HONORABLE MENTION, 2020
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY A. POYTHRESS
There’s a waterfall in the third bedroom.
It started as a stain on the ceiling. You notice it one day while tidying up. Fresh sheets tucked in at the corners of the bed, carpet vacuumed in neat lines, picture frames lined up at ninety degrees on the wall. And all the way up in the join between wall and ceiling, a dark stain against the paint.
Annoyed, concerned, you get the stepladder, and when you press your face close to the plaster, you smell the damp. Rot. Sign of a leak, surely. But you notice, too, that the stain seems to be in the shape of a small child’s hand, and something about the way that looks, one handprint all on its own, makes a pain settle low in your stomach.
You decide to ignore it.
The next week, when you go back to the third bedroom to tidy again, the stain has developed a drip. Out comes the stepladder and you inspect it. The child’s handprint has grown, from an infant, perhaps, to a toddler, dark veins of mold extending the shape. A fat drop of water builds at the tip of the pinkie, swells and fills, and you watch the trip it takes to the floor.
Off the stepladder and onto your knees, you inspect the carpet. The puddle of water darkens the rough fibers. You wonder if it reaches down through the carpet, the pads, the cement, the foundation, back into the earth itself.
You bring a pot of soil and set it beneath the trickle.
By the next week, the hand has grown into the lanky length of an adolescent’s, knuckles knobby and fingers crooked. Water streams from each finger and you’ve placed a pot of soil beneath each one.
Flowers bloom from them. You hadn’t even known there was anything living left inside the pots. You’re a notorious black thumb and you wonder if they’ve sprouted only because of the water falling upon them.
The blooms spill over the sides of their containers: blue peonies, white daisies, yellow buttercups, red tulips, purple sweet peas, and every hue of green on leaf there could be—to the point that you must move the dresser and side table and bed up against the wall. You don’t want to cramp their growth.
You end up spreading loose soil and smooth river rocks along the floor, between the pots, hoping the sediment will soak up anything extra. The stream has picked up speed and drops have started to mist the air, leaving a slick on everything in the room. The streams of water coalesce when the hand finally stops lengthening. The fingers are long, knuckles sturdy, palm broad and solid. The basin of water on the floor has grown so that it laps up over your feet, ankles, calves, knees. You can hear the crash of water against stone from down the hall, fall asleep to the sound filling your own bedroom.
You put the stepladder against the wall and climb carefully up each slick step. Water cascades over your head, down your cheeks and off the tip of your nose, down your throat, and down into the rapids below. The smell of damp, of growth, of mold, fills your nose the closer you get to the ceiling. Veins of black have branched off the hand, twisting and twining into the shape of an arm, a torso. As you watch, the fingers spread, retract, like they’re beckoning you. It’s the first time you’ve seen them move; your heart races and though the water is cool against your skin, you feel your cheeks flush.
The hand gestures to you again and you reach out, twine your fingers with the ones stretching towards you.
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A. Poythress has been published at The Rumpus, Thresholds UK, The Lit Pub, Asymmetry Fiction, The New Southern Fugitives, and long listed for the 2019 Online Writing Tips Short Fiction Contest. A. primarily writes surreal horror and fantasy focused on women and queer-identified people. They have an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College.