WARNING: This short story contains depictions of violence, death, and other imagery upsetting to sensitive readers. Take care of yourself.

(Written in 2023. This is a Horror AU.)

     The year was 2003.

     The quiet moments were the worst ones I had with Rory.

Whirrr

     No. I need to start over. With you. The quiet moments were the worst ones I had with you. There was no such thing as a sleeping silence without your spidery, sharp-nailed hand soon at my face, clawing and begging for yet another closet check of your fears. Those moments a child could not be seen or heard meant the house I was so proud to have would come crashing down in a cacophony of meaningless disturbance. Oh, the crashes. Oh, the crying. The calm was only the eye of the tornado. It would shift soon enough.

     That's how it was when you died-- it was so quiet. And my mistake was hesitating, I can admit that.

     Too focused of a quiet.

     Maybe if metal scraped the bottom I could have.

     Too quiet.

     It's not my fault I didn't hear that.

     Who could have heard you?

     You were so quiet

     And then came a sharp little cry then came a BOOM

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     I opened the bedroom door, ready to bark or shout or save you from yourself, but all that came out was a quiet "Oh my God."

     Your small, green-stick body crumpled onto the kitchen floor, torn by the metal that exploded with the microwave. The only fire lit was on your hair, pants, and debris. You were peering nose-first into the window before it blew. You were skin and bone and glass and stainless steel that will never rust. You will never rust.

     I saw you, and thought, "Oh, you look like your mother now."

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     In high school I wrote a story about a man wanting to make a deal with the Devil, so he committed every sin in the book to appease him. Theft. Adultery. Murder. The man lived hated, died alone, and tortured endlessly in hell, because he failed to remember the point of it all. The Devil doesn't exist to make friends, he exists to torture. And that is enough.

     Part of my research involved reading firefighter accounts on the smell and texture of burning skin. The scent was best described as "burnt beef, coins, and burning hair." The skin was fragile. So fragile that their touch would slough the victim's skin into their hands in sheets.

     Understanding hit me like a wall when I leaned over you and smelt the pennies and beef. I put out the fire as gently as I could in hopes I wouldn't upset you. Some of your skin was simply red, but too much red gives you black. Your skin next to the fire was black.

     I called for an ambulance and waited with you. Despite it all, you were still alive. I felt your small hand with its too sharp nails claw at mine as you croaked, "Uncle Todd?"

     Despite it all, it wasn't enough. As far as I can tell, that was the last words you ever said.

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     Every letter and email my readers have sent since the accident have gone straight to the bin. I don't want to know their thoughts on the matter. Mother blamed me, Dad blamed the entirety of Panasonic. I can't tell who Chip's parents blamed. They were like balled-up, used tissues at the funeral, complete in their brokenness as they cried. I blame you.

     If you were still in school, it would have been fall break by now. The spot where your microwave sat remains untouched. When I try to even fantasize such things like replacing it, I can hear what my mother would say.

"Oh, already? Moving on so fast? I always knew you had a rock inside your chest, Todd. You careless, torturous being. Were you even capable of love?"

     It would be ironic that I cook more now after you died than before, but I don't have a microwave. Even if I still hear your soup can turning on inside what used to be the microwave, I don't have a microwave. Even if I didn't hear it that day. Even if I didn't hear that

Whirrr

     At best, it was a lingering white noise I can block out. Lately it's become a garage door that never stopped opening. When neither TV or music could drown out the noise, I forced myself into the kitchen to investigate. I had to write, after all. I still had deadlines. I still had work to do.

     I hadn't taken a long look at this part of the kitchen since your accident. The blackened abscess still was a blackened abscess. They told me that I was lucky that there was no real fire damage beyond the laminated countertops and my drywall, and maybe I was. That didn't change how ugly it looked.

     "Maybe Magic Eraser can get this out," I murmured to myself, touching the destroyed countertop. I knelt down to the under-sink cabinet, retrieved a clean sponge, and went at it with all of my body weight.

     That appliance noise transformed from garage door to a damned airplane engine the heavier I pressed the sponge into the countertop. All I did was crush the sponge into nothing and sand a tiny groove into the useless counter, so I relented. That's when it hit me.

     The noise wasn't from the counter. It was behind the wall, and sound wasn't all it emanated. I could feel heat from it. Like a fever.

     I prodded it gently, only to feel what it could be. Layers of it clung to my fingers like wet tissue.

     A pallid sweat broke out on my forehead as I stood there dumbly, watching the almost-glossy goo lose its heat on my hand. It wasn't quite as black as I thought it was after all, it was more like a black maroon.

     "Sloughed skin," I whispered.

     For a moment, I kept my composure, until the scent of pennies and burnt beef washed over me.

     A panicked cry escaped as I dove for the sink and shoved my hand under the cold water. I watched it unstick to my fingers in pink clumps, swirling down the faucet. The nausea didn't go away, the smell didn't go away. Even after I lurched into the sink and lost my lunch, the smell of you overpowered the vomit in my mouth.

     Metallic and burnt and sweet stained in the air into me my wall into my house. I heaved over the sink, panting and heaving and expelling a mark washed over me until matter squished onto my hand. The wet stick of a little tiny gooey hand pat my dry one and I leapt back into the black counter ready to die.

Whirrr

     You stood across from me, hand still raised in the air, startled by my reaction. It was undeniably your face, your eyebrows pinched together in worry and mouth slightly ajar. It was you. A small child, standing underneath the height bracket for children your age. The culmination of people I loved and hated. Your father's eyes, your mother's nose, hair that you never let me fix.

     The solidified part of you was the coagulated blood composing your hands and feet, but it wasn't solid enough. Thick maroon-black oozed out, staining my kitchen mat where you stood. Going up, your body steamed out into a red fog to the point your head was semi-transparent. Your eyes were the only other opaque part of you. They were as thick as glueI was reminded of a few months back you tried to make me a card. You bumped your glue bottle over, milky white spilling out over the entire table. It dripped onto the floor, into the table's cracks, even on the chairs. In an attempt to clean, you took my bath towel and smeared it over the entire dining room.

     I was so angry.

     I drifted down to my hands, where your bloody handprint already dried. When I clenched my hands, it pulled at the skin like a layer of your glue. One hand dried in blood, the other still dripping rinse water. My skin felt sticky to be inside.

     "What the fuck did you do to my wall, Rory?" I cried out, face already wet with tears.

     I hadn't realized that the microwave forever turning your can of soup finally fell silent. For the first time in ages, I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my head. The emptiness made your words hang midair.

     All of the childlike croak in your voice was gone, like the innards had been scrapped out and left to rot. Only the shell remained. You were only a wisp. You were only skin. Your cadence was practiced, calm. Rehearsed, like you waited ages for this moment. "I love you."

     I could see the headlines tomorrow. "Todd Blue, popular young author, has died from heart failure next to upsetting wall."

     I rubbed my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt, and I faced the ceiling taking slow, slow breaths. If my Mother taught me anything, it was that deep breathes interrupted crying enough to stop. "I need to move."

     "This won't go away if you move away too."

     I faced you again with thrown out hands. "And why can't it?! Is it me you're haunting?!"

     No words from you, no sound from the house. Your Elmer eyes bore straight into mine.

     It was me you were haunting.

     "No!" I stepped forward with a pointed finger, too far into your face. Boiling steam, red-hot, blood-hot, boiled the tip of my index and I pulled away with a panicked yelp. None of it distracted from the thoughtless anger that consumed my actions, it wasn't nearly as hot as how my face felt. "It was a freak accident! Do you know how rare it is to kill yourself via microwave, Rory?! You are the only example we have!"

     Your stare was unwavering, save for eyes leaking slow onto the kitchen mat. It wasn't my fault, Rory. The police told me so, your grandpas said so, and who said that my mother was ever right? But your eyes leaked, like glue that dripped off the table. Each drop fell into the kitchen mat, and I realized it was completely saturated in your blood.

     I backed away and shook my hand at the kitchen mat violently. "I can't have this! I can't! This is a crime-scene! I can't have a crime scene in my kitchen!" I yelled.

     "Because you're afraid of what it looks like to other people?"

     Who are you to say that? Who are you to know what other people thought? I pulled at my hair as hard as I could to keep the room from spinning, but it still spun as fast as my heart beat. The glue. The scissors. Your body on my floor. Panic bubbling in my chest bubbled over, and I couldn't help but fall into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. I didn't stop whatever tears escaped. But that shouldn't scare you, should it? You seen it before, it's only the second time since-- when you-- it wasn't my fault. My voice didn't sound like mine, it sounded like someone else who was crying. "You should have been a better child, Rory! It was your fault! All of it was on you!"

     "I was hungry. I couldn't eat without help, but I wanted to be a big boy and do it all by my own..." Your face began to melt into the floor. The soaked mat was now a small black pool growing larger with every word you said. "Were you really sad when it happened? Or were you just scared?"

     I could feel it coming for me, the warmth radiating off you. I let go of my hair and lifted my weight onto the balls of my feet, as far back against the cabinet as I could go. But I can't escape from you. The day your parents died. That long, silent car ride home. And here you are, cursing me, curse you always were. The ignorance of what I wanted in life. My panicked laughter faded into heavy breathing as hot viscera soaked into the toe of my socks.

     I didn't know.

     I don't know who I am inside of me Rory if it's black or black or white or if I'm good or bad or all just empty oh God you reek of coins am I this am I only blood inside is that all I am?

     "Your feelings are all sick inside, Uncle Todd."

     Does that make me sound bad? Was that not how I was supposed to react? No one told me how to do this. I was scared, Rory, I was scared. I'm scared. I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared.

     "I want you to be okay. I love you."

     By the time you left the room, your blood blanketed the kitchen. It was impossible to leave without staining myself red.

Whirrr