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Frank Vanderbilt was what one might call your typical middle-class American in his forties. He had a comfortable house in the suburbs, a wife and kids- pretty much everything, really. He smoked his pipe and watched television in the evenings, and in the mornings went to work at his 9-to-5 office job. It was his life, and he was comfortable with it. Well, as comfortable as one can be, of course.
It was the little things that ended up pissing Frank off. A cup of coffee that was cold now because Mrs Vanderbilt had made it before Frank woke up; his son Patrick switching the channel from the game Frank was watching; his daughter Louise singing too loud in the shower. Sometimes, Frank found himself wishing he’d never had a family at all. He loved them- of course he did. But there’s a thin line between love and hate, and as time passed and Frank grew older, balding, losing his hearing, he found himself leaning more and more towards bitter hatred.
It all came to a head one evening when Louise and Patrick were arguing about something idiotic again.
“It’s my turn ,” Patrick yelled, placing his hands on hips, glaring in the authoritative way only a ten-year-old can manage.
Louise stuck her tongue out at him. She was his elder by four years, and yet still managed to act like a brat half the time. “Is not,” she argued.
“Is so!”
“Is not !”
“Is so!”
“Mommy,” Louise mewled, running into the kitchen. “Patrick’s trying to steal my ukulele again!”
Frank buried his face deeper into his newspaper, the smoke from his pipe rising in rings towards the ceiling light. Sentences about the economy and crime rising entered his mind and vacated it promptly afterwards, the deafening cacophony of Louise and Patrick’s arguing the only thing he could find himself focusing on. He heard his wife Dorothy’s quiet attempts at placation, completely ignored as Patrick and Louise argued over that godawful instrument that neither of them could even play-
In a second, Frank was on his feet, striding into the kitchen. “Give me that,” he said brusquely, snatching the ukulele from Louise’s hands. In one swift motion, he brought it down over his knee. The thin wood cracked and splintered, the instrument breaking into two distinct halves in Frank’s hands. He breathed a sigh of relief- another job well done!
He looked back up, and found Louise staring at him in horror, her eyes welling over with tears. Dorothy’s lips were pursed, looking upwards and away from everything, and Patrick was similarly silent.
Frank rolled his eyes at their reactions, and was about to step back into the living room, when Louise spoke.
“That was my Christmas present,” Louise whispered, her lower lip quivering. What a baby. Frank did wish she’d grow up a bit. “Why would you do that?”
“I can’t stand the noise,” Frank answered matter-of-factly, not bothering to keep the annoyance at his family’s reaction out of his voice. “And you need to focus on your flute anyway. You’re going to get kicked out of the school orchestra at this point, your playing is so poor.”
A sob escaped Louise’s mouth and she dropped her face into her hands, turning on her heel and sprinting up the stairs.
“Christ,” Frank muttered.
“You- you didn’t have to do that, Frank,” Dorothy spoke up quietly, still staring at the ceiling.
Frank scoffed. “I’m the man of the house, I can do whatever I want. And get your eyes off the ceiling, woman- you look like one of those Tibetan goldfish.”
“Sorry,” Dorothy said. “I’ll get back to work on dinner.”
“You’d better,” Frank grumbled. “Half past six and still nothing on my plate. After a man’s had a hard day’s work, he needs nourishment, Dorothy. You know this. And you!” Frank turned to Patrick, glaring. Patrick flinched. “Why are you still standing there? Go read a book or something. And no television- god knows you’re stupid enough as is. I mean, that report card! Enough ‘B’s on there to fill a hive.”
Patrick’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Sorry,” he said, voice quiet. “I’ll-”
“Speak up,” Frank interrupted, massaging his brows. Honestly, why was everyone in this family so fucking insufferable all the time? Frank was surely the only reasonable one here. “You’re a man, aren’t you? Act like one.”
“Right,” Patrick said, voice marginally louder as he straightened his back. “Sorry, Pop.”
Frank made a sort of waving gesture, and Patrick scampered off- hopefully to actually read a book. Frank walked back into the living room, grabbing his newspaper from the table. It wrinkled under his tight fist as Frank plopped himself down on the couch, taking a long drag of his pipe and beginning to actually read the news of the day.
From the corner of his eye, something caught his gaze. A lump, innocuous and small, sat innocently under the rug.
Frank’s eyebrows furrowed. Had one of the kids left their ball there or something? But no- this wasn’t the carpet, it was the rug, and it was glued to the floor with extra-strength adhesive. Frank had paid to have it done last summer.
He took off his reading glasses, setting his pipe on the wooden side table atop his newspaper, and crept toward the lump.
It was only a few inches tall and pushed beneath one of the rocking chairs, such a subtle change that Frank was certain none but himself would’ve been observant enough to notice it. He got down on one knee, leaning towards the thing, and poked it, hoping to figure out whatever it was that could’ve been left behind there.
It moved.
Not enough to be alive- it was more like a jiggle than anything else, a slight give beneath the carpet under Frank’s finger. But it moved nonetheless, and Frank was… not happy about that.
Under the seamless gray of the rug, the lump looked like a cancerous tumor. Frank’s lips pulled themselves into a sneer, and he was so utterly disgusted by the notion that he did something that, in hindsight, was awfully rash.
Frank stood, and stomped down hard on the lump.
It squished under his foot before… well, the only way Frank could describe what happened next was that it ruptured. It felt like squishing a water balloon, except there was no liquid seeping into the rug, and even as Frank dug his heel into the spot, he could find no evidence it had ever been there at all.
Then Dorothy called them all in for dinner, and thoughts of lumps and tumors were wiped from Frank’s mind at the heavenly smell of his wife’s cooking, straight out of the oven.
Louise didn’t end up coming down for dinner that day, which was a win in Frank’s book. He didn’t think he could stand the childish looks of betrayal she would send him all throughout dinner without flying completely off the handle. And of course, if he did, she’d have had it coming, but still. It was an expense of energy that Frank really didn’t want to have to take.
He walked to the table and dug into his serving.
Later that night, when he was deep in sleep, Frank dreamt he was squishing bugs with the faces of his family.
--
Two weeks passed, and it happened again. Frank was, once again, alone in the living room- Dorothy had gone out with the children to buy them new clothes, so he was actually alone in the entire house. Frank had turned on the latest baseball game, and was on the edge of his seat hoping his favorite team would win… when he saw it.
In the exact same spot, as last time sat the lump- only it was bigger now. More bulbous. Staring at it invoked a deep feeling of dread that Frank couldn’t quite shake.
Immediately, an uncalled-for rage swept through him. How dare this lump interrupt his game! How dare it shake the sanctity of his home! How dare it make him feel scared!
Frank Vanderbilt didn’t get scared.
He grabbed one of the wooden chairs from the dining table and lifted it above his head, thrusting it down and letting the strength of gravity do most of the work. Again, the lump ruptured, and the leg of the chair broke off sharply. Frank stared down, breathing heavily, the debilitated chair clutched in his grasp.
“Fuck you,” he growled at the rug, unbridled anger filling him completely. “Fuck off.”
The rug, predictably, did not respond.
That night, Frank dreamt of his wife’s voice as he fell, further and further, into nothingness.
--
Every day that week, it returned. In the same goddamned spot every morning, a little bigger. Frank would stomp it; he would smash it; he would stab it with a kitchen knife. Every time, it ruptured, with no or little resistance. And every time, that deep feeling of dread flowed through him.
His family couldn’t see it. Of course they couldn’t. Their eyes were obviously failing them; it was clear to Frank that he was the only one in this house who had any observational skills at all. He even tried pointing it out to Dorothy a few times, but every time, she chose to lie and she said she saw nothing.
Frank felt like he was going insane.
“Dorothy,” he yelled as he stepped downstairs that Friday, “it’s back.”
“Dear, I already told you, there’s no ‘lump’ there,” Dorothy called back from the kitchen where she was making lunch for the children’s school days.
“Stop lying,” Frank spat. “You know it’s there as well as I do. You’re just- just pretending, to spite me.”
“Frank, you sound ridiculous,” Dorothy said as she strode into the living room, jam-covered butter knife still clutched in her hand. “Look, see? There’s nothing there.”
“No- under the chair, you idiot.”
Dorothy flinched, almost imperceptibly, and all Frank felt was a surge of annoyance. She should just stop playing the victim already! No one was falling for it, and she was just digging herself further and further away from Frank’s good graces. But to be honest, ever since they’d married, she’d been doing that anyway.
“Sweetheart,” Dorothy tried, voice turning saccharine, almost pleading, “do we need to go to the doctor? Are you sure- are you sure you’re not seeing things?”
Frank stopped in his staring at the lump and turned around. “You think I’m seeing things , do you? I bet you’d love it if I turned out to be insane so that you could keep the house. You never loved me- don’t even lie about it. You’re nothing but an ungrateful-”
“Frank, stop ,” Dorothy yelled. “I’m trying to help you! There. Is. Nothing. There.”
Frank grabbed the front of Dorothy’s dress and began dragging her towards the lump. She sputtered and did her best to get his hands off her, but there was nothing she could do- not against Frank’s strength. She’d never been able to before, and she certainly wasn’t now. He pushed her to the floor, forcing her onto her knees in front of the lump. He dropped down beside her, glaring.
“ Look ,” he spat. “Look, you miserable nag. There’s a lump.”
“Frank, please ,” Dorothy said, and Frank could see the beginnings of tears forming in her eyes. “There’s nothing there-”
Frank smashed her head against the lump. It was a good foot tall by now, and her face smashed into it, hitting the floor as the thing burst. Dorothy was properly crying as she brought her face up, and her nose was bleeding from the impact.
“Don’t lie to me,” Frank repeated, voice low and dangerous.
“I can’t let the children see me like this-”
“Then don’t lie!” Frank roared. “There was a lump there. You saw it, as plain as day, as plain as you’re seeing my face right now. You saw it. I- I know you did.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Dorothy sobbed, attempting to drop her face into her hands. Frank yanked up on her hair, forcing her to meet his face. He raised his eyebrows. “I- honest to God, Frank, there was nothing there.”
Frank stared down at the rug, expecting not to see anything, expecting the rug to be back to its deceptive normal, just like it always was.
But this time, there was a stain there.
He relinquished his grip on Dorothy’s hair, and she collapsed beside him, but he ignored her. She could deal with it, and she brought this upon herself by lying, anyway. Frank moved towards the stain and reached out to touch it.
It was wet.
His fingers came away stained with red.
Before his eyes, the red blossomed into the carpet, a deep stain that colored everything around it. Frank leaned down, doing his best to observe it closer, when-
He noticed his skin was very, very pale.
As the red in the rug grew, Frank’s hands grew paler, until the rug was fully saturated and Frank was as white as a sheet. He felt his heart beat faster, frantically, trying to pump his blood through him.
But there was nothing to pump, because Frank’s blood covered the floor in front of him.
He waited for Dorothy to help him. He waited for her to jump up and call the police, an ambulance, a neighbor- something.
Instead, he just felt her eyes on him, watching silently. In his final moments, Frank heard her speak.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she whispered, and truth colored her words as surely as Frank’s blood colored the rug in front of him. “But what I do know is that you deserve this.”
Dorothy’s footsteps retreated behind Frank.
He felt the rug reach up, and then slowly, agonizingly, it swallowed his bloodless body whole.