Old Man Thomas stared at Chloe as she stirred sugar into the weak, watery tea, not a single waft of steam drifting up from the liquid’s surface.
“Is it to your liking?” he asked. “I don’t get visitors all that often, you see, and I am not much of a tea drinker.”
“Coffee, for you, is it?” Chloe asked, playing along with the evil old man’s attempt at small talk.
“I have more… exotic tastes.”
Yes. Of course he did. If what Chloe had always suspected about Old Man Thomas was true, then he didn’t consume the same things as mere mortals. She took a sip of the tea. Her initial assessment had been correct — the water hadn’t been hot enough, the flavours barely there. But how could a creature like the man sitting in the armchair across from her have known? Did he even remember his human days?
Chloe met the man’s gaze for just a moment, and a chill ran down her spine. Instead, she turned her attention to the pictures hanging on the floral-print wall. Black and white photographs, mostly. Images of people long since passed.
Out of the corner of her eye, Chloe saw Old Man Thomas following her gaze. He furrowed his brow, apparently in some discomfort about someone else looking upon his pictures, and he licked his lips before speaking again. “Perhaps it is time you told me why you are here.”
There had always been something peculiar about the way the man spoke, as though English was his second language. Or rather, Chloe suspected, as though he’d learned English a long, long time ago.
Chloe took another sip of the tea before replying. It wasn’t that she liked it, far from it, but it bought her a moment to reconsider the answer to that question. The very answer she’d said to herself over and over again during her journey back from New York. “I’ve come to make a deal. One that only you, I think, can fulfil.”
Old Man Thomas sat back in his armchair, unconsciously fiddling with the top of an armrest, in a small spot where the pink print had faded. He said nothing for some time, only looking Chloe up and down, considering her, the process making her skin crawl. But it was a small price to pay if she got what she wanted.
A noise from the floor above made Chloe jump out of her skin—the sound of something flapping. Only a bird, perhaps, but still enough to frighten Chloe in this, the eeriest of old homes, the wallpaper fading, the paintwork flaking, the owner staring at her with brown eyes so dark that you might even think they were black.
“There is only one deal people come here to make,” the old man finally said.
“Yes,” Chloe agreed. She had more to add, but the words got lost in her throat.
“May I ask, as I always do: how long do you have?” Considering what he was — what he surely had to be — it surprised Chloe to see sincere empathy in the man’s eyes.
“Eight months,” she said.
* * *
JUNE
It had been a company-mandated checkup that had caught the cancer.
Chloe was the most productive Business Development Director for a major advertising agency based in New York. That maybe didn’t sound particular glamorous, but it most certainly was. She’d worked her ass off to get to this point, over the past few years, and now she reaped the rewards: access to a company card and exclusive bars and restaurants, all to be used with the express purpose of winning over new business to her agency’s cause. She loved it. She had to have loved it, because why else would she have spent so much of her life pursuing it?
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
At least, that was the rationale that went through her mind as she sat in that doctor’s office, alone, her head spinning with the news that her physician had just dumped in her lap. It wasn’t like it was on television; the doctor didn’t hold her hand, didn’t tear up himself, staring into her eyes as he told her the diagnosis. The delivery was clinical. Prompt. As though he had other patients he needed to be getting on with. He probably did.
Chloe had walked out of the doctor’s office in a daze, holding her designer clutch to her chest as though it was her lifeline. The bag gifted to her by a loyal client. Evidence that she’d spent her life being a productive, useful member of society.
Her heart dropped for the second time today when a realisation flashed through her mind: this news wasn’t hers alone. She’d need to tell people. She’d need to tell Kim. At this, she retched, and vomited onto the sidewalk. Nobody stopped to help her, to check she was OK. One woman even looked down at her with disgust. All Chloe could do was pull herself back up, and keep walking back to her car. Chloe had never felt so alone in anything before.
When she finally pulled up her car outside the house she and Kim shared, Chloe discovered she couldn’t move. Her body didn’t cooperate with her wishes, but then again, was this what she really wished? If she stayed here, she could prolong the inevitable. She could gift Kim another few minutes, another few hours, of the bliss of ignorance.
Some time later — she couldn’t say how long it was — Chloe was surprised by someone knocking on the window of her parked car. Kim smiled back at her, that big, toothy grin, one of her teeth jagged from a childhood injury. Chloe loved that broken tooth. She loved it with all she had to give.
“You OK, Chlo?” Kim asked. “Why you just sitting here, then?”
When Chloe turned to her, still in a daze, Kim’s smile faded. She could see something was wrong.
“I have some news,” Chloe said.
* * *
That evening was a mess. Anger, tears, despair. Chloe and Kim had directed it both at the world and at one another, but both knew that the latter wasn’t fair. It was collateral damage. Damage that they both kept apologising for.
Most of the anger they directed at each other happened after Kim suggested they go away, that they take those vacations they’d always dreamed of. After all, they had the money now. They were comfortable. They could do what they want.
But Chloe had insisted on keeping her job. She wanted to feel normal, and what better way was there to feel normal than to keep going like nothing had changed?
After she’d said that, Chloe had watched Kim’s face change from despair, to confusion, to anger. “How could you say that? How can you not want to live your life? To make the most of…”
Kim had trailed off, but Chloe could fill in the rest of that question herself. To make the most of the time she had left. Chloe didn’t have an answer for her.
When the worst of the anger subsided — not that there wasn’t still plenty of it bubbling beneath the surface, but the initial shock was fading — Chloe had brought Kim to bed. As she’d done it, she’d known that this was a strange way to respond to the news, but she needed it. She needed Kim. She needed to feel something that wasn’t anger or despair.
They laid there now, Chloe resting her head against her wife’s stomach, her wife stroking her hair.
They didn’t share a word for an hour. There was no space for it, no emotional capacity. All they could do was process the news, or try to.
“I keep thinking about Old Man Thomas,” Chloe finally said. “You remember? The old grump I mentioned, from back in the town I grew up in?”
“The man you called a monster?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. He’s still alive, Dad says. Still in that big old house, just off Elm Street. Still shouting at the kids who ring his doorbell and run off, I imagine. Never chased them, never left his house, even, as far as I could always tell. He’s had a good long life — well, long, at least — and he’s awful. How is that fair? How is that just?”
Kim bit her lip.
“What is it?”
“That’s the first time you’ve given me a glimpse of what you’re really feeling about this. That’s the first time you haven’t just got angry, or cracked a joke about it.”
A smile crossed Chloe’s face. She couldn’t help it — she felt vulnerable, and even only being vulnerable to Kim, she didn’t like it — and had to make light out of it again. To distract. To defend herself. “Well, there’s still time for that yet.”
“Don’t, Chlo. Don’t joke. This is serious.”
Some of the anger rose within Chloe at hearing this. “Don’t you think I know that? It’s about me. It’s—”
“It’s about you, yes,” Kim interrupted. “But it’s also about the ones who love you. Those you’ll leave behind.”
Chloe turned her head away, leaving Kim to think she was annoyed. But really, she just didn’t want her to see the tear rolling down her cheek.
When she finally slept, she dreamt not of her life, nor her of her death, marching steadily towards her, its arrival imminent. No. Instead, she dreamt of Old Man Thomas — the man she’d called ‘monster’.