Teeth on the Wallpaper

The ceiling was chewing.

Nathan sat slumped in a velvet chair that didn’t want him there—its arms too narrow, its back leaning subtly away from his spine like a dog recoiling from its owner after a long absence. His knuckles were red, not from blood, but from the memory of blood. They throbbed with the distant knowledge of violence, like a photograph of a scream.

Across from him stood two detectives who may or may not have been real. They had names, presumably—badges too—but their faces were off. Slightly. Like masks made by someone who had never seen a human head before and was improvising with mashed potatoes and old VHS covers. Their suits were damp with something viscous, and their notepads pulsed in time with the sound coming from the walls.

Detective Halstrom bent down, close enough for Nathan to smell the rot behind his molars. “Tell me about the jam,” he said.

Nathan blinked. “I—what?”

“The jam. On your hands.”

“That’s blood,” Nathan whispered.

“Tomato,” Velez corrected, licking the tip of her pen. “Or raspberry. We’ll know when the lab stops shrieking.”

A wind blew through the house despite all the windows being nailed shut. It smelled like hot pennies and old teeth. Nathan looked around and suddenly realized the wallpaper had mouths—hundreds of them—chewing softly, mouthing silent prayers or curses or recipes for meatloaf. He couldn’t tell. One of them coughed.

“I woke up on the floor,” he said. “In the kitchen. Next to the fridge. It was humming in E minor.”

Velez nodded slowly, her neck rotating further than any human neck ought to. “And your wife?”

Nathan tried to speak, but a cough clawed its way up his throat like a small, furious animal. “She was upstairs,” he finally managed. “I didn’t go up. I… couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Halstrom asked, now upside down and scribbling on the ceiling.

“Because the stairs were whispering her name.”

Outside, it was raining frogs. No one mentioned it. The windows wept silently.

Nathan clutched his skull as if afraid it might unscrew and float off. “She said someone was watching. Said they were in the walls. I laughed. I always laughed. She told me the drain in the shower blinked once.”

“And did it?” Velez asked, one eye melting slowly down her cheek like an egg yolk.

“Yes,” he whispered. “It did.”

The room pulsed.

Halstrom produced a photograph from his jacket. It showed nothing. Literally—pure black, like a still from the void. He held it up solemnly. “This is you. Standing over her. Smiling.”

Nathan shook his head. “No. That’s not me. That’s the dream of me. That’s the version I left behind in the mirror when I stopped looking.”

“The neighbors heard a scream,” Velez said flatly. “Or maybe a violin. The distinction is academic.”

“Clocks don't lie,” Halstrom muttered, tapping his temple. “But they do exaggerate.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Nathan said, rising to his feet though the floor tried to swallow his boots. “There was someone else. I saw him. No face. No eyes. Just… humming. He opened the bedroom door from the inside.”

“We found no one else,” said Velez.

“You weren't looking,” Nathan snarled. “You asked the house, but not the attic.”

Halstrom’s eyebrows grew three inches longer. “Attics lie.”

Velez turned toward the staircase. “Let’s go ask it anyway.”

Nathan followed them, one foot after the other, the banister gently weeping in his palm. As they climbed, the wallpaper mouths grew louder—chanting, laughing, spitting teeth like popcorn kernels.

Somewhere above, the door to the master bedroom creaked open with a sound like a dying violin.

No one was there.

And all at once, Nathan remembered something.

He remembered laughing.

He remembered the humming.

He remembered the knife.

But when he reached for the memory, it pulled its hand away.

Behind him, the detectives scribbled faster.

The wallpaper screamed.