Creature of Habit – Rachel Grey

Creature of Habit

Rachel Grey

The first time your body stopped responding, your parents were getting divorced. Your eyes had opened, and there was a creature on your chest. At first, you fought against the bonds that held you. On that first night, you saw its long arms hung far past its small, shrivelled body. You could see the beady yellow eyes reflected in the darkness. You strained to breathe against an invisible string that had sewn your lips together. Breathing became short inhales and rapid exhales from your nose. Then there was a moment, a shift. A toe moved, a limb released, and the creature dissolved.

This continued throughout your teen years. Stolen nights of sleep, waking to a demon hunched over your chest. Your first night in Mum’s new house, the first night in your dad’s new house, once your parents finalised the end of their marriage. Getting a job, facing exams, first time having sex— while they breathed softly, you suffocated under the weight on your chest. Trigger after trigger brought your sleep demon back to your bed, always the same. But then, three years of blissful silence.

You thought you were over it.

Once again, you lay cemented on your back. Shapes flickering in the shadows don’t give you an indication of the time. A sliver of orange from your neighbour’s house illuminates the room through the bottom of the blind, pulled down carelessly in a sleepless rush. Fresh cotton sheets are tangled between your legs from the humidity of the night rising. Your lower leg haphazardly thrown from its cover in search of cooler air. Your lover slumbers beside you, their soft breath echoing your shallow gasps. The heavy weight is ever-present, pushing you into the mattress, but the figure is missing from your chest. Tonight, it is your left hand the creature is perched on. You can’t speak, you can’t force movement into your muscles. Even breathing doesn’t feel right.

‘Do you deserve this?’ its disembodied voice calls to you from your left hand. Low and shrill, it grates on you like when metal scratches on metal, sending involuntary shudders through your body.

All you can do is move your gaze towards its yellow eyes that are peering at you from your left hand. Through the barely lit room, you are faced with its shrunken head, while its withered and wrinkled fingers pull on yours.

‘Won’t you leave?’ it croons.

The sheets tug away from your body as your lover rolls on their side, widening the space between you. The creature looks at them and uses its arms to lift itself up towards your face, climbing from your hand up onto your chest. Its foul breath, a smell of mouldy wet socks, washes over you. Decayed, flaking grey flesh and cracked lips fill your field of vision. Its fingertips run down your arm, to your wrist, to your hand. You close your eyes and remember every moment the creature vanished, as its fingers push against the gold ring on your finger, digging the diamond into your pinkie like a fresh piercing. When you open your eyes, the creature is there, still perched on your chest.

‘Are you worried you won’t find anything better?’

The bed shifts as your lover sits up. The creature stills over you, hovering. But your lover doesn’t look at you. They rise from the bed and walk out of the room, followed by the sound of rushing water from the tap turning on in the kitchen. You remember last night, the muffled flirtatious laughs not directed to you in midnight secret calls. You hear your lover’s phone ring, one quick sharp sound before it’s gone.

‘Stop.’ The sound breaking from your lips is no louder than the spinning blades of the fan in your room. The demon scurries from your chest, its nails dragging down your arm as it goes. You wiggle a toe, and a finger twitches. The bonds begin to break, and the weight starts to lessen as the creature drops itself away from the bed.

Lorry

I wouldn’t be thirteen before Lorry died.

Sorry. I meant Lori. I could just hear her now, between the wet wad of bubble-gum perpetually swishing around her mouth.

‘Not Lorry,’ she would insist. ‘Lor-ree ’

She would stretch the word like taffy, so I could feel all the peaks and valleys it contained. I couldn’t help it though, my Dad was a lorry driver. The word evoked calm; it evoked nostalgia and safety. I’d think of the big steel steps into the cabin, the warm enveloping smell of Dad scent. It wasn’t like Mum smell, of the timber polish and plastic couch covers.

I had known when Dad was going to die too. Couldn’t explain it, but when I looked over at him at the breakfast table one wet morning, I could feel what was going to happen. A kernel of fear, of worry, that slowly grew inside me until it felt like a memory that hadn’t happened yet. I felt the chill of the rain, the scream of horns. He ruffled my hair on the way out the door. ‘Don’t worry ‘bout me, love,’ he said. ‘I’m far too careful.’

It was a fluke, I had told myself, staring at a piece of dry chicken on my paper plate, the gentle murmur of funeral-goers in my living room. A hunch that happened to be right by coincidence. People couldn’t just see the future like that. I never would have guessed what came next, at least. The big move, the putting our life into boxes and moving across the country. Mum said the house was full of too many memories. I disagreed. Dad was in the pictures, but nowhere to be found in the floral throws, the Home Sweet Home embroidery. We took it all with us, and Dad disappeared into the stratosphere, because that is what happens when people die.

Then came Lorry. Um, Lori. The Patron Saint of All Good Things in this World; when the teacher asked for a volunteer to show me around the school, and she could notice the awkward silence that followed, her hand shot up like a cannon. I knew right then and there that this girl was special, that she was my people. I was so thankful that all the love that I had for my Dad didn’t have to go to waste. Because I gave it all to her.

Life had been good; I didn’t have to be stuck at home with the silence and the grief. Every day after school, I would go over to her house and eat chips on her bed,

Julia McAlister

play board games, and flick through teen magazines. We began doing this to see all the cute boys in the bands we liked, but soon it became about finding the best quizzes.

‘Oh,’ she said, lighting up at one particular one. ‘This is good. What superpower would you have and why?’

The question threw me in a way that I did not expect. ‘Uh … I’m not sure. What about you?’

She flicked the hair out of her eyes. ‘I guess … it’d be pretty cool to see the future.’

Wet roads, honking horns. I winced. ‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘I want to see all the cool stuff I get to do.’

‘You really want to spoil the ending?’

She laughed. ‘Yeah! Why not? I can see where to go, what to avoid, who I’m gonna fall in love with—’

‘I already know what happens to you, Lorry.’

She frowned at me. ‘Oh yeah?’

I blinked, remembering the same feeling that came over me when I saw Dad. The dreaded, despicable hunch. This time I could see white, hear machinery and breath rattling, the sour smell of the dying. I picked up the magazine.

‘You’re going to get spotted by a talent scout, and flown to Paris to be featured on the cover of Vogue. European men will be dying at your feet, and you will live out your days in fame and glamour.’

She took the magazine from me and began fanning herself with the glossy pages. ‘Well, if you say so,’ she replied with a soft laugh. ‘Maybe my adoring public will at least get my name right.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. I’m sorry that I can’t save you.

‘Don’t even worry about it. Come on, it’s your turn to get your future read.’

I smiled stiffly but didn’t stop her. The future is a lie, a terrible but beautiful lie.