THE OLD MAN AND THE HOMUNCULUS Str8aura

 

‘I’m proud of you, kiddo.’

I soaked in every detail, looking him all over. Only when I felt ready did I dare speak.

‘I am. Proud of you... kid.’

His glow dimmed, and his wizened eyes became tired once more.

‘All at once,’ he said, trying to be gentle.

I tried again, and again.

Each time, I’m just slightly off. Each time his stance hardened a little more, and his tone became snappier. I started to get nervous, and that made me perform worse.

‘I... I am proud. Of you kid. Do.’

‘God damn it.’ He tore his eyes away from me, exhausted from trying to be kind so many times. ‘English. What’s wrong with English? Did I fuck up somehow, is this my fault?’

Somehow, despite wondering that out loud, he still sounded like he was accusing me. I didn’t know what to do to calm him down, except to try again.

That was the wrong choice. So I fell silent instead. That was also wrong.

‘Why aren’t you speaking?’ he barked. ‘Don’t stop, keep going. I’m not leaving until ‘

As always when he riles himself up like this, there came a point where his energy gave out. He deflated like a balloon and fell into a coughing fit, hobbling over into the corner away from me. He leaned against the boxes and a dusty mirror, tilting it slightly towards me.

I don’t like looking at myself much. I know I’m not done yet.

I have his eyes, and his jaw. If I grew several inches, and stood up straight, someone staring at me from a distance could mistake me for my father. Any closer, and the illusion would be ruined. They’d see my still hardening bones through the holes in my cheeks, my hairless scalp, and my blistering red chest. They’d see the parts on my arms where blood dripped out of exposed vessels onto the floor, and all the discoloured patches that dot my body like a crossword.

I’m not done yet. He used to be fine with that. He told me every day I’d look better with time, back when we still had enough of that. He told me I’d get better.

Now, several months later, he’s given up on encouragement.

Wiping tears out of his eyes from his violent coughing, my father stood up on shaky legs, still not looking at me.

‘Try “One more lingering cough.” Try the whole thing. From the top.’

I immediately sat up, pushing myself with my arms and legs back into position. My legs aren’t strong enough to support my weight yet, so I have to get around like this—crawling like a spider, dragging myself like a corpse. Luckily, I don’t have many places to be.

Once I was in position, I started the routine from memory.

The routine goes like this. First, I hold my hands in front of me, and pretend I’m reading a newspaper.

(I still don’t know what a newspaper is, but dad reads them, which is the important part).

Then I tilt my head up, looking off at nothing, and brightening like I’ve seen someone come in.

Then the lines begin.

‘Kid...do! Good... To... See you. How... was... School?’

I notice Kiddo is sad, so I offer him to sit beside me. I listen to his problems. Although I don’t let it show, I often wonder what sort of problems a Kiddo might have. Oftentimes I make one up in my head, just to help with the acting. ‘My left foot is too small’, or ‘My lungs are falling out again’, or whatnot.

‘Sit... With... Your old.... Man...’ is the solution I offer each time. I can’t say anything related to the problem I’ve decided on. Dad’s not a fan of improv.

The whole time, he watched from the corner. Still recovering from his fit, he stayed silent for a minute, but recovered fast.

‘Faster with your arm.’ He nodded. ‘On his shoulder. It’ll be—You’ll see, eventually. It’ll be about level with your elbow, though. Now take his hand in yours. I usually—Ugh. Not so hard. Gentle squeeze.’

I loosened up my grip on the empty air.

When we finished, after I sent Kiddo back up to his room, we started again. Newspaper, Kiddo comes in, and so on.

Three times we rehearsed, his frown deepening each time. Finally, midway through the fourth try, he waved his hand in frustration.

‘That’s enough for tonight. He’ll be home soon.’ Dad shook his head morbidly and stood up, stroking his chin. ‘We’ve got to change our method. We’re running out of time. You need to be ready by ‘

Another cough, and he groaned painfully.

‘... I don’t know. You need to be ready. Any day now, I could...’

He looked me over, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

‘Maybe I can write up a note, saying I’ve gone somewhere. My sister’s... dog died, and I have to go see her. Give you more time to practice. More time to develop. More...’

Without warning, he lashed out, kicking the mirror hard. The sound of shattering glass scared me, and I shrank away, crawling back into the dark corners of the attic.

‘It won’t be done. You won’t be done. All of this work, all this time I spent, and I still... God damn it, you’re not done!’

He stepped closer, and I began to feel fear.

His hands reached out for me.

A sound from downstairs. An opening door.

Dad looked just as terrified as I felt. Quickly he let go, wiping bits of me off on his jeans. He stole one last look at me before hobbling back to the stairs, trusting I knew what to do by now.

Stay exactly where I am. Don’t make a sound. Don’t move a muscle. Don’t blink or breathe. Easy, since both of those are pretty hard for me.

I’m actually pretty good at this one. If this was my entire job, I wouldn’t have any problems. It’s just the moving I have trouble with.

His voice drifted up through the floorboards, even after he shut the door and left me again in pitch black.

‘Hello! Yes, hello, sorry I couldn’t, eh... Be there at the door. I was just, er... Just looking for something of mine upstairs. No, no, don’t. Too much stuff up there, I don’t want you to... Don’t want you to get hurt. How was school, kiddo?’

That too faded as they both went downstairs.

Alone in the dark, my mind drifted back again to the ever elusive Kiddo. In my 3/4ths of a year I’ve been alive, I have never once actually seen his face. Forced to guess, I’ve come up with some unlikely hypotheses.
He must look like me, right? But then again, I’ve only seen one human in my life. One of a theoretically infinite number of possibilities. What could other humans look like? What colours could they be, how many arms could they have? With nothing but imagination to stave off the boredom, I started creating mental Kiddos to toy with, getting more creative each time.

This one I stretch out, letting his limbs dangle on the floor and flop about like tentacles. This one I remove all the facial features from, and distribute them randomly across his body. An eye here, a nose here, a mouth here. This one I invert, until all his skin is inside and all his everything else is outside.

The day I will finally see Kiddo is fast approaching, which excites me. I don’t like to think about it too much. It doesn’t make dad happy. Every time he comes to that realisation again, he gets angry again.

I’m not supposed to make him angry. I don’t want to make him angry, but I seem to be rather good at it.

An idea comes to mind, a way I can make him less angry. He wants me to be more like him. He wants me to practice. He also wants me to never be seen or heard until the day I’m ready to emerge. But surely, I can be careful. If I only move when everyone else is sleeping, when all noise downstairs ceases, I can practise more. I can do better.

Then he’ll be happy. Happy enough to forgive me for disobeying.

I don’t know how much time passed, from when dad went downstairs to when it became quiet enough I felt comfortable moving, but it’s enough to convince me.

Moving an inch a minute, terrified of dad barging in, I crawled into position. I lifted my hands and held my pretend newspaper.

When I got to the speaking part, my voice was a low, hoarse whisper.

‘... Kiddo!’
 


The next day was a weekend. Dad and Kiddo were out, so I had the house to myself. As soon as I heard the door shut, I got to work.

I ran the routine until it was clockwork. I ran the routine until each run was exactly the same length. I mastered my smile, my tone, and even shortened the lengths between words by taking faster, shallower breaths.

When I was confident I had that, I tried something unique. I stood at the other side of the room and did it as Kiddo.

A strange thrill came about me as I did, of doing something I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t know how Kiddo would respond, so I had to improvise. I didn’t know what problems he had in his life, so I had to make one up. I barely understood what ‘school’ was. But I knew everything his dad would say to him, and exactly how long each sentence would be. I experimented.

It took me a few runs to realise I was enjoying myself, and that was when the most taboo idea of all came to me.

The attic was never locked. Dad trusted me not to wander out, and for most of my life I hadn’t been able to, anyway. Today, my legs felt strong. I didn’t know what the rest of the house looked like. If I wanted to truly perfect my act, I would need to see the stage.

But that would be my most disobedient act yet. Dad would know. He would find out, somehow. I would muck something up, not do it properly. Something would go wrong.

So I ignored that urge. No matter how the trapdoor called to me, I remained in the dark, practicing alone.
For three more runs.
 


Light was a beautiful thing.

It was all so strange, so alien to me. Shapes I knew in formations I didn’t, the still living versions of items I knew only the corpses of from the attic. Every colour was more vibrant, so vibrant it hurt my eyes and I had to pull my eyelids shut for a moment. Only for a moment, though; Once I got over the initial shock, I realised I needed to keep moving. It was as if I could feel dad’s hand on my shoulder every second I spent outside the attic. He could come in any second.

This was the time I first laid eyes upon a newspaper, a real one. It took some effort to recognise, but what few letters I knew were enough to make out the word NEWS on the front page, and I was delighted to realise I knew exactly how to hold it. I could even make the motions of reading it, although I didn’t actually know what it said. It all made my character feel more real, and my rehearsal came as natural as if I truly had done it every day of my life.

I learned about cars, too; I learned that the sound of one arriving outside heralded the coming of dad and Kiddo, which meant it was time for me to scramble back up to whence I had come. So accustomed was I to the stance I always waited in, I was able to make it seem as if I hadn’t moved a muscle since dad had left me. He came in that night to check on me, and when he ran the rehearsals, I found his criticisms to be mild and scattered.

I felt, that night, prouder than I had ever felt in my life.

So I did it again the next day. While my family was out I began making up new roles, new situations, taking guesses at what the objects about the house did and what they would be used for on an ordinary day. I stopped making up problems and began making up experiences, things that a father and son might do any lazy day inside. I acted out pushing the vacuum cleaner with my son, sticking forks into my arm with my son, gnawing on the sink with my son (Delicately, so as not to leave bite marks—I felt very clever for having that realisation).

When the car pulled in, I knew what to do. As I retreated back up to the dark of the attic, I felt tingles of eagerness all over, already excited to do the same thing next weekend. Finally, I felt, I was taking the initiative. I was becoming more human by the minute. Any day now, I’ll be ready, and I’ll be sent out in the field.

And I’ll get to see what a Kiddo looks like.
 


The reward, I later decided, was not sufficient to make up for the pain.

I felt there had been something decidedly dour about dad’s posture from the moment he came up the stairs, stepping slowly, head tilted down, but I was so caught up in pride at my own cleverness I didn’t think anything of it at first.

Quickly he dissipated that pride, not with words, but with the mere motion of lifting his hand and rubbing his fingers together.

His fingers were bright red, shiny with still wet fluid. Blood. Not human blood. My blood.

Blood which dripped out of my arms and hands at the most inopportune of times.

I may never know what could have possessed me to be so stupid as to forget about that.

Before I could do anything in response, the hand came at me in an arc, open palm smacking me across the cheek hard enough to dislodge a few of my growing teeth. It came back the other way, and before I knew what was happening, he was beating me into the ground. It wasn’t strong, nor effective, nor was it very long before he started up his routine coughing from overexertion, but I was weak and held together with scraps. I could do nothing but gasp, flail, and search my vocabulary for something to tell him to stop.

‘Kiddo’ was the first word I tried and earned a kick to my ribs for the trouble.

‘School’ was the second, and by this point my lungs felt like they were collapsing in on themselves.

‘Dad’ was the third.

Only when I croaked that word out did he stop. I lay on the ground in tatters, bleeding and bent at odd angles.

‘What did you call me?’

Heaving, but with nothing to throw up, I repeated the word.

Pain exploded again, so harsh and sharp I couldn’t identify the source, or the instrument he had used to deliver it.

‘Don’t you ever call me that,’ he told me. ‘You’re not my son. You will never be my son. And you’re not his father either.’

He coughed again, falling back on the mirror for support. This time I didn’t look at myself.

‘I’m his father. I’m his only father. He’s my only son.’

He kept repeating that, voice growing wearier and wearier, until it was just the two of us breathing in the darkness.

 

He seemed to know, somewhere within him, which day would be his last.

That day, he waved me off when I started my routine. He hobbled over to sit by the mirror, slouched against the ground, drawing in ragged breaths every few seconds. At a loss for what to do, I copied his posture, and only then did he start speaking.

‘No. Straight up. Close your mouth. Smile.’

I did so, looking closer to how he had looked a month ago. Two old men, identical in every way, except that one was human.

By now, my skin had filled in entirely. My organs had settled into place, and nearly all of my muscles were fully developed. My blood was secure within me where it was supposed to be. I even had a full head of hair. Only some of my wrinkles he had stopped from forming, using a finger to smooth out my skin back when it still had the consistency of clay.

‘Don’t do it all at once. Stretch it out over a few weeks, like I’m slowly recovering. Just—Just act like nothing’s wrong.’

I nodded mutely.

Scrunching his eyes shut, he gritted his teeth in frustration.

‘He needs his father. He needs me. Don’t break character. Ever. You don’t, you don’t...’

When he stopped coughing again, he started a new sentence.

‘I’ve left you some tapes, on the kitchen table. Family videos. Just... Watch them, if you want to know how I would act. If you don’t know. If you—God damn it, not now...’

He spent the next few minutes just trying to breathe. I reached out a tentative hand to touch him, only for him to wave me off.

‘Stop. Just... Just be there for him. Whatever he does, whoever he becomes. You need to just... Be there. Okay?’

He was fading fast, I could tell. I wondered what Kiddo had thought that morning, before the two parted ways. Not knowing it would be the last time he ever saw his real father.

Looking at him, the knowledge that I was seeing him in his last minutes finally sank in. I realised then I may never get a chance to say something to him again.

As he took his last gasps, I opened my mouth, mimicking some of the first words he had taught me.

‘I love you.’

He turned to me, ever so slightly, eyes widening in surprise.

Then he died, releasing his last exhale right then and there.

I was left alone in the attic with his corpse.

It occurred to me I didn’t know what to do with his body. I just stared at him, as if waiting for him to spring up again. Taking everything in. I finally let myself touch him, taking his hand like he had taught me and squeezing. Our fingers interlocked perfectly.

I tilted his head back a bit, so I could let him rest in a more comfortable position. I found a rolled up tarp and set it over his body.

I turned around and went down the ladder, shutting my dad’s body up in the darkness of the attic.

Deathly still. Not moving a muscle.

 

When Kiddo came in that night, he found me alone on the couch, watching old home movies.

Such a lively man, our dad had been back then.

Without saying a word, Kiddo came and sat down next to me.

I turned to him and smiled, wrinkling my cheeks and lifting my shoulders.

‘I’m proud of you.’