Faces in the Carpet

[Andy J. Campbell]

Andy J Campbell a...@ajco.demon.co.uk
FACES IN THE CARPET (Fiction)

My fingertips trickle over hanging glass picture-mirrors, darkened by
my stale dry shadow. A phantom thundercloud drifts across lace-edge
trimmings and bright pixie coloured islands in a sea of varnished
teak. Pipe-cleaner dog stares up through black bouncy eyes, cowering
between wire branches of a golden tree with shining, hanging leaves.
My fingers rustle this imitation of nature, prickling, tickling,
smile-inducing, and the dog lies down, trembling with fear.
I move on, and the sky darkens over painted ivy-smothered cottage,
red door with flecks of white left by lazy painter. Fingers glide
gently down to stroke the yellow roof's rough coarseness and I
reluctantly sense, feel, accept the building's unreal miniature
solidness.
Fascination and exploration slip away with my smile, to be replaced
with frustrated dreams of destruction and domination. Fingernails sink
into plaster, white salty grains bounce from the roof, the sky fades
darker, golden leaves shimmer, and pipe-cleaner dog whimpers and
whines knowing Dream/Fairytale world will perish-
"Lets jump on the bed Robert!"
My vision is destroyed. I turn and put my back to the sideboard,
concealing my fury.
"See who can touch the roof!" cries my sister, Kate, bouncing from
feet to knees to bottom to feet and reaching up at the cobwebs with
the sleeves of her cardigan.
I step onto Grandpa's bed - always slightly harder, firmer than
Grandma's. I look at Kate, who is leaping and diving in a flutter of
brown legs and white socks, and then at Grandma's bed, which is
trembling, as if on the brink of implosion.
I smile again (no fury), and start to jump up and down on the
squeaky bedsprings, making the roof zoom in and out.
"Door, geddown!" Kate yells and the power cable of mindless fun is
abruptly cut. I unfold in the air, land on my stomach and slip neatly
down into the gap between my grandparents' beds. I breathe in the
thick, tangy dust from the carpet as Kate hurries to straighten the
bedcovers, and the door squeals slowly open.
"Kate?"
Grandfather's voice. My heart fills with hatred when the man's dirty
sandals shuffle into view. I keep my head still and one ear cocked.
Shuffling, breathing, scanning... stops.
"Where's that vicious little bugger?"
"He was just playfighting with me Grandpa and I fell on the bed and
made some noise I'm sorry- ah!"
I hear a tough, bed-vibrating slap, followed by a high pitched cry.
"Don't lie to me child!"
"He's hiding I don't know where please don't hurt him-"
Liquid patters onto the carpet between Grandpa's shoes - clear and
deadly. I imagine the needle sinking into my goosepimpled arm -
twisting flesh, scraping bone - and I inhale strings of poison dust
and begin to cough and sneeze feverishly.
"Anymore noise and you get the injection, understand?" booms the
voice of my grandfather, now overshadowing me like some grotesque
demon. Kate leans over the bed and watches me with her fingernails
between her teeth and dampness on her cheeks. She mimes how sorry she
is while Grandpa scolds me.
"...and she can stay in the front room with us you little trouble-
making bratt." Grandpa finishes, then turns and grabs Kate by the
hair. It hurts and she screams but I do not interfere, for I have
learnt many lessons trying to act Big Brother.
They shriek and shout to the door, which consumes them and slams,
echoing the room and blowing the curtains that hide bars on the
windows.
I wait until I can hear Kate no more, then scramble to my feet and
pluck spiders of fluff off my face.
I decide Dream/Fairytale world will lose another character before
I'm taken back to my cell. Perhaps my brutal and motiveless murder
will be noticed this time and I'll be given the overdose I so deeply
desire: the Animal Sleep.
I can only hope.
On my way to kidnap and dismember the pipe-cleaner dog, I meet
Georgina, the black woman in the carpet.
"When'd you come in?" I ask. She tells me she followed Grandpa under
the door. I nod and step over her.
Pipe-cleaner dog has somehow realized my intentions and hidden
himself well. Georgina looks up at me from the floor as I part the
leaves and branches of the golden tree to spy on the island below.
"No Georgina," I whisper firmly, gliding my fingers from island to
exotic island. "Five deaths isn't enough. The dog must go."
Georgina asks me why I'm afraid of being injected if my desire is to
be given an overdose. The Animal Sleep would surely amount to five or
more needles. I stop hunting Dream/Fairyland and turn to her, riddled
with pain and confusion.
"Because..." I whisper, unsure what I wish to say. "Because I hate
being alive." I study these words until I am certain they are correct,
before allowing tears to distort and magnify my vision.
Through a mosaic of wobbling colour, I spot the face of the pipe-
cleaner dog peeking from behind the trunk of the golden tree and
snatch it from its fantasy home. I walk over to Grandfather's bedside
cupboard and pluck open the door.
Georgina protests when I hold the dog by its tail and dangle it
between catch and hook. I look down and see her hovering between my
knees; staring through furious, carpet-woven eyes.
I shake my head violently as Georgina suggests Kate may get the
blame and be repeatedly injected instead of me.
"She won't!" I bellow and slam the cupboard shut on the pipe-cleaner
dog. I am unable to resist smiling, knowing the animal will never
pester me again with its big bouncy eyes. I pound the door on it
several more times to see how warped and twisted I can get it, how
much pretend pain it can withstand.
`Never as much as I can,' I think crossly, picking its lifeless eyes
off with my fingernails. Georgina no longer watches me. I scan the
carpet and find her slithering away towards the door.
"Tell Grandma her dog's dead!" I shout. She stops swimming through
her multi-coloured ocean and turns a fraction. "Yes I did mean what I
said about the overdose." I reply, throwing the dog's eyes at the
nearest wall. They bounce back and hit me as if in revenge. "Go tell
Grandpa, go tell him, see if I care, see if..." my words fade as
Georgina vanishes under the door.
I roll back my sleeves, hold up the remains of the pipe-cleaner dog
and wait for Grandpa to burst into the room with his needles.

*

A long time passes and I begin to ache, so I put the corpse down and
lie on the bed. An hour or so later the sun shines in through the
window, illuminating the Dream/Fairytale world and casting thick
shadow-lines down my body.
I see dots and dashes and curls drifting in the sunbeams over my
head like microscopic creatures at the bottom of the sea. I blow
gently through my lips and watch the chaos I create, remembering the
time when my father was alive... when Kate and I were allowed to play
together when ever we wanted - indoors or out.
Memories wander to his death, and our instant transfer to this house
of hell. I must have been no more than six years old when I was first
dragged through this dungeon's smoke-blackened doorway.
Six years old.
And I have never left here since.
Grandpa's kitchen cupboards are stocked full with huge jars of
transparent liquid. I saw them once... a long time ago, when he
decided I was to help him prepare a special meal for Grandma. When I
asked him what the jars were he said "Animal Sleep" and slammed them
out of sight.
Grandpa used to be a vet. Looking after children's pets. Making them
better. Touching them. Stroking them. Putting them to sleep when they
were causing too much hassle.
Now he's retired, Kate and I are his pets.
I am overwhelmed with self-pity when I consider the fascination I
have with the objects in this room. I have been imprisoned here during
the daytime for almost as long as I can remember. When night falls I
am tied behind the back and walked into another room that is cold,
empty and pitch dark.
I get scared sometimes... but when Kate taps softly on the walls
from her own prison elsewhere in the house, I settle down, curl up and
think of the past.
I have attempted to escape on no less than fifty eight occasions,
each one a failure, each one resulting in tighter security and less
privelages. Most of my schemes have been unsuccessful because of their
complicity and difficulty to perform: until recently I have refused to
abandon this fortress without Kate.
And now, beaten and bedraggled, I watch particles of dust descend
through a funnel of glorious light and wonder - for the millionth time
- if the liquid in Grandpa's cupboards is the juice of the house
itself, squeezed like a sponge to leave only a desert-like dryness in
the unfresh air.
When the floating particles and the thick lines across my body fade
away, Georgina returns to inform me Grandpa is preparing my cell.
"Thankyou," I tell her. "And... Georgina?"
She asks me what. I leap off the bed and stamp on her face - both
feet leaving the air. Eight or nine thumps later I give up, for she is
ploughing across the room like a speedboat.
"Bitch! Devil's BITCH!" I scream as she posts herself under the door
again. Seconds later, a lock fires back and Grandpa marches into the
room. He is gigantic and terrifying: a fallen angel with pointed ears
and a serpent's tongue. His formidable appearance stuns me as it does
every day, and then I am being writhed and battered like an abused
doll.
His daily injection (issued since the twenty fourth day I tried to
escape) ensures I fall quickly asleep in the void of my cell. Moments
before the drug takes effect, I hear Kate's gentle knock and feel as
happy as can be before the nightmares commence.

*

When I awake I am in my grandparents' bedroom once more, a huge and
boulderous lifeform among thousands of tiny, parachuting dust-
crystals. Touch returns: I am laid out, arms by my sides, on a soft,
comfortable bed. Grandma's bed.
I smell the staleness of the air, sucking in and a hundred undersea
lifeforms. I smell a girlish aroma: Kate is here. Grandpa's harsh
breathing pounds on my eardrums. I focus my eyes past the sunbeams and
the tiny dancers... three enlightened figures stare back at me, two of
them hideously wrinkled. In the middle, and lower down, I see the wide
blue eyes of my sister, alert and innocent.
"Doggie dead," blubbers Grandma. She holds up a small sightless eye
and cries over it, liquid pouring from her every facial orifice. She
burps and coughs and drools thick ropes of saliva onto my bare feet.
Kate turns away with disgust.
"We tried our best," croaks Grandpa, holding up a fist full of
syringes. In my head, I smile victoriously. "Your father would
understand why I have to do this, Robert. Your days of troublemaking
must end here."
He snatches Kate by the arm. My soul is sliced down the middle. Five
needles puncture her skin and she falls, mouth wide in silent shock. I
wait for the screaming but it never arrives. Before my strength
returns my sister is dead ...and then a face in the carpet.
I lean over the quilt and weep for her to come back, but she is
swimming away with Georgina - my grandparents' cleaner - who was
overdosed years and years ago.
I cry because the legend is true: there is no escape from this
prison, even via death.

*

I spend the next two days in my cell, weeping for my sister's tapping,
which I know I will never hear again. The darkness I have always found
nullifying becomes unbearable. I begin to feel myself being woven into
its hellish matrix, for here in my cell there is no carpet - only
cold, insect-ridden floorboards, preventing Georgina (and now my
sister) from visiting me.

*

Hundreds of nightmares later, I am back again, terrorizing the
Dream/Fairytale islands with my divine fingertips. This time I have my
eye on a dwarf that sits alone and smiling on a varnished mushroom. I
brush its cheeks gently, whispering to it my dreams of seeing the
outside world.
Georgina drifts out from under Grandma's bed, Kate following close
behind. My stomach twists when I see Kate's appearance; she is no
longer human but dry, dusty, and formed of nothing but colour. She
offers me a barely-recognizable smile, and I find myself returning the
gesture feeling empty and hopeless.
Georgina tells me to consider my first rejected plan. I shake my
head and continue stroking the cheerful dwarf who, unlike the dog,
seems unaware of my barbaric intentions. Georgina repeats herself.
This time Kate backs her up.
"No!" I snap. "I'm not waiting until they die, it could be years."
Kate tells me to look at her.
"Why should I, you're not even there. You're just patterns in the
carpet, just a stupid-"
She demands my attention, loudly, firmly, so I sigh and do as she
asks. Her face hovers beside Georgina's; hazy and difficult to depict.
She tells me never to give up. One day I will overpower Grandpa
because he is old and his days are running out. I smile cunningly at
this thought. Yes. She is right.
I must keep going. I must keep myself alive.
I sit down on Grandpa's bed and stare at the happy little dwarf. It
revolts me, and the more I look at it, the greater my hatred becomes,
but I do not give in to my fury, for because of it my sister now swims
as a ghost in the carpet.
Instead of knocks in the night I will survive on voices during the
day. I will terrorize the Dream/Fairytale world for ever, though I
will cease to commit any further random killings. And I shall watch
the dwindling dust until my grandparents crumble.
Then, there will be revenge.

_____________________________________________________________________

Faces in the Carpet was first published in Beneath the Surface in 1996.

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