow, under his plastic snout and sneer, that was a minor detail that only came to mind after the event. He sauntered into the room – which from the door was only two strides – and then he was standing neck-to-neck with Pops, who stared resolutely at the pork chop.

Three men came in after the Wolf, all of them too-tall and broad, sucking up all the light between them. They wore fatigues and thick-soled, steel-capped boots laced with frost. Each wore part of a beastly face secured with a thin strap of elastic: the wolf’s muzzle; monkey mouth; sneering, bare-fanged hyena; and, at the back, the shining curls of a former prime minister.

The Wolf came up close, very close, too close, to Pops and murmured, Cat got your tongue?

Pops stared at the wall about two inches above my head and shook his head just a fraction. The Wolf jabbed him in his massive belly; still the big man said nothing.

The Wolf smiled a bloodless smile under his muzzle and hood.

You know why we’re here, don’t you? He leaned closer still and grunted. We came ... because we saw your light on!

Monkey man let out a piercing animal shriek, at once comic and hideous and, I swear, I almost shit myself. Benny was breathing fast and I kicked him under the table. The Wolf leaned over him.

You. Chair.

Benny stood like a wooden boy and pushed his chair over and then, not knowing what to do, looked at the Wolf. The Wolf looked at Benny. Then monkey man pushed his way to the front of the tableau and poked his plastic face on Benny’s cheek.

We only need the legs, you dumb cunt!

The Wolf put out a placating hand, Oi. He’s just a kid.

Monkey laughed around his plastic face and looked over at me.

You. Get round here and take this chair apart, there’s a good lad.

Do it, boy! hissed