I just know I'm going to dream about the witch. But when I wake it's dawn, and all I dreamed about was water—not a dream, as such, but how sleep itself felt, a big, dark lake, perfectly smooth, not so much as a ripple on the surface.
I'm tired, though. I ache with it, even though it's the best night's sleep I've had in a long time. It hurts to move my eyes in their sockets and I think maybe mom's right, maybe my laptop is slowly killing me. There's nothing of yesterday in my head until I sit up and it slides down the inside of my skull and into my eyes. I see the cops, I see Cara's photo, I see the party, and a cramp rolls over my stomach.
I reach for my laptop, the same way I do every morning, remembering it's out of juice. I grab my cell instead, seeing five messages and two missed calls from Flint. I know what they're going to say, and I'm right.
Where u?
Tommi you twat, answer me. You ok?
Tommi?
You oka? Gonna call your mom.
Duck you, douche move.
I write sorry as a reply, but I don't send it. She's right, it was a douche move. I should have texted her when I got home. I barely even remember getting home. Had mom been in the bath? Hovering outside my door? The whole evening feels half real, like my dreams have slipped loose, like they'd started and finished before I even went to bed. When I draw back the covers I see I'm still in my clothes, too, and with a jack-in-the-box jolt I wonder if somebody slipped something into my bottle, or if Flint somehow got me to swallow one of her little pills to help me relax, because that part of the night has gone completely.
Something moves in the bathroom, an echoing squeak of heavy flesh in the tub, the slosh of water. I need to pee but I can wait, so I head downstairs instead. I'm the first one up, the drapes drawn, the house yet to take a breath. I put coffee on, put bread in the toaster, brush crumbs off the counter while I wait, staring at that weird pattern of black mould on the kitchen wall. My brain's still catching up, little chunks of yesterday falling into place. I ought to leave it well alone, but I know I won't. That's the trouble with having a writer's brain, you cannot let a sleeping dog lie.
I must have woken mom up because she's staggering from her bedroom, half dead, when I walk up the stairs. She looks at me through her limp hair, grunts something about coffee.
"In the pot," I say as I walk into my room, closing the door behind me. I take a breath, feeling knackered from just climbing the stairs, feeling like there's not enough air in here. It's better when the windows are open, the cold air entering the room like the first explorers on a new continent, slowly, as if there's danger here.
Back under my duvet, laptop plugged in, toast eaten, coffee cooling on the table. I'd spend my whole life here if I could, if I thought mom wouldn't kick me out on my ass. I run my finger between the keys, brushing away crumbs, until the laptop finally has enough juice to crawl back up from its grave. It seems to take forever before it's ready for me, and I wonder if it's so reluctant because it knows where I'm about to take it.
I take a sip of coffee, swallowing even though it's still too hot. Then I start with Cara Pierce's Facebook page. I'm surprised to see that her profile picture has changed, and I can't for the life of me make out what it's supposed to be. It's just a black square with two out of focus yellow circles, almost like eyes, and two fat lines growing up from the middle, arms maybe. The whole thing is blurry. I click on the photo and it should take me to the next one, and it does, only this one's exactly the same, so's the next. They're all like this, some Facebook glitch maybe.
Tanner's page is still missing, deleted last night after I messaged him. I can't quite believe I did that, it feels like an utterly alien act, way too brave for me. I scroll through Cara's other friends but there's nobody there I recognize—Megan aside—so I click the creeepy.com tab and load up Cara's profile. I scan the list of stories she liked or commented on, finding the one I was looking for.
_tubby_
I knew I'd seen the word before, that single comment on the single photo on Tanner's page. Cara commented on this story three days before she died, and all she wrote was:
i don't' know if this is right but look at the table, look at the table, it's the same
My cursor hangs over the link to the story like a guillotine blade, but after a few seconds I move it away. I don't feel ready for it yet. Instead I launch Google and type "Witch's Game" into the bar. Nothing comes back but adverts for video games, so I add Cara's name, but that comes up blank too. I try adding "Dead Girl" alongside it and halfway down the first page there's a link to a Fox News page.
Girl's Death Linked to Facebook 'Witch'
When I click through, through, it takes me straight to the Fox homepage and there's no sign of it there. I retreat, trying to make sense of the thumbnail photo that goes with the article. Another teenage girl, not Cara, a school picture maybe. It's dated 2016. I drum my fingers on the laptop, popping my lips, but I can't think of anything else to search for so I head back to creeepy. It takes me half a mug of coffee before I can bring myself to click on the story, and I finish the drink off completely before I start reading.
I get the feeling I'm going to need it.
_tubby_
added by _unknown_ on 27.12.2013.
tubby is sitting under the table again.
tubby isn't saying anything but he won't stop smiling, I can feel him smiling even when I can't see it, and he keeps touching my ankle with his cold fingers. tubby isn't talking, tubby never talks, but he's grunting the way he does when he's hungry.
he's always hungry.
mother is serving, its chip night and shes done sausges with them. tubby don't always like chips but he likes sausages, he prefers meat. his fingers rub my ankles, rub them red raw, but I don't dare kick my leg because I don't want to make him angry. i tell him to hang on in my head and he grunts and rubs my ankle some more until I think his sandpaper fingers are going to reach bone.
father is staring at me. he's staring at the way my cheeks curve in instead of out, at the dark hollows where my eyes sit, where the tears gather like dust, at the line of my collarbone jutting over my t-shirt. mother too, she's serving me an extra big portion, but it doesn't matter because tubby won't let me eat it. tubby is too hungry to share.
here,she says, putting it down before me. it smells so good, I can see the grease on the sausages, the meaty smell of them rides up my nose and sits in my stomach. the chips are home cooked and crispy, but they will be fluffy when you bite into them. there's gravy too, pooling between everything, deliciously thick.
eat, she says. it's good for you.
eat, father says, an order.
and they see me pick up my fork, they see me stab it into the flesh of a sausage, they see me lift the sausage off my plate, but they don't see tubby's bone thin arm slide up from beneath the table, they don't see his dirty nails puncture the sausage, pluck it from the fork, they don't see his grinning moon face in the shadows between my legs, his wet lips opening, sucking down the meat with a choking, gulping desperation.
he eats everything, he even picks up the plate and pulls it beneath te table. i can hear him licking it, long and slow. and my parents just sit there and watch me and they don't see it, they see something else, something that isn't real, and when it's done they smile and take the plate that tubby has put back on the table and tell me I did well and they give me pie and custard for pudding but tubby eats that too.
i make my excuses and leave but when i look back I see tubby there, so big he barely fits beneath the table, his obese body squatting on two fat, folded legs, like a toad, his bald, sausage-greased head resting on a cushion of chins. only his arms are thin, as thin as broomsticks. tubby never wears clothes but he's so fat his skin hangs down like a skirt. his eyes are just holes in the doughy flesh of his face and he is still grinning at me. my parents feet are touching him, his back fat folded around their legs, but they don't feel him. i know that tubby could dance around in front of them, could jump up and down on their spines, and they would not know he was there.
only I see tubby, and he sees only me.
i can't even remember when he was first there, or maybe he's always been there. but he never used to take everything, he would only ever help himself to a slice of ham, or some apple peel. but the more he took the hungrier I got, and the hungrer I got the more he would take. now he's always there. he sits beneath the tables at school, he stands in the shadows behind the candy machines, he waits for me at night, when i'm so hungry I can't sleep and I come downstairs for a snack. he was there at the hospital when mother and father took me. when the doctor handed me a lollipop it was tubby's hand that took it, and it was tubby that sat quietly in the corner crunching it into dust, all while the doctor and my parents stared at me and smiled and nodded and told me how well I was doing to eat.
tubby is here right now, he's sitting in the bath even though the bath isn't big rnough for him. his flesh hangs over the edge and touches the floor. he's bigger than ever and he's grinning at me and grunting and i know what I am going to fedd him, it's right here in my hands, a skull on the label and the words 'bleach' written on the side of the bottle. i don't even care any more if he drinks it or if he lets me, I'm so hungry I don't want to live. my legs look like his arms, they're almost too weak to hold me. i'm made of twigs and sticks, not even real any more.
tubby grunts, the bath squeaking as he jiggles impatiently. i lift the bottle to my lips and tubby pulls it from me, puts it to his mouth, and drinks, drinks, drinks, until the bottle is empty. then he tosses it to the floor, still grinning, still grunting.
he won't even let me have this, I think. he won't even let me go.
god I'm so hungry, let me eat.
let me eat
tubby climbs out of the bath, he waddles to me on those emormous legs. they're so toadbent beneath his weight that he's the same height as me. he holds out his hand and I think he wants something more to eat, but I don't have anything, and anyway he's just wanting to hold my hand because he does, his long fingers cracking as they close around mine, just gently.
he's leading me out the bathroom, through the kitchen that smells like food because mom is always cooking now, out through the front door, out onto the street. i'm almost too weak to move but tubby is there, a dreadnought that pushes down the sidewalk. people must see him because they skitter out of his way, but they also can't see him because nobody looks at him, they just stare at me, at the scarecrow thin shape of me, bent legged and bow-backed, my arm outstretched before me.
i don't know where we are. a tall building that reaches the clouds that is drenched in shadow. tubby knows, because he pulls me through the door, up the stairs, up and up and up and up and up and up and up past screams and laughter and shouts and cries until i just can't walk any farther.
there's a door, it's open, and I can smell food. tubby goes first, and I wonder if it is his apartment, but i know it is not because there's somebody else here, somebody I can't see even though I can feel them watching me, but it doesn't matter because there's a table in front of me and its' covered in food, so much that it looks like it might break, and tubby just grins at me and the other thing I can't see grins at me and I know I can eat as much as I like here, I know I can.
so I do.
i dig my hands into the red of it, that glorious stickiness, and I eat.
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