Content warnings

Hoarding. Child neglect. Violence.

When the doorbell rings, Penny doesn’t want to open the door. She doesn’t want anyone to see how they live. She peers through the spyhole, a sea of junk mail slipping under her tennis shoes. Mama doesn’t like strangers, has told Penny to only open if it’s someone with a package. The man has neither, but Penny knows him, and Mama needs help.

It’s Mr Grey, the landlord, brushing invisible dust off his tweed shoulders. He checks his watch. “Mrs Flowers? Penny?”

Penny cracks the door, leaving the safety chain on, and peeks out. The day blazes behind Mr Grey, making Penny feel small and willowy in his shadow.

“Well? Are you going to let me in?” The landlord looks down at her with dark piercing eyes. “You called me.”

Penny nods. He’s right. She did call him because what else was she to do? Mama needs help, and Penny’s only ten. Mama wouldn’t like Mr Grey coming in, but despite his intimidating exterior, he’s a nice man, letting them live here, coming when she called.

Penny called many numbers—only a few people came, most of them uninvited. People who came include: Mr Fish, their elderly next-door neighbour; Miss Winters, Penny’s fearless and robust science teacher; two social workers; a policeman; a pizza delivery boy. They all came in, but none of them could help Mama.

The safety chain jangles in Penny’s hand. Several flyers from nearby restaurants spill over the threshold as soon as she opens the door. “Thanks for coming.”

Mr Grey steps into the magazine-stacked foyer, and Penny’s cheeks feel as hot as the heating pads Mama once ordered to help with her back ache—they were faulty and occasionally overheated, yet she never returned them. Penny reminds herself Mr Grey has been here before, has seen it all before. He’s not here to evict them. She also knows the house looks worse than before. There only ever seems to be worse and more in this house, yet never enough.

Mama.

That awful bull’s head mask had been Mama’s latest purchase. How her eyes shone when she discovered it online. Just the thing she was looking for, the thing she must have. Penny didn’t say a word. Mama got so excited she read the description out loud, laced with words like mystical and empowering, authentic and Minoan. Made in Crete. Why was Penny so quiet? Didn’t Penny want Mama to be a strong, independent woman? And so Penny bit her lip and nodded when Mama asked if she liked the mask, even as she shuddered at the glassy eyes, the black snout, the sharp-tipped horns. Mama looked so happy, her weary face filling with light Penny hadn’t seen in a long time. Hope for something better, although Penny didn’t know what. When Mama cleared her bed, her nightstand, and hammered a nail above the headboard, Penny felt the tug of hope too.

The mask never made it onto the wall. Once it arrived, Mama tried it on, and it got stuck. Has been stuck ever since.

Mr Grey doesn’t seem disturbed by the chaos, or more likely, holds his opinions deep under his still, cool surface where they must be squirming like worms. In many ways, he reminds Penny of a rock. Hard, dependable, strong. Penny hopes he’ll be strong enough to help Mama.

When Mr Grey looks at Penny, his frown eases. “Where’s your mother, dear?”

Penny’s hands clench into fists in the pockets of her denim overalls—a size bigger than she needs with fashionably ripped knees, but like everything else, the house makes them feel old and torn. Hidden inside her left pocket is a small spiralling conch from a holiday in Crete where she went with Mama and Papa long ago. She found it on the beach. Years later, her memories of the island still seem almost magical. The air was so fresh, the Aegean Sea so blue. Papa carried her on his wide shoulders while Mama basked on a towel in the sun. Everything they needed fit into two suitcases. Penny brushes her fingers over the conch in her pocket. The bumpy surface, the silky underside. She always carries the conch with her—that way it doesn’t get lost.

Papa would’ve been the first to call, but Penny doesn’t have his number.

Mama.

“She’s in her den. Follow me.”

A narrow pathway leads them deeper into the house. It’s getting darker. The walls on either side block most of the overhead lighting. If you can call them walls. They’re made of newspaper and catalogues, old magazines and older books, held together by years of dust and neglect and the weight of their own existence.

As they enter the next room, Penny doubts the landlord registers the change. She only knows by the pattern of mould and stains on the ceiling.

The kitchen is not a kitchen. The stove-top and counters have vanished under a landscape of boxes and piles. There are bugs and chicken bones and open cans of rotting food. Mr Grey coughs into his handkerchief. Penny picks up the pace, ignoring the stench. She keeps looking, but can’t always find the source. Eventually, when everything dries up, the smells tend to die out.

“Careful,” Penny says, catching a glance of Mr Grey’s shoulders sweeping dangerously close to the makeshift walls. One wrong move, and everything might come tumbling down and bury them alive.

Every few steps, something cracks or complains under Mr Grey’s footsteps and he mumbles an apology. “Don’t worry,” Penny says with a shrug. “It was probably already broken.” It’s the truth. Anything damaged or broken in this house has been that way for a while.

The house didn’t always look this way. There used to be sunlight and laughter and room to play. It was after Papa left, after Papa said he couldn’t live like this anymore, that Mama started building her walls.

Like Papa, the house could only take so much. As it filled, it began to twist and change. There’s no space, yet there’s always space for more stuff. When one pathway closes, another one is created. Rooms bulge outwards like barrels. And so the labyrinth grows. Only one thing remains the same: there’s barely space for Penny.

A loud thump sounds in the distance, so forceful it seems to shake the very foundation of the house. The walls shudder.

Mr Grey’s eyes widen. “What was that?”

Penny grips the conch in her pocket. “Mama can’t see so well with the mask on.”

The landlord in tow, Penny navigates through Plastic Bag Avenue, Newspaper Street, Misc Box Alley. Upon the Lane of Forgotten Dreams, she trips on an old tennis racket and stumbles forward. The walls crumble around her, as she always knew they would. She stands frozen in place. She can only think of how the walls came crashing down on Mr Fish who wouldn’t let Penny show the way. How they swallowed Miss Winters, her favourite teacher, in the sewing room. Penny tried and tried but couldn’t dig either of them out.

Mr Grey grabs Penny to safety a blink before the walls bury her. It takes Penny a moment to realise she can still breathe.

“That was close,” Mr Grey says, putting her down on her feet. “Are you hurt?”

Penny shakes her head. When she feels for the conch in her pocket, it’s gone.

“My seashell—” Penny gasps. “It must have fallen out.”

“We’ll find it.” Mr Grey scans the rubble, carefully shifting things here and there. “It must be here somewhere.”

Penny searches too, knowing there’s no time. They need to hurry and get to Mama before something like this happens to her. Even if this is Penny’s one and only chance to find her conch.

She turns to leave. “Never mind. We should go.”

“Better not forget this,” Mr Grey says, and hands her the pale golden conch with a smile.

“You found it!” Penny wraps her arms around the landlord, then shyly pulls away.

Mama.

There’s no way forward. Mr Grey crosses his arms, as if trying to make himself take up less space. He squints at Penny. “Is there another path?”

Penny strokes the conch in her pocket, trying to calculate the shortest—or any route—to Mama. But it’s not something taught in school.

After a long pause, she comes up with a plan and motions for Mr Grey to follow. After several lefts and rights, always more wrong turns than right ones, they reach yet another dead end.

Mr Grey sighs. “There must be a way somewhere.”

“This is the way,” Penny says. It’s been the way to her room for years.

While climbing over the mound, Penny’s eyes land on familiar landmarks. The old curtains that once hung in the kitchen window. The handle bars of her first pink bicycle. The end of a striped scarf reaching out. Mama has kept everything. Every drawing Penny ever made. Penny’s baby clothes and milk teeth and one hundred Barbie dolls. Everything they’ve ever owned is somewhere in this house. Safe. Lost forever.

Penny thinks of the two bright-eyed social workers who came into the house and never left. They shouted for help, but Penny could never find a way to them. Sometimes she still hears them whispering in hoarse voices to each other at night when the house is quiet. Other times, she hears them chewing and gnawing. Perhaps one day they will eat their way out.

Penny tells herself it will be different with Mr Grey. He knows the house and Mama knows him. He doesn’t seem easily rattled. He will not get crushed or trampled or lost. He will not scream. He will not run. He’ll fix Mama and march back into the sunlight, and things will go back to the way they were. It wasn’t so bad.

Mama.

They’re standing by a wall of cardboard boxes, stacked like bricks. In the middle is a square hole, a small doorway. It leads to Mama’s den, the room where she eats and sleeps, fills crossword puzzles and sudokus, watches never-ending soap operas and browses infinite online shops, where she spins her dreams and cries.

Penny holds up a hand. “Let me go in first,” she says and disappears like a rabbit into the dark hole. She doesn’t want Mama to be startled, to think there’s an intruder in their house in case she doesn’t recognise Mr Grey.

Mama stands in the far corner, her face to the wall. From this angle, she almost looks like her old self. Soft and round and kind, long brown hair flowing down her back. When Mama turns, she looks like someone else. Something else. Her pink bathrobe is tattered, turning grey. The bull’s head mask covers most of her head. A dark gaze narrows on Penny. Penny wants to look away but can’t. As if haunted, she gazes back at the black mirror eyes, the wide snout, the golden horns curving upwards.

“It’s okay, Mama. It’s me, Penny,” she says, but her voice doesn’t sound so sure.

Penny approaches her mother like she’s a wild beast that might kick or bite—or rip her head off. Penny comes bearing no sugar cubes but reaches out in a similar manner. Mama shuffles closer. Penny remains frozen in place. The beast that is Mama smells Penny, sniffing her palm and fingers and every inch of her arm up to her shoulder, hot air billowing from two large nostrils. Penny feels the steam of her ancient breath against her cheek. Mama’s every inhale and exhale is audible, a low rumble rising from some unholy cave within her. Penny is convinced one single breath could blow her away.

The beast’s facial muscles relax and demeanour softens. Penny, one hand clenched around the conch in her pocket, feels a nudge against her scalp, followed by a gentle snort of humid air. In that brief, rare moment, Mama is just a mama, an ox mother nuzzling her calf.

Mr Grey clears his throat. He’s crawling in.

Mama’s head snaps towards him. Her giant nostrils flare. “It’s okay, Mama,” Penny whispers. “It’s Mr Grey. He’s here to help you.”

The only light into the room is weak and fractured, emanating from the hole behind Mr Grey.

“Please, help her,” Penny says. “Get that awful thing off her head.”

Mr Grey stares into the darkness as if trying to gain a better view—or understanding—of the situation. He removes his tweed jacket and folds it over the back of a broken sun chair. He rolls his sleeves. “Don’t worry, Mrs Flowers. Everything’s going to be okay.”

He grabs Mama by the horns. Penny watches from a safe distance. She wants to remain hopeful, but already she fears—what if, what if? What if not? If Mr Grey can’t help Mama, who else is there to call?

Mr Grey’s face turns redder as he pulls. Mama’s mask stays on. It’s on tight, like a second skin.

“Stay still, Mama. He’s trying to help.”

But Mama is as strong as the mythical beast whose face she wears. Stronger than Mr Fish or Miss Winters. Stronger than the social workers. Stronger than the policeman or the pizza boy. Her nostrils enlarge into caverns, spewing steamy air. A foot in a tattered bath slipper digs the ground. The house quivers.

“Pull!” Penny screams.

Mr Grey has a firm grip of the golden horns. But the more he wrestles, the more he yanks and pulls in his feverish dance with Mama, gliding like gods across the floor, the more it’s becoming apparent he’s not so much pulling as being pushed.

“Mama, no!”

The beast won’t listen. If anything, she seems more determined than ever to defend her strange, crying calf. While the mask may dull her human senses, her gleaming horns remain sharp.

If only Penny were stronger or quicker, but she is neither. Not strong enough to help Mama or stop her from ramming Mr Grey. And neither is Mr Grey. He may be strong, and even quick sometimes, but Mama is stronger. Mama tosses her massive head, hair whipping like a mane, draws back, then charges forward like a fiery chariot that won’t be stopping at any mortal station. Penny knows there will be no time for Mr Grey to get out of the way from between Mama’s horns and the wall.

The one wall that's solid and real.

The last Penny sees of Mr Grey is the glint of his watch, as he brings his arms up to protect himself, and the whites of his eyes. Mama’s are perfect black.

Penny scrambles through the hole and shrinks below the towering walls, hugging her knees. When the screaming starts, she takes the conch from her pocket, holds it to her ear, and listens hard for the Aegean Sea.

END

Author’s note

Like most of the things I write, this story both is and isn’t personal to me. It was namely inspired by general consumerism, the slight hoarding tendencies of a loved one, and the memorable Knossos ruins in Crete (home of the Minotaur myth) where I visited many years ago.

Sylvia Heike

Sylvia Heike is a writer from Finland. Her short fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, PodCastle, and Nature Futures. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and been longlisted for the BSFA Award. When not writing, she enjoys knitting, gardening, and watching birds.