Morticia Hill Mansion

Theo took his time ripping the skins off blanched tomato meat. It was his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that made him lay them in a perfect row at the top of his wooden cutting board. It looked like a cross-sectional view of intestines that he had seen earlier in the day, a single layer of columnar epithelial cells, which made him giggle to himself.

The fleshy part of the skins pressed against the wood, where it dehydrated and stuck like a Band-Aid, making it harder for his wife, Abbey to clean later in the evening. The extra effort this required aggravated her further as she was already stressed about her husband’s new interest at work, so she faked being asleep when he wanted intimacy, even though it’s been over a year since they made love. She decided it would be better to wait until morning to discuss her suspicions with him.

Elvis was laying on the uneven floorboards at the bottom of the servant’s staircase. His ears perked up at the sound of a blender. He saw blood-colored liquid splash onto the wall, counter and floor.

“Don’t worry, old boy. You’ll get a taste later,” Theo said.

Elvis scanned the kitchen for further disturbances, then scratched his neck with a hind paw and went back to gnawing at the bone marrow from a pig femur.

High winds whistled past the thin windows lining the kitchen of the eighteenth century home, a trait that both Theo and Abbey found charming since the day they purchased it. They knew these windows wouldn’t do a good job keeping the cold in or out, but they loved them all the same. 

Theo thought of that day—how they both conceptualized the house’s name to be, Morticia. Morticia Hill Mansion. It reminded them both of the Addam’s Family house, which they found quite fitting, as Theo was a pathologist at a nearby hospital and Abbey a mortician at her family’s funeral home. It suited their dark nature.

Morticia was a north-east facing mansion at the top of a hill that received natural sunlight throughout the day, another desirable feature, especially in the winter. Graves containing all the generations of families that had lived, loved, and died there were scattered under the old magnolia tree in the front, marked by marble headstones with writings nearly worn away by acidic rain.

Considering Morticia had no neighbors within a mile, Theo and Abbey never invested in blinds, a reason that people did not sleep over often. Family and friends claimed to feel eyes on them from outside, but the couple didn’t believe in any of that woo woo.

Theo sharpened his knife and smiled at this distant memory of his relationship with Abbey. He was surprised to feel the corner of his mouth curl up into a half smile, as he thought he’d lost feelings for her after twenty-five years of marriage.

Theo stopped reminiscing and hyperfocused on the previous daydream of Caroline, their new postdoctoral researcher who’s only been in the lab a few months. She brushed her hand gently against his as they analyzed a peculiar finding under a shared microscope. Was this intentional? He found himself preoccupied lately by their chemistry, a feeling he hadn’t felt since meeting his wife.

Theo was ruminating over Caroline’s soft skin when he realized he’d been stirring a pot of spaghetti for a while and hadn’t set a timer. He pulled up a strand from the boiling water with his slotted ladle and imagined it a piece of Caroline’s hair between his fingers. He blew on it gently until cooled, then threw it at the wall to test its doneness. It stuck in the shape of sunglasses. A part of him wondered if it was a sign from Morticia that he himself was under the microscope.

 “Al dente. Perfect,” he said, then stuck his finger into the tomato gravy and brought it to his lips for the last taste-test. It was done to his liking. “Abbey…Sammy. Joseph! Time for dinner!”

Theo peeled the sticky pasta from the white plaster, leaving behind a starchy residue that he didn’t think to clean. It blended in just fine with the red splash stains on the exposed wood, a feature that inspired the kitchen’s nickname: The Slaughter Room. 

Abbey came in from the study with her laptop in hand, alone with no kids in tow. She sat at the end of the table as far away as possible. It was not her typical seat. Theo just thought she was working and needed peace and quiet. He was more than happy to give that to her. He hadn’t yet considered that she caught him flirting with his postdoc through a game application on his phone.

He walked towards the stairs and shouted up them. “Sammy. Joseph! Get down here for dinner.” 

“They’re not home,” Abbey said without removing her eyes from the screen.

Theo found that odd, as the kids always came home for spaghetti and gravy, but he was too distracted by his day to ask questions. 

While Theo swirled spaghetti onto plates, Abbey stalked Caroline’s social media, immediately becoming self-conscious as she could never compete with such a young girl. Caroline was the full package. She was in medical school and was beautiful. She had perky breasts and no cellulite; characteristics Abbey couldn’t compete with at her age. Abbey knew her husband was distracted by the thought of Caroline, but what could she do? She hadn’t seen him this lit up since they were first married. Abbey hated wondering if she had wasted her young self on him.

When Theo approached Abbey to place down her dinner, she didn’t even bother taking down Caroline’s information. Theo thought he saw a woman on Abbey’s desktop that could have been Caroline, but that couldn’t be possible. Could it? How would she know? He was so careful. But then again, he fell in love with Abbey for her attention to detail. He started panicking because he had no plans to leave his wife, his kids, or Morticia.

He ate his dinner to the sound of the wind pounding against Morticia and penetrating her crevices with incredible force. Except, this time, the moans reminded him of his wife’s voice when he pleasured her, not of Caroline’s from his fantasies. 

He thought of the long birthmark along Abbey’s sternum, how he wanted to run his hand along it as if to suture up the cut he made towards her heart with his scalpel-shaped Ego.