Replaceable

"Are you coming tonight?" Carver asked as he straightened his bow-tie, his every movement reflected in the  rectangular mirror glass of the Victorian armoire in front of him. His slacks and suit jacket paired well with the black lacquered wood and gilt embellishments of the wardrobe, making him look like a member of a royal family."You should know the answer to that," Shirley said as she watched him from her seated position in the red velvet armchair.

" I just thought that maybe you'd enjoy the fresh air, or the company of our friends and loved ones… you know, like you used to? " Carver said with an air of sarcasm.

"I used to enjoy a great many things, but the world has changed. It's gone sour,"Shirley said, her face somber. "It's been six months! Aren't you tired of being cooped up? Of only seeing the same pasty white faces day in and day out?" Carver said, his cheeks flushing.

"I'm indifferent about them really. Like the chandelier hanging from its place in the dining room or this staunch wallpaper that is plastered throughout the house, they are like background scenery. They are there, but hold no real significance to my life. They’re practically faceless," said Shirley, dryly.

"What a wonderful thing to say about the people who take care of you! You won't even so much as answer a phone, or call out to pay your bills. What if these so called background figures up and left you, left you all alone to fend for yourself? What would you do then?" Carver said, fully turning to look at her, his anger made completely aware, his cheeks an even brighter shade of crimson, tiny veins spider webbing under the skin of his temples. 

"I suppose that's a matter for me to worry about should it happen. But if it were to happen as you hypothetically propose, well, then, I will say one thing. Money talks. That's something I have plenty of. The chandelier and wallpapering are fixtures in my home, things I've grown accustomed to. While they may have a semblance of permanence in my home, in my life, I know all too well that as things age, as life goes on, these things will need to be repaired, or even worse replaced. The same thing goes for people," said Shirley, matter-of-factly.

"So people are just dispensable to you?" "That wasn't quite what I was thinking… more like replaceable." 

"That's the same thing." 

"To-may-toe, To-mah-toe. What do I care?" 

"You should care. Nothing lasts forever. Not money, not your youth. Just like that wallpaper you seem so fond of speaking about, things fade. Your life will pass by in the blink of an eye and leave you wondering if you lived your best possible life. What would your answer be?" Carver said, genuinely curious as to what she would say.

"I'm quite content with my life, thank you." 

"If this is what you want to call living. Well, I'm off. The party awaits," Carver said as he glanced in the mirror for one last brief moment. Satisfied with the final product, he turned back to Shirley, who already seemed to have dismissed his presence.

"See ya next Tuesday," he continued, his voice filled with disappointment. He loved this woman… but...He feared that she would never change. 

"See ya."

                                         * * *

Shirley spent the rest of her evening as routinely as she did the rest of the days of the week. Her Tuesday romps with Carver were just that, a minor distraction from her daily routine. After he left each meeting, she would soak in a hot bath prepared by her servants, and read as the aromatic suds swirled and sloshed in the water around her petite body. The floral scent of her bubble bath helped to ease her into one of the many romance novels she had brought in from the dime store. After her bath, she would enjoy some chamomile tea on the second level deck that was adjoined to her lavish bedroom. This was the furthest she would go out of the house, the closest she would get to "leaving the property."

Shirley enjoyed sitting there on her open deck, feeling the light breeze of the night sky flow through the thin layers of her silk robe and coming to gently kiss at her bare skin; skin that had been not long ago submerged in the nearly scorching water held by her ivory tub. The air felt like ice, making her skin tingle, arousing her; goosebumps coming to rise on her milky white flesh. The sensation of the breeze against her nakedness was a caress that asked for nothing in return. It brought to mind the warmer touch of Carver. While Carver served his purpose in bringing her carnal pleasure, she kept him at a distance, not giving him a chance to gain a spot in her heart. She could not afford that.Shirley knew all too well how broken, how damaged people could be. She knew all too well how easily they could up and leave. Because of this she guarded her heart.

Sipping the last bit of tea from her cup, Shirley rose and entered her bedroom, closing the double doors behind her. It was early, but she was ready to retire for the evening. Maybe she would fall into a deep sleep filled with sweet dreams of escape. She hung her silk robe on a peg on the backside of her bedroom door, then pulled on a nightie. She flipped the wall switch and turned off the overhead light. Shirley crawled under the blankets and let them and the gentle satin sheets fall over her skin in cool comfort. She rested her head on the pillows beneath and drifted off to sleep. 

                                                  ***

Shirley stirred awake. Within the room a noise reverberated, the walls groaned. It sounded as though the room was breathing, being called to life by some unknown force. Shirley groggily wiped the sleep from the corners of her eyes, not fully aware of what was going on around her. When her vision was normal, her eyes grew wide and a small gasp escaped her throat. What she saw frightened her to the core. She began to tremble.

The wall opposite to her bed began to push outward in the center as if it were elastic being stretched taut. Behind the bowing wallpaper and wood, the silhouette of a figure could be made out. A person was somehow pushing their way through her bedroom wall! Shirley could hardly believe her eyes. She pinched herself as if to bring herself back to reality. However, this was reality, as unsettling and unbelievable as it now was. The wall split at the center then. The wood and plaster and bits of torn wallpaper shot down to the floor below, strewn about like the fragmented pieces of a popsicle stick house. 

From the jagged opening in the wall emerged the slender body of a young girl, or at least what Shirley thought to be a young girl. The body was dressed in a standard maid uniform of black and white. Shirley looked up at the girl's face and did her absolute best not to scream out of sheer terror. The girl had no face. A smooth expanse of unmarked flesh replaced the areas where a nose, mouth and eyes should have been. In the girl's hand was a long, perfectly polished kitchen knife; its wide blade seemed eager to slice through flesh, to become stained with blood. Shirley's heart thumped in her chest.

"You're being replaced. And we're here to do the replacing," said a voice coming from somewhere within the faux maid's body, the voice warbled, guttural. 

Shirley threw the blankets from atop of her then. She scrambled from the bed and made a mad dash to her bedroom door. She was determined to get away from this faceless freak as fast as her feet and legs would take her. She threw the heavy wooden door open, exposing what should have been an empty hallway. Instead, standing before her like a ghoulish sentinel, was a tall, lanky figure of a man dressed in a butler's uniform. Just like the girl, this figure had no defining features to where his face should have been. Shirley let out a terrified scream, a scream that echoed throughout the long hallway and down the stairwell to the foyer below.

She tried to push past the large figure in the doorway, but her attempt was unsuccessful. He wrapped his thin, but surprisingly strong arms around her waist and chest.  

"Do it now! She must be replaced!" said the deep, almost growling voice that came from within the man's diaphragm.

The maid raised the large kitchen knife into the air, preparing to sink the blade into Shirley's heaving chest. Before the blade made contact with the space immediately below her rib cage, Shirley swung her right leg backwards and landed the ball of her heel into the butler's groin. In one quick maneuver, she threw herself forward and out of the stunned man's grasp. She fled past him through the doorway and into the hall. Shirley had only made it a few feet past the threshold when she felt some sort of gravitational force pulling at her ankles and calves. Momentarily looking down, she saw that the lower portion of her legs were being dragged down into pools of murky quicksand with every attempted footfall. 

It was as if she were moving in slow motion or running in place. The figures were also moving at a snail's pace, approaching her from behind. As she trudged through the pools of unforgiving quagmire, images came to her mind's eye, flashes of the unremarkable life she had been living. In these flashes, she saw all the rooms she had wandered through in this house, in shiftless pursuit of her routine, her daily rituals. She saw images of her sitting in her den on Monday afternoons; its rich tapestries, gold upholstered furniture, and the grandfather clock chiming away as she spent countless hours playing solitaire or pretending to be the world's next best poet. Her Wednesday ritual of sitting in her emerald blue guest room, holding the sweater Richard had left behind and sobbing came to mind. 

"You can't break the cycle! No matter what you do, no matter where you go, eventually we will find you. Like it or not, you will get replaced," called the faceless male figure, his voice that same eerie guttural roar. 

The maid, as if catching up with time, ran toward her, and plunged the tip of the blade into Shirley's shoulder. She yelled out in agony. Just then, Shirley remembered a particularly painful time in her life, before Richard, before the world had become sour to her. She recalled a swimming lesson that her brooding mother had forced her to take. Shirley couldn't swim, but her mother insisted that she learn how. Her mother had stood by the side of the pool barking orders at her and watching, laughing as she sputtered and coughed on water and fought to stay afloat. Shirley nearly drowned. 

But somehow, something inside her drove her to keep moving, to keep her head above water. She now used that same determination to fight her way through the muck holding her in place. She pushed forward. The knife slid out of her shoulder as she moved. Like  it had for the maid, time began to move again. She was free of the quicksand in moments, narrowly escaping the butler's cold, thin fingers as he lunged forth to seize her. 

She pushed onward. She ran down the steps, each step creaking under her weight, to the foyer. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the two figures had banded together and were moving in union together down the steps, side by side, their strides jerky, not quite human. She looked forward again and ran for the front entrance. Unlike the bedroom door, she paused, hesitant to fling this door open with reckless abandon. She looked over her shoulder again. Her heart sank as she saw that the two figures had made it to the landing,and were only getting closer as the seconds passed. Shirley raised a shaking hand to the doorknob and turned it. The door opened.

On the other side of that heavily decorated wood, the rolling hills and flush landscape of her front property were revealed. The nighttime sky had crept over the land, keeping the grassy knolls hidden in shadows.She took a deep breath and ran over the threshold and down the marble steps of the mansion's entrance. She didn't look back this time. She just kept running, the grass grazing against the bottom and sides of her bare feet. For the first time in God knows how long, Shirley was in the outside world, the world beyond the confines of a cage disguised as a luxurious manor. Under better circumstances, this moment in time would be liberating for Shirley. But right now, she was far from liberated,she was terrified. Would her assailants stalk her down? Would she be replaced?

Shirley ran and kept going even after she came to the road past her property's reach; the road leading to town, to the rest of the world. A car was fast approaching on the winding pavement ahead. Its high beams flashed and spread a golden light across Shirley's shock stricken face. The car came to a screeching halt a few yards ahead. Shirley moved at a  slow jog, blindly moving forward with no particular destination in mind. From the driver's side of the sedan, the car's door flung open and a man in black emerged. It was Carver, still dressed in his festive attire.

"Hey… Shirl… are you okay?" 

She looked at him, her eyes searching his face. She looked as if she were processing if he were really there or not. "They're coming. They're coming to replace me…" she said, almost as if she were in a trance.

"Who's coming?" Carver asked, concern rising in his voice. 

He looked down at his lover and saw the tears welling up in her eyes, her lower lip quivering. Her whole body trembled. There was a large gash in her right shoulder that was trickling blood and coming to stain her nightgown. She began to swoon. Carver moved fast and caught Shirley in his arms. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with fear.

" I wanna live," she said. These three words were the most sincere declaration he had ever heard come from Shirley's lips. He looked down at her face which took on a child-like appearance. 

"As do we all," he said, then placed a gentle kiss on her clammy forehead. He escorted her to the sedan and the two of them drove off, traveling wherever the road would take them.