The small dining room was quiet, save for the soft clinking of silverware against chipped stoneware. Amelia sat across from her husband and watched him scarf down his supper. His face was smeared in soot, as it typically was. He had hardly shrugged off his work coat before meandering into their dining room. His shoes were nowhere to be seen, most likely mud-covered and sitting on their front porch to dry.

“A busy day?” she asked.

“Hmm,” Robert replied.

The usual, then. One by one, he shoved piles of meatloaf into his mouth, having no concern for the juice dripping down his chin. It reminded her of when Robert would nick himself while shaving, the thick droplets eager to make their home onto his shirt collar. She would have to wash his work shirt tonight—the stain would set something terrible if she didn’t.

After only two years of marriage, Amelia felt that she had settled quite well. She and Robert had adjusted sufficiently into their home, which her late father passed down to her. Their dining room was smaller than most and dimmer than she’d like, but Robert preferred a more minimal look. Too much clutter made his eyes hurt. Most of their furniture was disassembled in the attic, tossed up there and forgotten by the newlyweds.

Amelia stared at her plate; Robert’s robust chewing echoed in the room, accompanied by the soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer. His mouth made a wet slop every few seconds before coughing out all the air he swallowed in haste to get his supper down. The chunk of meat sat before her, moist and oozing with the sauce she labored over all afternoon. She had taken a few small bites, as she needed to, but could hardly bring herself to swallow the mound down. Her already full stomach started to churn. She set down her fork.

“Honey, how would you feel about going somewhere this weekend?” she asked.

“Like a trip?” he asked. Robert leaned back in the wooden dining chair, the wood creaking with the weight shift. “I don’t think we need something like that.”

Amelia fought back a frown. Back when they were in high school, Robert had always lived to the fullest. He’d sneak up to this very house and toss pebbles at her window, waving wildly to the long dirt road that led to the end of the property. His truck would be parked down the way, packed with sleeping bags, beer, and flashlights. Amelia remembered his boyish smile as he placed his letterman over her shoulders.

“Well, I’m sure we could fit it in somewhere. It would be nice to get away, just the two of us,” she said. “We haven’t been able to spend much time together recently.”

Robert set down his fork for the first time in nearly ten minutes. His hand clenched in on itself, eager to return his death grip onto the bent piece of silver. It became obvious to Amelia that she shouldn’t have asked. She should have known by his furrowed brow and the tightness in his shoulders as he walked through the door that evening not to ask. All he seemed to do was come home angry these days.

“Say, Mia, where would we get the money to go on this trip?” Robert said, voice low.

Amelia took a quick breath, her smile stretched tight across her mouth. “You’re right, honey,” she said. “I know money’s been tight, especially winter blowing in early, but I guess I just thought it would be good for us is all—”

“Just be quiet. I’ve heard enough out of you for the evening, acting like you know what’s best for us. You don’t know nothing,” Robert said, interrupting. “Just sitting here all day, getting ideas in your head of a life better than we have. I never imagined I’d marry someone so damn ungrateful.”

Amelia swore her father’s grandfather clock, shoved in the back corner of their foyer, stopped ticking. Once she blinked, the soft ticking in the hall resumed. It was all she could focus on as her hearing died out and her face grew hot. She felt her stomach sink and placed a careful hand on top of it.

“Of course, I’m sorry to have suggested it.”

Robert let out a huff of finality as if he had finally solved his biggest problem of the night and went back to shoving meatloaf down his throat.

He went at it with a newfound hunger, his face almost as red-hot as the sauce. With each loud, gulping swallow, Amelia was sure he would choke. The grounds would lodge themselves down his esophagus any minute now, and he wouldn’t be able to hack them back up, no matter how hard he tried. She knew she couldn’t help him—knew that her arms couldn’t possibly stretch around him tight enough to squeeze it out of him. Amelia would have to watch him choke down his last breaths and then figure out what to do with the leftovers.

He used to not be this way. As she watched him hack down his supper, Amelia wondered when things between them started to change. No matter how far she looked back, she couldn’t pinpoint when his boyish smile disappeared completely.

After supper, Amelia silently grabbed their plates—one for her and three for Robert—and carried them into the kitchen. She heard the wooden chair scrape against the floor, the foul sound sending goosebumps down her skin. Amelia listened to the whispers of his work shirt being unbuttoned and tossed on the floor. Soon enough, his heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs, and their bedroom door closed with a purposeful thud.

The stoneware clattered in the sink, and the remaining meat scraps fell into the drainpipe. Amelia placed her hands on the sink’s side and took a sharp, hollow breath. She had laundry to do.

Just as she thought, Robert’s-stained shirt was crumpled and forgotten on the dining room floor. Picking it up by the collar, Amelia held it open to assess the damage. She’d have to scrub at it for hours to get it all out. She could already feel her knuckles begin to ache. Throwing it over her arm, Amelia turned on her heel and began to walk to the mudroom.

They were beyond lucky to have a washer in the house. Even if it was an old piece of junk that hardly agitated, at least it was inside. As Amelia pushed open the old swing door of the mudroom, she nearly cursed when she saw the pile of wet clothes still sitting in the hamper. Rushing over to the pile, she grabbed whatever was on top—her favorite church blouse—and sniffed it. No mildew.

“Thank the Lord,” Amelia said quietly.

She had spent so long on supper she had completely forgotten her clothes were sitting in the mudroom. Amelia looked out the frosted window facing the edges of the property. It wasn’t too late to dry them, but as Amelia glanced down at all the other things needing washing, she wondered if she’d get to bed before dawn.

With Robert’s shirt still hung on her arm, Amelia picked up the basket and made her way outside the mudroom, back into the foyer, and out the front door. Nudging the screen door closed with her hip she could feel the cool night air wrap around her. Summer was already yielding to winter up in the mountains, the air thinner and colder to breathe in. She prayed their clothes didn’t freeze.

Sitting by their porch steps were Robert’s missing shoes, caked with mud and something else. In the dim light, it was impossible to guess. Amelia would have to ask him in the morning. She prayed it wasn’t oil from the mines. The last time they got so dirty, she had to scrub it so furiously that her cuticles went raw.

Walking around the front of the house, she turned the corner by their cracked bay window, careful to keep the hamper on her hip rather than her stomach. They used to have a working back door, but the lock jammed a few months ago. Robert promised her he’d fix it one day, but Amelia found herself getting used to the journey to get to the clothesline. It allowed her time to daydream.

The night before Robert had proposed, he begged to take her up to the lake. It was a cool night, much like this one, but the lake had already been thoroughly frozen over. Amelia couldn’t possibly guess what he wanted to do out there, but he smiled so wide at her, and she knew that no matter what it was, she would have a fun enough time just by his side.

Amelia couldn’t remember the last time they went to the lake. Sometime after they got married, if she recalled it right. Robert’s sister came up with her kids, but he had hardly shown his face before complaining they hadn’t packed enough beer and slinking off to the store to pick up a pack. Amelia spent the entire afternoon playing with her nieces and listening to her sister-in-law drawl on about her husband’s new promotion. Once the sun had set, she hardly noticed Robert had even shown up to begin with.

Coming to the back of the house, Amelia walked to the old clothesline, bent at its left base and the wires falling loosely from their supports. Robert said he’d fix this, too. Setting down the basket, Amelia smiled at its soft blue color—her mother’s favorite. She remembered how happy she had been when her father had built it and let her and her mother help paint it. They were such a happy little family, just the three of them. That’s all they needed.

As Amelia began to hang the laundry, she remembered her mother’s soft voice telling her stories. She could vividly recall her mother’s lean arms lifting to the wire, tugging it slightly as she weaved clothes through it. She told Amelia how proud her father was when he finally finished their house and the tears he wept when he found out her mother was expecting. By the following month, he already had a polished wooden crib waiting in the nursery. The crib sat in the attic now, disassembled and in desperate need of a dusting.

Day after day, Amelia would sit by the base of the clothesline and hear her mother ramble on with a smile. Amelia frowned as she looked up at the full clothesline, the basket empty at her feet. She wanted what her parents had—more than anything, and when she met Robert in school Amelia was sure she had found it. But now?

Now Amelia felt like she didn’t know anything anymore. She felt like she didn’t know Robert anymore. Closing her eyes, she took a shallow breath, but before she could exhale it, she heard a soft gurgle from the tree line.

Turning on her heel, Amelia looked toward the sound, eyes wide.

“Who’s there?” she yelled, one hand coming to her side and the other to her abdomen. “I hear you!”

Her eyes stayed glued to the tree line, but there was no movement save for the leaves waving in the breeze. Had she misheard it? Amelia knew better than to investigate alone—she should run to get Robert. He would know what to do, but Amelia thought about his furrowed brow and tense shoulders. No, no, she shouldn’t bother him. It was probably a critter, anyway, trying to sneak into their back garden.

Another gurgle sounded from the treeline, louder this time. It was desperate. What if it needed help? Amelia swallowed down the lump in her throat; goosebumps once again rose along her skin. What if she could help it?

She took a tentative step toward the noise, then another, and another, until finally, she was only a few steps away from the underbrush. Amelia could see it then—the mound lying dead just beyond the trees. Her lip quivered as she looked down at it—a dog.

Amelia had seen it before, running around the main road a few nights ago. She couldn’t remember who it belonged to, but it always seemed to be running. Was it looking for a new home? Was it hungry? Is that why it ended up in their yard, only a few feet from the garden?

She stared down at it, at its mouth beat horribly out of shape, almost as if someone had stomped on it with a boot. A few of its teeth lay in the limp grass, bloody and covered in residual gum tissue. Its body was no better. Amelia gagged.

Its torso was caved in, unnaturally lumpy in all the wrong places. The skin began to sag in certain spots, separated from the tissue underneath. Who could have done something so awful?

Amelia’s hand moved to cover her mouth, her throat constricting as though not to vomit. Robert’s-stained shirt dropped to the ground, the white fabric soaking up whatever lay in the grass—its blood. The blood that had already seeped into the grass was indescribable in the dim light. Amelia turned away, sure she would be sick, but a sudden movement halted her.

The dog’s stomach began to pulse, the skin rolling loosely. There was something inside of it—Lord help her, there was something in there. Bile rose in her throat, but she couldn’t let herself look away. She couldn’t. Its stomach began to roll more violently, and as its matted fur separated, Amelia could finally see it. Whatever was in there was clawing its way out.

Stumbling back, Amelia’s jaw went slack as she saw a paw emerge from the dog’s stomach, but there wasn’t anything natural about it. It was too large, too red-hot to be a pup. Its claws were black, cankerous, and oil-covered. One paw was free, and then another, and soon its slicked head emerged from the corpse. Amelia’s eyes pricked with tears—she needed to run, she needed to do anything other than watch—but as she placed both hands to her side and the bile settled back in her stomach, she couldn’t.

Its claws dug into the damp earth, the grass lifting from its roots as it clawed out. It was an ugly thing, something straight out of a nightmare her mother would have told her. Its fur was pitch black, patches missing near the base of its neck and spine, the red skin pulsing with new life. Amelia was sure that no ounce of love could exist in a creature so foul. Its eyes slowly blinked open into a hollow nothingness—it had no eyes. Its head swiveled around as its nose twitched. It could smell her.

Carefully, the thing pulled itself out of the dog’s corpse, a gush of thick liquid spilling out with it. Amelia took a few steps back, watching the blood weave through the grass around her. The soil was already too damp—it couldn’t possibly absorb more. The thing’s soft mouth opened, and where she expected to see the soft gums of a newborn was the stark white of fangs, eager for food, she thought. Amelia let out a shaky breath. The creature continued its crawl.

It was crawling to her, she realized with horror. What if this creature thought she was its mother, that she would be the one to feed it and take care of it? Amelia’s limp hand once again settled on her abdomen, and a newfound resolve filled her. She couldn’t let the thing live, not when it came from a monster like that.

Her foot felt heavy as she lifted it into a step and then another until the soft, fleshy thing was right under her foot. Amelia looked down at it, her eyes wide but her will strong, and brought down her foot in a strong stomp.

Then another.

And another.

Its soft body squelched underneath her shoe, the soft cracking of bones penetrating the night air. Amelia couldn’t stop until she looked down at her foot again and saw it covered with its corpulent sludge. The thing was long dead, and as a hollowness filled Amelia, she bent down and grabbed Robert’s work shirt. Holding it by the collar, she spread the fabric and gently laid it on the creature like a funeral shroud.

She watched as more dark liquid seeped through the fabric.

As her hands fell back to her sides, she knew she wouldn’t be able to get the stains out—not of something this far beyond repair.

---

About the Author