And I was just thinking, we need to be honest with each other, you know? And the story about your kid and the bullies really didn’t touch me the way you probably thought it did, I mean I don’t wanna get into that kinda baggage, and for that…

There came a storm of boos and applause from the studio audience. Then a scoff from the armchair which sat across from the television screen.

Sunk like a log into the cherry-red cushions of the living room loveseat, Chiro Fleming snapped the top off a can and sipped as the results of the dating panel show bumbled on. Framed by the Fleming’s larger-than-life wall-mounted television, a busty girl in a tiny sequinned dress burst into tears. Her bony legs collapsed to the stage as her scoreboard went dark. He felt a little sorry for her; she knew how to keep her mouth shut which was more than could be said for most of the women who appeared on television, and she was no particular hag in comparison to her competitors. Her slim body was the stand-out; you couldn’t even tell she’d had kids. But kids were no joke, and once that sort of secret was out you just knew all that beauty had been good for was making a slut and some drooling hangers-on. A total waste. At least today’s bachelor had the sense to drop her.

Kids were a definite no-go.

The bachelor stood beside the host, holding a bright, empty grin and fidgeting with his cufflinks. Ever the fair judge himself, Chiro knew the man was no better than the broad who was now convulsing on the stage like some sort of sparkling worm, in its dying throes.

The both of them made him feel faintly sick. The male contestant was horrendously pretty, with near feminine features, the insubstantial kind that were so in vogue. He blinked frantically without changing expression, like the glitter had gotten in his eyes, and did not appear comfortable in a suit. By the fact that he kept forgetting the womens’ names, he had not a single brain cell to speak of. But he had the perfect perky walk, a perfectly polished smile that seemed to blind the audience to the fact that there was nothing underneath.

Chiro sipped again, as loud as he could, as if that would make it more satisfying. The sugar made the back of his mouth mealy. He wished he had something more substantial but the family had always been restrictive, and alcohol was outright banned from the Fleming household after Karik got into the last stash and needed to be taken to hospital. The little worm came out fine, of course, but Art had gone berserk and even Carion had to try mouthing off, trying to start a ‘man-to-man’ talk. Coming from him it was more like a comedy routine.

Chiro assumed Red would have more sense than to let the incurable half-wit grandson ruin things for everyone, but the old man was firm. He proved just how firm he was each time Chiro tried sneaking in some personal treats, just one shitty bottle and he wouldn’t hear the end of it. When Red was out of the picture, Art did more than pick up the slack. The spot where she’d smacked him across the jaw still stung especially when he showered. No, he never wanted anything more to do with mothers and children than he already had to deal with, not if he could help it.

The best part of having Red return to the house was that they had broken out some champagne over dinner in celebration of his recovery. Just enough to half-fill one of their tiny crystal flutes, and then nothing. That was days ago.

Chiro upturned the remains of the can in his mouth. The bachelor was talking about someone’s lovely personality. This woman in question had a face like a pug and he knew everyone could see the stretch marks on her thighs.

The sun was beginning to set behind the fringed trees that surrounded the Fleming estate. Its rays shot a blinding light through the bay window of the living room, straight at the television screen. The finalists’ scores were being tallied up, and all Chiro could see was a flat white glare, scattered with the imprints of tree branches.

It wasn’t the first time this happened, he’d just have to wait a couple of minutes until the sun passed below the hillside. He knew this, yet it always seemed that the glare hit at the worst of times. The show was about to end and he would miss it. It shouldn’t have been possible for the sun to hold a grudge, but it seemed longer and more inopportune each time it happened. And how do you win against the sun? Chiro remained stubbornly in place and tried to listen as closely as he could to what he could not see.

Now, you get to choose which two lucky ladies gets to head off on that $20000 Southern Islands Cruise with you! Are you ready?

The radiator in the foyer was making a racket. A rapid click-tapping. The house was enormous, its old wood panels were ancient and brittle. Noise carried far, especially on the ground floor. Chiro ignored it and continued squinting in the direction of the television.

And, uh, #2, I chose you because really enjoyed our time together and you know, I just thought you were really beautiful, totally my type and I really laughed when you told me about your brother and the underwear drawer… incident. Yeah, I just thought, it’s really relatable, you know--

The next bout of tapping came, this time far more forceful.

“God damn it, fuck off!” Chiro howled, banging his fist against the edge of the loveseat’s carved wood armrest. His next shout was a shriek of pain.

Over the echoes of his own voice, Chiro shrank back into the soft red cushions nursing his hand. His outburst made him miss the announcement of second female finalist, but for now, all his attention was pointed in the direction of the staircase. His legs were ready to take him out of the lounge to the kitchen, where he could take the long way around to the study and hide. Anything not to be chewed out by Art.

When he was sure that nobody was stirring upstairs, it was safe to consider priority 2: the tapping noise. He knew those last few sounds definitely did not come from the creaky old radiator. They had been more deliberate - like somebody using the door knocker.

The Fleming house had a brass knocker shaped like some hideous animal, with a ring hanging from its jaw. Old man Red thought it was preferable, no, a family mandate to keep the thing. Glueing a plastic buzzer onto an antebellum mansion door was not the kind of behavior that made the Fleming family what it was. Chiro thought it was idiotic: with all the creaking floors and the crackling radiators in the old house it was impossible to tell when someone was really knocking.

Well, not impossible. Chiro would say that this time the knocking had been quite distinct. He still did not rise from his seat.

Excellent choices, Mr. ____! You got good taste, two beautiful girls… ladies, will you come up on stage to join our handsome bachelor? Now we’ll proceed with the finals… after these messages.

Thunderous applause from the speakers while Chiro fumed. Why should he have to get up and answer the door, even if someone was indeed there? The house was huge and the door was so far away. Red never took his advice yet expected him to bend over if any terrible decisions came back on them. And not to forget, the boards were so loose that every footstep could bring Art flying down the stairs ready with a tongue lashing for waking Karik up you know how hard it is to get him to sleep and the other kids poor kids you don’t know how hard it is you never lift a finger around this house how do you think I feel, I’m out 12 hours a day and I have 3 kids and dad to take care of and you don’t lift a finger, you just want to kill me, you want me to give me a heart attack is that it? Who will take care of you then?

Of course, her ears were pricked high for the most miniscule fart from Chiro, but a stranger banging at the door and she wasn’t budging from wherever she was. Probably in bed with legs spread, trying to squelch out another kid with Carion. They could get loud some nights, enough to scare the kids. With all the bitching you would have thought three was enough.

Chiro wondered vaguely if his sister and her husband had gone out for the evening. He had to wonder, because he most definitely did not remember being told.

They were always leaving him out of things. Hell, when his own father was in hospital, Art and Carion had gotten all cagey and took days to let him know. They acted like it was his duty to be there but were unwilling to even drive him over, and when he made his own way over it seemed he was only there to exchange potshots and dirty looks. It would be no surprise if they ditched him tonight. Maybe Art was committing the kids to some new mom-magazine therapy for their anxiety-diabetes-epilepsy-etc or maybe they had secretly planned another celebration dinner for Red. In that case, it might be them knocking. That meant they forgot the keys, or (more likely) were just assuming he’d come running to the door, bowing as they entered, like a valet.

He slouched harder into his seat.

The sun drifted below the the western treeline, dappling the square wooden room with light, silver dots flickering as they traveled through the snow that lay on the branches outside. The light bouncing off the sheet of untouched white snow was blinding. Chiro tried not to look out the window and focused on the television, where he caught glimpses of a salad commercial. It was nothing he wanted to see anyway.

He reasoned that the sun’s maddening descent would end before the commercial break was over. If he was was lucky.

Any more door knocker antics were going to be ignored. If Art and Carion had really been dumb enough leave without their keys, they could just come around to the back door where he could see them through the living room window. He’d get a mouthful from her for making the kids wait out in the cold (as if the little thugs weren’t always sneaking out to roll around every time it snowed) so he’d take this time to think of excuses.

Chiro ruminated his way through a yoghurt commercial.

He had concluded already that it was Art and Carion at the door. If it were anyone else, it would be an intruder and they should be proud of him for not just throwing the door open. The Flemings did not often have guests. Since their uncle moved out, he couldn’t remember a single person outside the family ever setting foot in the house. During Red’s time in the hospital Art had virtually thrown whole estate under lockdown. Even deliverymen had to wait down by the front gate which led to the main road, and Carion or Chiro had to go out to meet them. The gate was a seven-minute walk from the house, and that was in the springtime. In the winter, the winding path-markers were covered and you were carrying five pounds extra in coats, navigating over the endless slippery ice-traps.

Of course, no invader was ever going to bother hiking all the way up and through the forest. Aside from some the most daring neighbors, nobody would think of knocking, least of all a burglar. But what if, Art said. And Chiro said, if you’re so worried let’s get some guns so we can defend ourselves, so we’re not sitting ducks when someone walks all the way in. He had always wanted a nice gold revolver. But the argument, any argument, only made Art dig in her heels.

She hadn’t always been so short-sighted. In the years past, the two of them enjoyed the thought of freedom, or at least tried. He remembered going to great lengths to get out of the house, if only for the feeling of outdoing their father. Mother and Uncle C had never been quite so invested, but they stood by his rules. Their father, he’d yell and yell and they would cower, only to laugh later, while hiding under the covers at night..

Chiro would never say it aloud (and there would never be a situation that asked for his opinion) but Art’s terrible triplets were spitting images of he and Art as children.

Much like her mother, little Kris always had some sort of comeback delivered in an inherited shrillness of tone that made you want to cave, just to end the conversation. And Kuro was always parked behind his sister, mumbling but in unwavering support of her cause, whatever it was, holding the door open once she gave the word and cursing his dad or uncle when he thought nobody was looking. Afterimages of Chiro’s own childhood. He was sure, however, that Kuro had less of a spine. He definitely bought into Art’s delusions of diseases and dangers, after all, he was born into it.

Comparison to the final triplet Karik was difficult, and not at all appealing. He wondered if the two ‘normal’ children even considered Karik a brother.

The sparse freedom Art and Chiro had enjoyed was erased entirely for Kuro and Kris, and it was more or less Karik’s fault.

Karik himself never intended this of course; his dull, addled brain, unchanged since his fifth birthday, didn’t have the ability to hold and express real malice, but that didn’t stop him from flinging himself headfirst into any trouble available. He didn’t have any compulsion to go out and play, and he didn’t really wish to defy his mother, but ended up doing all the damages of Kuro and Kris on the worst of days, and more.

Since all three kids were born on the same day, Art’s paranoia might simply have been an overarching symptom of motherhood, but Chiro suspected if it were just Kris and Kuro, Art’s fear might have been just a little less suffocating. Incidentally, spontaneous suffocation was on her list of fears too, after Karik had choked himself on some walnuts.

The sun was taking an extra-long time to dismiss itself. The bottom of the television screen was still cloaked in a white glare. The bachelor and women in their sequined skins had returned, but their lower bodies were lost in the hot slice of sunlight. Chiro clenched his teeth. When faces and talk grew dull, he’d like to at least enjoy those shapely legs.

Chiro scraped at one of the cushion’s velvet buttons and waited impatiently for the light to fade, watching the edge of the sun glare sink slowly, unbearable slowly, almost torturous until...

Like a lightswitch, the sunlight vanished.

No, it wasn’t gone. There was just a chunk taken out of the middle, an oblong shadow pressed into the glare of the setting sun, vertical like a pillar, no, tapered at the top and moving... Chiro gagged. He tasted his drink bubbling back up his throat. Applause.

Someone was standing at the window.

At first Chiro did nothing, his go-to option in any situation. Who could blame him for standing his ground? He was never really needed. When Art yapped at him to open the door, pick up the shoes, to shuttle the kids to the bus or do the kids’ dishes for them, it was nothing that she or the kids couldn’t do themselves. Even in the days they thought would be Red’s last, with Red in a coma and Art on edge, he was neither needed nor wanted in that hospital room. The nurses weren’t even pretty, and didn’t seem interested in supporting him in his time of need.

There was something different about his situation. He was alone. He had excuses prepared, but nobody to give them to. Nobody was telling him what to do.

Chiro’s eyes drifted in direction of the bay windows, three panels with a slight outcropping. The figure watching through the window didn’t notice or didn’t care. Chiro squinted. All he could see was a blurred black silhouette against a plane of bright white. The sun was just against him in all respects, wasn’t it?

There was no point in fighting the sun, but it wasn’t just that. There was a human being standing there, watching him. That was another matter, one he could deal with. He’d always been able to get rid of people. Even when it wasn’t intentional.

Chiro sat with his eyes at an awkward slant for a minute or two, then lurched to his feet. “Who the fuck are you?” he roared, aiming a finger at the window. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The shadow jerked and bolted.

An obscure warmth spread through his chest. It was a rare feeling, the feeling of a job well done. With a sudden burst of energy he charged to the kitchen, grabbing the nearest boots (Carion had so many, and they were always nicer than Chiro’s) and, after a pause, drew one of the knives out of their holding block. With a deep breath, he threw open the back door, loosed his lungs and shouted “This is my house! You thought you could just walk on in here, you little shit? Why don’t you get back here?”

He almost ducked straight back into the house when something flickered over the snowdrifts, but it was only the shadows of the high branches, falling spider-like on the snow. Chiro shielded his eyes, stepped off the patio and stomped on shadows, roughing the ice under his feet. Satisfied, he surveyed the yard. The Fleming estate forest stretched above and all around.

“You think I didn’t see you? Thought you could just walk in? Well I’m not going anywhere!” The words sounded tough. He stood up extra straight to show it wasn’t just talk.

There was not a soul in sight.

Chiro scanned the garden and thought he saw a centipede. He leapt up the porch steps before seeing it was in fact the edge of a footprint, one of several. Small shadowed intents cut across the snow towards the small cleared path through the forest that led to the extended garden.

What was back there again? The sandy garden, the wire sculptures, and the shed, what else? These features had all been added as a sort of personal park by their mother, his and Art’s mother, during her outdoorsy phase. Their father Red (well, his monthly maintenance crew) had always taken care of the garden, but since their mother was long gone, and the house obtained a television, and the kids were banned from roaming around (again, a Karik special) nobody found much use for the garden path other than Carion, typically after he and Art had just torn the house up with argument and he had to clear out for a few hours.

Now the garden had become convenient hideout for would-be criminals. Sure, they weren’t in the house but outside there was his mother’s shed, his mother’s statues and her forest.

Chiro’s hand tightened around the knife and he made his way onto the garden path.

There was not a flower in sight. Chiro was not so limp-wristed to say he wished to see them, but his mother had been very fond of her flowers. They were all buried under the snow, or hidden in the shadows of trees. The forest was all wind and flickering lights that seemed to have taken form and were pushing him along, whispering as he walked. When he looked up the forest was just like he remembered, just as huge and otherworldly, when everything else from his childhood had shrunk and dulled. Just as frightening.

He peeked over his shoulders and felt his stomach heave with shock at the shapes behind him - but it was just the gathering of bent wire sculptures, hollow and unmoving. Gifts from a family friend. A very good friend, because the pieces were so ugly he could not imagine anyone paying for such junk. Well, perhaps their mother would have. Chiro didn't linger there long.

Then the tall stacked-stone pillar at the center of the rock garden sent him skittering behind the nearest tree, his heart beating like a rabbit’s. Then there were the branches and the sun, the branches like spiders and the sun like some terrible mocking eye, casting shadows like a web. He remembered why Red had stopped him and Art from wandering around the forest.

Their mother was so ashamed.

Chiro continued, the knife slipping on the sweat in his palm. His head wasn’t clear, he wanted to go back and lie facedown on the couch, but he was having trouble picturing how exactly he could accomplish it. His breath wasn’t even coming to him, forget any rational thought. A villain to the end, the sun chose then and there to vanish.

Tensed to break, Chiro felt as if he were in a movie, not the kind he liked, the kind that always made him sick. The kind he was forbidden to watch. A lot of things had been forbidden at the Fleming household. But he was out of the house now.

He came to a darkened, almost turquoise bed of snow, a smooth half-moon where the ground was paved. He lifted his head and saw the delicate grey coils and thatched covering of the gazebo. Had he walked so far already? Well, there were worse sights. He managed to draw a full, ragged breath. The gazebo was a feature he secretly liked. He knew in the spring that flowers covered the surrounding hedge and vines hung down the sides, cloaking it in nature, an adults’ version of a treehouse. In its shade, his mother talked about moving in a table so they could have tea and juice. They could hang bird feeders, and string lights. But the furnishings never came, their mother passed away before the lights were installed, so it was dark.

Chiro needed to sit down, no, lie down. He hadn’t realized it until now, at the gazebo’s wooden steps, that he was staggering, and sweating a stream down his hairline that froze in a stiff pike over his cheek. Each step was more daunting and mountainous than the last.

He saw a figure on the other side of the gazebo, framed by the slender metal bars. He hoped it was a short tree, or a statue or rock pile, but it could be none of those things. The figure shifted and slid into the shadows. Chiro stepped to the side, his eyes darting, then heard the clatter and then felt the impact. His feet slid out from under him.

On his way down he thought he saw claws, dozens of them, sweeping past him towards the sky. Then he felt the floor and the blood.

The sunlight had abandoned him. Everything was dark, but he knew his eyes were open and that hands shouldn’t have been quite so dark, nor his arms or his sweater, pants or Carion’s boots, but they were all dark, darker than the shadowed trees which had started to close in, and then the stain started to spread over the pale plane of snow and he saw it was red and smelled the way nothing in his mother’s garden should have; sour, rotten and rancid and inescapable.

Laying on his side, slightly curled like a puppet tangled on its strings, Chiro writhed but none of his movements were the sort to get him back on his feet. His throat closed and his limbs locked and in convulsions he blindly sent the knife skidding under a frozen bush. The fabric of his clothes were stiffening around him like a cocoon. To an audience his final jittering moments could have resembled a wriggling worm, although unlike the worms that made it to television, he did not sparkle.

Then he was still.