The delegation of tasks becomes firmly entrenched in the routine, and positive changes are noticeable in the Homeowner's condition. At the very least, he's been bumping into turns, doorframes, and furniture less often, his vestibular apparatus has started returning to normal, his sleep has become deeper, and he didn't dare hope for more. These improvements were godly plenty as it was.
The self-proclaimed colleague—the host rarely but neatly allowed himself to tease his own benefactor with this nickname, always meeting with furrowed brows and a pursed line of lips—handles his newfound duties respectably. They take night watch every other night, trying at dawn to nestle in the bedroom as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the one lying beside them. Both notice: fewer and fewer people come—they don't want to hypothesize about the reasons, as they would mostly be joyless—and the Visitors are gradually disappearing from view. People come and go in waves, unnerving with their transience, which makes it unbearably hard to remember even their general features, but even this chaotic occupancy of the rooms becomes routine.
Nothing seems strange anymore.
The delirious, vomitously absurd mundanity doesn't seem strange, nor the endless inspections of the living and half-living, whom the Homeowner isn't sure about in the slightest.
It doesn't seem strange that in one bed, despite the heat scorching the house walls, two people, unneeded by themselves and the world, can sleep back to back, or even almost in an embrace. Youth over the past weeks has receded from them even further than before, and the "one-night stand" approach with all its flirting and one-time romance has been replaced by the principle, where it's shameful, and necessary, and so bad that it even strengthens the masochistic desire to live. Endless chatter about pains, uncomplicated physical contact—call it even.
It doesn't seem strange that blood no longer induces nausea, and conversations continue while scrubbing its stains from the floorboards, with jokes slipping in. It doesn't seem strange that murder and salvation are almost equivalent concepts.
Everything fits within the framework not of what's normal, but of what's necessary — and therefore, acceptable. The house, people, non-people, the past, fears, hopes, bodies, guilt, relief, the two of them—all merge into one viscous, humming substance, whose nagging presence you grow accustomed to unnoticed.
Really, you can get used to anything. To anything, except one thing.
"You alone?"
Tripe scrapes at the door, pressing on his skull, already wrapped in irrationality, with the rustle of that already loathsome question, the answer to which determines whether the master of the house will live until morning. The words of the disproportionate Guest crawl under his skin, slither through his entire organism with the blood freezing from yet another visit from this creature.
Alone?
The house is quiet, but there's chaos in his head, a shrill hysteria. His thought panickedly darts from corner to corner of his mind: who's even left? His memory rummages through the rooms, unhelpfully sorting through the personalities blended into a tangled mess. Some had a fight earlier in the day so bad that someone fled over the threshold as soon as the sun set; a couple were forcibly dragged away by those fucking FEMA bastards a couple of hours ago—damn it, they agreed they wouldn't show up again; he shot one piece of scum early in the morning because she started spouting such nonsense that all doubts evaporated—or was that not today? The faces in his far-from-perfect memory, worsened by chronic sleep deprivation and stress—an assortment of mincemeat, stretched into a bloody mush over several days.
"Why so quiet?"
His, the Other's, bewilderment amuses him to the point of stupidity. A corpse-like, swampy, rotten dampness wafts from the crack in the doorjamb, thickening the air, making it hard to breathe into the lungs. The scratching continues, and it seems the door is about to be utterly shredded, letting into the makeshift shelter the one whom no resident of the area has ever managed to fight off. And the master of this house certainly won't be the first exception.
The latch trembles. It was flimsy to begin with, and having Something lean against the entrance doesn't improve it. The floor creaks and shudders underfoot, and his body lists by inertia—if only he doesn't fall, depriving himself of any chance.
"Well…" the Pale One drawls, anticipating its feast of others' torments. "If you're alone…"
But the thickness is cut by another voice. Human. Loud. Steady. The kind that makes it clear its owner has never once seen the one he's shouting at so inhospitably:
"Fuck off, all beds are taken!"
He's shouting the right things, too, guessing from the figure frozen in the middle of the hallway that this one shouldn't be opened for—something will open it if needed.
The nagging presence outside goes quiet, as if disappearing into nowhere. Half a minute passes—though it feels like a whole hour—before a displeased "Lucky you. You've found favor not only with Death, but with Fortune, too" is heard.
The host isn't up for deciphering more convoluted phrases—his head is already swelling…
"And where's your famed conditioned reflex?"
…it's torn apart by a cacophony inside, forcing him to sink into an armchair in the corner and cover his entire face with one hand, trying somehow to collect himself. It's unbearably stuffy, he's shivering to the point of joint pain, and again his body, damn it a hundred times, won't obey, won't obey at all, moving only in spots as if numb. The words sounding from nearby aren't processed immediately; it takes time to read any thought or mood in them.
"Like I was paralyzed, damn it…" the Homeowner only whispers in his own defense.
The goddamn rifle lies ownerless near the wall—the piece of iron is useless against this particular Visitor anyway. He hears it being picked up with a slight grunt, leaned against a corner like a simple broom—nothing supernatural, just another household tool.
Something has to be done about this. But what to do and how—the hell knows. It feels like the far it goes, the messier it gets: his nerves are shakier, his hands tremble, the world swims and fades in his eyes, refusing to form a single clear picture even under the insistent voice, the touch, the demand to focus on breathing.
Exhaustion wins. Puts him on his back, forcefully pressing him against a hard surface—even his own bed, to which he's almost dragged across the floor rather than led, feels hard, icy—a sectional table in the flesh. His eyes won't open anymore, glued shut by exhaustion, a semi-faint, not just a simple desire to sleep—that won't be enough now. His brain resists the plunge, but it pulls him down, into the gray thickness, where sounds die and time ceases to exist. Remnants of consciousness cling to trifles: the coldness of the sheet, the faint smell of tobacco, unfamiliar-familiar hands, the barely perceptible sound of breathing against the crown of his head.
"Someday, all of this will end anyway."
The Homeowner wants to include too many things and events in "all of this." His interlocutor has no idea what, besides the well-known problems, he'd like to fall off the edge of the earth —probably it's for the best that the Tall One has never crossed paths with the merciless Non-Human and has no idea what caused the stupor that gave way to panic. Otherwise, perhaps the host would indeed be alone at home now.
It will end.
The Pale One will keep coming until he gets bored with his own rules.
The sun will fry the shack to the point where standing on the floor will be impossible.
They will die—both will die, reasons will be found. And then it will indeed end.
He sees no other outcomes today. Perhaps in the morning, his thoughts will be less pessimistic.
