The Slender Help

“Come out,” she said, “Come on out, now. No-one’s going to hurt you.”

*

+++Drag your little finger through a butter block and make a curving trench of shining saffron oil— then jab your thumb, once, twice, above that arc in butter slime—

+++You have made the face of the Slender Help.

+++And now you’ve called them…

*

+++“Come out,” she said. “There’s work to be done. There’s things I need you to do for me.”

+++She held her shaking hands to the gaps in the walls, turned them; showed the dry and wrinkled flesh. “My fingers won’t straighten. I’ve grown old. I need help.”

+++And in brittleness stooped she stands in the hall, with the half moon dull in navy shallows of night and soft something moves— in the crack— in the wall.

+++“Butter, for you,” she whispers, pointing at the melting pap on a dish. “And more where that came from, I promise.”

+++And she stares at the seam where wood and stone now lean away from each other— Slowly, limb by spidery limb, it pours itself from that gap, both eyes and smile are plunge-marks scratched into the velvet red of chest and long hands crack in lengthening as they wave towards the butterplate, grinning face reaching for that oily smirk fingered blunt in yellow stuff.

+++“Ah, ah,” she says, pushing the reaching hands away. “Washing up first.” She points into the kitchen, at the mound of dishes, two weeks’ worth, bulking the sink with crockery shards. “If you would be so kind.”

+++And the Slender Help looks up at her with the holes of its eyes and she smiles at it smiling with gums, with its gap.

+++“And when you have them done,” she says, “there’s hoovering to be done upstairs.”

+++By the hand she takes it into the kitchen—the warm felt of its palm is a nuzzling, loving touch—and the Slender Help has to grow a bit before it can reach the sink. Stretching like plants reaching up to the sun, she hears the watery snapping of its long and liquid bones.

+++Then, cooing softly to itself, it sets to work.

+++Slowly straightening, she stands in the doorway, and the years now seem to be melting things, falling away from her.

+++“You can lick the plates,” she says, and her laugh is unburdening of age and care. “I don’t mind.”

+++The tongue comes out, and roughly licks along a rim and plate by plate all things are cleaned.

*

This is the Slender Help:

+++Take two lengths of rubber red and cross them, their centres tied in the blackest knot to leave yourself four lengths to droop; these are the limbs of the Slender Help—all a writhing rubber joint that stretches and compresses and splits into a branch of rubber fingers—and at their centre, the knot is the body of the thing, round and headless, mouth and eyes carved into that blood red felt.

+++Or take a fly and snap away its legs and wings and leave the thing with limbs enough to wander on the tabletop until it dies.

+++Such is the Slender Help, and for a pat of butter warm they’ll do a night of chores for you.

*

+++And after the washing-up there is the hoovering, and then the windows to be washed and the beds to be stripped and changed and the Slender Help goes about its business in happy smiling silence, a bubble of red flesh held on rippling plastic limbs.

+++“Would you like your butter now?” she says, wiping the plaster off her hands.

+++It coos.

+++With dawn a weak of green between the trees, it straddles the tepid wax of butter like a crane fly, dragging a long hand slow across the lump then lifting the limb to slide along the lipless pucker of its mouth. And there is the lapping suck as the butter is tongued away.

+++Again and again it slathers its limbs from elbow to wrist and sucks them clean until there is no butter left.

+++And with all jobs done, and the butter gone, the Slender Help turns to her and in silence it waves its long fingers and licked hands in slow farewell.

+++She laughs, and waves her hands in reply.

+++It drifts and wobbles back into the hallway and there, drags blunt fingers over the fresh plaster now blocking the space between wood and stone. The creature makes a noise, something between a sigh and gargle and searches for the crack that brought it here.

+++Thumb-hole eyes wobble in flesh.

+++Mouth hangs opens, crying: “Oa. Oa. Oa…”

+++And she says “There’s one thing I still need. I still need your help.”

+++Thumbs work vainly on the smoothness of the new white stuff.

+++Her voice is low. “I’ll bring you butter.”

+++She reaches out a hand and holds the bluntness of the Slender Help.

+++“And in time, I’ll open it again.”

+++She leads it away—

+++Fingers stretch to linger on plaster cold.

*

+++Kneeless limbs softly bend like melted wax. The creature runs a hand over the sheets and bubbles something in its mouth.

+++She he washed the grey from her hair, has dabbed the lines of black from the creases of her face. “I’ve left your room the way it was. When you… when it… You can stay here.”

+++By the arm from crimson fingers a stuffed bear from the pillow hangs.

+++“What do you say?”

+++It lets the teddy drop.

+++Mouth opens soundlessly, like a blister popping.

+++“You say thanks. Thanks.”

+++She nods, she smiles—encouraging.

+++Mouth opens— “Taaaaa…unks…”

+++“No—say thanks Mammy. Say: ‘Thank you, Mammy’.”

+++She waits.

+++“Taaaaa…unks. Maaaa…”

+++“Yes?”

+++“Maaa…mmy.”

+++It blinks expressionless eyes at her.

+++She closes the door and leaves the Slender Help sitting in the dark.

*

+++Standing over it she dresses the thing in navy jacket and cream trousers, both musty with the wardrobe smell; the confirmation roseate a faded pink now crackling with age.

+++Fussily plucking the shoulder fabric, she fixes the jacket upon it, closing it up the paw-marks of mouth and eyes etched deep into its chest. She turns it to face the mirror on the dresser—places her chin upon its shoulder.

+++She frowns.

+++“No,” she says, “You’re smaller. You haven’t grown this tall yet.”

+++With a soft, wet crunching of bone, the Slender Help shrinks. Thin wrists and ankles disappear up into cloth tubes.

+++“Much better,” she says. “You’re almost yourself again.”

+++In the glass she watches herself stroke the navy.

+++“Can you… grow hair? Will you grow your hair back?”

+++“Oa. Oa…” it says, struggling against her grip.

+++“You can be blonde for me, can’t you?”

+++“Oa...”

+++“Curls… for me.”

+++She kisses the warmth of headless shoulders.

*

+++She’d left the doors unlocked and once the Slender Help had pulled itself from the clothes it picks its way along the corridor, its long legs moving stickily, slipping themselves into place, its fingers trailing the dado rail.

+++Still the crack in the wall is closed, and the clot of plaster has taken the colour of palest skin.

+++And the Slender Help curls its long legs underneath and sits, rocking back and forth, the felt of its pucker-pocket mouth unpursing in gentle lament, and it waits in the dark for the crack to open, for its sisters to come and find it.

+++“Oaaa...” it moans.

+++Take it home…

+++Take it home…

*

+++Come morning and she finds the Slender Help, limbs asplayed , a dying-spider knotted thing,  slumped and mouthing on the rug.

+++Again.

+++Doing this again.

+++She kneels— “Silly thing,” she says, softly pulling its hands from its face. “What are you doing out here? And what have you done with your clothes? You’ll catch your death.”

+++The Slender Help mumbles something—turning, it reaches out to her.

+++“Now, now—” she says, pushing the long fingers away.

+++They get in her hair— entwining things—

+++“Stop—” she says, grimacing, her neck forced to bend, “Stop—you’re being bold—”

+++The mouth clacks open greasy, rising it grips her hair, reaching, it grips her neck—

+++“No!” she shouts, furiously yanking her hair out—out— of its clenching hands, “David! David—no!”

+++And hissing, her hand is folded to a fist and down it comes on the cheek of the thing.

+++Sound the clap of knuckles on meat— With a bubbling shriek it lets go of her, rolls away upon its side, rolls and cries and holds the hair pulled from her head against its eyes

+++“Shhh,” she says, her fingers working ravaged roots, searching for blood or anything torn.

+++“Mammy’s sorry.”

+++Its crying is low and soft—beads of butter in the dimples of its eyes.

+++“Ah shush now. Ah shush now…”

*

+++Half the moon is hidden and it takes it from its hiding place: a thin slab of butter on a plate.

+++Kneeling before the plastered crack it drags a thumb and makes the face of the Slender Help

+++And calls to them: “Oa… Oa… Oa…”

+++It doesn’t see or hear her—she kicks the plate across the floor, splashing butter on the tiles—

+++But there is scrabbling—scrabbling on the other side of the wall—

+++“Oa!” it cries, “Oa!”

*

+++In the kitchen, at the table, and she is ladelling warmed butter onto a plate. The yellow lies there. A bile; or some such other intimate seep.

+++“Eat up. Eat up, love.”

+++And the Slender Help sits, a dangling bulb of cherry in the chair, the pupil-less holes of its eyes sinking and rising in flesh. Again and again it gazes into the hallway, to the fresh plaster on the wall; dull now— the colour of sandstone, of oak.

+++The clothes it wears are crisp and spotless— it has made itself fit them painlessly.

+++Leaning towards it, she bumps a spoon against the lipless, toothless cloth of its mouth— “Ah ah. Come now. Eat up. Lovely. Lovely.”

+++But it will not eat.

+++She greases her lips— “See? Mammy loves it. See? Mammy’s eating. Mammy loves it.”

+++It looks at her— blows a bubble of something— and in that gap she slips the butter plap. Lazily its lips work, smacking the stuff into strings before swallowing.

+++“Good boy. Good boy. Eat up, David. We’ll make you strong. We’ll make you well again.”

+++A burble of butter slips clagging down the front of the Slender Help.

*

+++She screams and dishes shatter on tiles—

+++“No—the fire—don’t go near the fire—

+++She pulls it to the ground, and kneels there, hugging it—crushing its softness against her hard—

+++Whispering: “ Never, never go near the fire.”

+++“His face.”

+++“The right half of your face.”

+++“Melted…”

+++“Red…”

*

+++The Slender Help walks back and forth across the room.

+++Back and forth, back and forth.

+++The windows are nailed.

+++The doors are locked.

+++Plaster is the colour of bones.

+++Back and forth.

+++Back and forth.

*

+++It finds her kneeling in the corner of the hall, new plaster wet, slathered in paste on the carpet.

+++And there is an arm on the ground—a blood red, plastic-jointed thing—

+++Fingers working, it flops towards the Slender Help and the Slender Help moves towards it, mouth opened, keening, and the limbs of the Slender Help crack in growing—

+++And turning, mouth a gap into redness, throstling flesh in scream, she throws the slop-caked trowel at it—dully it bounces off its chest, and kneeling heavily on the moving limb she growls:

+++“Get to your room! Get to your room David!”

+++Lurching, the arm bursts under her knee—sprays in spasms buttery blood.

*

+++“Oa...” it calls at night. “Oa…”

+++But they cannot hear it.

+++“Oa…”

+++“Oa…”

*

+++And they are on the bed together.

+++Facing each other.

+++Her fingers entwine with its—

+++With his fingers.

+++She looks at the single slender curl of gold upon his head.

+++“Will you leave me, David?”

+++“Noa.”

+++“Will you leave me?”

+++“Noa Maaaammy.”

+++She kisses his tears.

+++She kisses the tears of the Slender Help.

+++Her mouth …

+++Such a rough thing…

*

+++“Oa.”

+++“Oa.”

 
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Graham Tugwell is a PhD student with the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches Popular and Modernist Fiction. The recipient of the College Green Literary Prize 2010, he has been published by Write From Wrong, Jersey Devil Press, Red Ochre Lit, The Quotable, Sein und Werden, Thoughtsmith, THIS Literary Magazine and L’Allure Des Mots. He has work forthcoming in Kerouac’s Dog Magazine, Anemone Sidecar, Plain Spoke, Pyrta, Battered Suitcase, Anobium, Lost Souls, Rotten Leaves, Red Lightbulbs, Anomalous Press and FuseLit, among others. His website is grahamtugwell.com.