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Carter BrownWord Count: 815

The Girl Beneath The FloorboardsLike two dull pearls beneath the boards, I see her. Those eyes lurking in the darkness, taunting

me, hovering in the blackness below my house. Perhaps its just the crawl space, I assumed. But

no, there is no crawl space and no basement. Just the endless black like a starless sky, and those

two white orbs, her eyes, as if shes always watching me.My mother and father, they cant see her down there. They dont know. I asked them

once and they tried, but all they saw was the darkness leering back at them. Honey, youre

seventeen. Maybe its just a rat, my mother offered. But I can see her. When Im home by

myself -- when my parents dont know -- I talk to her. I tell her I can see her. I stare back.

I put my face against the floor sometimes and feel her cold fingers on my cheek. I feel

her face so close to mine that it prickles the nerves of my lips. But Im not attracted to her.Im not.Shes cold, shes lifeless. Her eyes are bloodshot pearls and I can see the curtain of her

hair, greasy and untended, fall across her hidden face. I know what she looks like, down beneath

my house. I know. But its never stopped me. I lie against the floor sometimes, offering myself

to her, to feel her breath, to watch her lithe movements in the dark. Her eyes bob up, down, come

closer, and I can feel the cold billow of her breath against my lips.What are you doing down there? I asked her, but her response was only the quiet touch

of sodden, chilled fingertips against my cheek. Whats your name?Myra, she said; but it might just as easily been the settling of the house.I remember one day when I pricked my finger, just enough that a lobe of blood formed

up, and I held my hand down over the boards. For a moment her glare remained distant, locked

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on my own, beady black irises in the white discs of her eyes. Then she hovered closer, her eyes

grew larger. I pinched my finger ever so slightly, so that the blood sprouted and dripped and I

saw her green-black tongue coil out between the boards like a rotten maggot in a corpse, and she

snagged my finger fiercely. I felt the dampness of her tongue against my wound, felt her tingle at

the taste of blood; I could hear her gulp quietly, satisfied.I remember feeling a unique sensation begin in the pools of my fingers and flow through

the brooks of my hands, up through my arms, until my whole body was an ocean of want. I

lowered my head to the floor and stared at the lumpy tongue around my finger. I caught her eyes

-- which had lost their pupils, their irises -- with my gaze, and I brought my lips slowly to her

tongue. I opened my mouth and eased my tongue toward my finger, and then finally I touched

her; our tongues, damp in different ways, coiled and lapped at one another. She tasted like

mothballs and bile, but it was intoxicating. I felt my stomach flop, felt my legs go numb with

ecstasy. She gripped me tight and pulled me to the floor, as if to yank me through the boards. I

felt her tongue, extended like a snake, slithering down my esophagus, down into my stomach,

and then everything turned black.

All around me the density of darkness, tangible like water, flowing down my throat and

nostrils. For a moment, I hesitated. Then I saw the narrow slats of light from overhead, falling

into the abyss. I hovered there for a moment, staring. In the light which I could only glimpse, I

saw a family in their living room. It was Christmas. They laughed and played and the children

tore open their presents, wrapping paper tossed on the ground in wrinkled heaps. Santa Claus had

come, and fora moment I shared that familys joy. Then the darkness suffocated me, poured

down the back of my throat like motor oil. I drowned for an eternity before the sensation halted.

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When I regained myself, I watched the scene again, the kids still opening their gifts. And

from that narrow view, through the flooring overhead, I saw the littlest child watching me. Her

eyes glanced back and forth before catching my gaze, me watching her unwrap her presents, and

she never looked away. For years she could not stop watching me, my eyes like bloodshot pearls

beneath the floorboards. When the day finally came that we spoke, I asked her her name. She

frowned, cocked her head, and whispered, Myra. And the name slithered through the darkness

like a snake.