The Mindful Migraine

Today is Halloween… and I would love to have a real-life Halloween horror story to tell you… but I don’t.

In Australia Halloween is not a big thing… (although it is growing)… only once as a kid do I remember dressing up to go trick-or-treating. I vaguely remember I was a “bad nurse,” while one sister was a “wooly monster” covered in carpet offcuts, and the other sister was a “Mummy” wrapped in rags. But here’s a picture of me channeling my inner-Wednesday Adams when I was 11 years old…

Anyway – my aim for this blog, has always been to validate what people with chronic pain go through; I see you and understand. But, it has also aimed at helping those who DON’T have migraines and other chronic pain conditions “get it”. On Instagram I post AI images to try to get the point across, and it recently occurred to me I might also be able to do it with short stories.

After my last little narrative experiment on my blog post labelled “A Gothic Migraine” I went away and spent the next month writing a handful of short stories that gave migraines a ‘modern horror’ twist… I’ll post a few, one a week, over the next few weeks, as a break from “regular broadcasting”.

And if you feel confused about what’s happening in the stories (as they arrive under the “MigraineGothic” tag) – think migraine: triggers, symptoms, treatment, stigma, cures, curses… OR… go to the new GOTHIC page of this blog, and download the ebook of all 13 stories “A Gothic Migraine” – the last story explains everything… and as a bonus, there’s a photo of me as a Goth!

But for today, here’s a short story that’s just a little bit tense…

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UNHOMED (a short story)

The newlyweds stood on the street, staring at the house that was for sale.  It had only gone on the market this morning, and there was no sign up yet to notify the public.  The real estate agent was the friend of a friend, and this would be his first look at the property too.

“It’s perfect,” the husband said to his bride, “just like every other house in the street… only cheaper.”

“I dunno,” the wife said, “I think it looks a little more… run down than the rest.”

“Nothing paint won’t fix.”

“No… it’s more than that… it’s as if she’s tired in her bricks and bones… world weary.”

“Nonsense,” said the husband as he turned to wave to the agent who was pulling up to the curb, and then more quietly; “it’s all we can afford.”

The agent sauntered towards them and the wife thought she saw him wince when he glanced towards the house, even as his mouth cheerily said; “isn’t she a beauty?”

“You bet,” the husband said, “we’ll take her!”

The agent laughed and started ushering them towards the front door, “might as well take a look while we’re here.”  He unlocked the door and shepherded them inside.  He hated the house.  The owner had been an old lady shipped off to a nursing home.  The children wanted the house sold as quickly as possible to raise money to pay for her new accommodation.  They set the price so low that a sale would be finalized fast, but the problem was, a low price meant a low commission, and the agent was resentful, even though he had been reminded it was easy money, earnt in a day.

After the newlyweds had walked into the living room, the husband laughed and called out to space, “hi honey I’m ho-ome!”

The agent leaned over to pull the door shut and yelped as the door slammed shut on his foot.  The newlyweds turned to see if he was ok, and the agent mumbled he was fine, but swore at the house under his breath.  Then he walked into the living space and threw his arms out wide; “spacious!”

“Sold!” laughed the husband.

“Hold your horses babe,” the wife sighed, “I need to imagine our furniture in here… and our future kids.”

She moved off and began to open and close kitchen cupboards, inspect whether the toilet flushed, and the wash-tap worked, flicked some lights on and off.  Her husband followed her impatiently from room to room, annoyed that the carpet wasn’t as fresh as he’d hoped.  He started tallying up what it might cost to replace it and remove the yellow wallpaper that filled the rooms.   

“Do you know,” the husband asked the agent, “if you can paint over wallpaper, or do you have to pull it off first?”

“No idea,” the agent replied, “I think you’re meant to peel it off… flay it, I think was the old medieval term… skin it like a cat…”

The wife stuck her head around the corner and yelled back at the two men, “don’t be gross… I’m going upstairs.”

They followed her upstairs to the bedroom level and let her float from room to room, watching listlessly as she stepped out spaces, counting aloud, opened and shut the doors to built-in-wardrobes, and peeked from behind curtains, imagining which rooms would get the morning sun. 

After she had toured the whole level, they came to a rest in the main bedroom at the front of the house.  The husband opened his mouth to make an offer, but his wife held up her hand; “I want to see the attic level first.”

“Attic?” both men asked.

“I saw the window on the front of the building,” she answered, “there’s no stairs, so there must be one of those pull-down ladders.”

All three of them wandered into the hallway, and there it was, at the top of the stairs, a ceiling hatch.  As the men pondered how to open it, the wife returned to the main bedroom and came back with a long stick that she’d seen in the wardrobe.  On one end was a metal hook.

“I better do it,” the agent said, “lord knows what might be up there.”

He took the hooked stick from the wife, snagged a small cleat on the hatch and pulled the door down.  Then he linked the hook through a metal loop on what appeared to be a concertina ladder and tugged.  It refused to move.  He tugged harder, and this time, the ladder rushed at his head, narrowly missing him as he leapt to one side.

Both men laughed nervously.  Now that the ladder was down, no one seemed in a hurry to go up.  They all looked up into the cavity and all three of them frowned at the strange shimmering lights that were shining through the opening.  The wife squinted at the painful brightness, while the husband tried to blink away a black spot that was forming in the middle of his vision.  The agent, meanwhile, was staring in wonder at how the attic space seemed to be pulsating with colored zig-zags.

A moment later the lightshow was over, and only the dark space beyond the opening remained.  It had been so strange, and over so soon, that none of them was tempted to mention it to the others.  Instead, both men took a step backwards, away from the hatch and the ladder.

“I’ll go,” the wife said, laughing quietly, “it’s just an attic.”

The agent swore quietly under his breathe then sighed, “I’ll go.”

Reluctantly, he climbed the ladder and paused when he was just past halfway up.  His head and torso were now inside the attic, but his legs were still on the ladder.  He made a strange whelping sound, then scurried back down, moving so quickly his feet didn’t catch the last ladder rungs properly, and he hit the ground hard, twisting his ankle.  He hobbled, lopsided but fast, to the corner of the landing and threw up all over the floor.  Placing one hand on the wall for support, he leaned over and threw up again, then slid slowly to the floor as his knees seemed to buckle under his weight.  The husband and wife moved towards him, then stopped when they realized he was crying.

The wife raised her eyebrows at her husband and tipped his head towards the ladder.  “No way,” he mouthed, but when she shrugged and started to move towards the ladder, his shoulders slumped, and he moved to cut her off.  He had no interest in whatever putrid possum was dead and decaying in the attic, but he also knew that if it was bad, it might spook his wife off buying the house, and they really needed this house.  It was his only way of avoiding a conversation about why their deposit fund was suddenly so lean.

He took a couple of steps up the ladder.  He sniffed the air.  Nothing.  He climbed up another two steps.  Now his head was in the attic space.  He sniffed again.  Still nothing.  He tried to look around to see if anything upsetting was visible, but there was nothing.  He climbed two more steps up the ladder.  His head and torso were now located in the attic, his legs on the ladder, just as the real estate agent had been.  He stopped.

The wife waited a few seconds, and when she realized he wasn’t going anywhere, she moved to the bottom of the ladder; “what?  You ok?  Can you see anything?  Maybe come back down love… you’re scaring me…”

Her husband spoke down to her, a gibberish sentence that seemed to end with something like, “ckwant mwooove…”

The wife glanced at the agent, but he was still sobbing and dry retching in his corner.  She started to climb the ladder, but it was very narrow.  She tried to tug her husband’s hand, but it was if he was frozen solid.  She tried again to squeeze up beside him, getting herself almost up as high as he was on the ladder when a wave of dizziness swept over her.  Everything around her was spinning giddily… she grabbed hold of her husband’s stiff leg and used it like a pole to lower herself down the ladder and onto the floor.

Another wave of dizziness overcame her, and she swooned towards the main stairwell.  Before she could sit down, another wave hit her and she tipped over the top stair, her mind screaming at her to stop the tumble, her body unable to.  At the last second, she felt herself pulled back.  The real estate agent yanked her with such force that she heard her clothes rip.  She sighed heavily and landed with a thump on the floor at the top of the stairs.  And still the room around her was spinning… spinning… spinning in circles as if she were on a broken circus ride.

The wife screwed her eyes shut and lay down.  She pushed her face against the timber floor and felt the coolness seep into her cheekbones.  She took several deep breaths and began to push her fingernails into her flesh; the small crescent moons reminding her of the here and now.

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Perhaps a minute or an hour later, the three of them found themselves standing on the street.  They were looking at the house that was like all the others on the street.  As they turned to go, the sun slipped behind a cloud and threw a shadow across the glass of the attic window.  The husband recognized the sudden darkness as a gesture mocking his defeat.  The agent, favoring his right foot, would later swear the house gave him a sassy wink as he decided he wouldn’t take the contract.  The wife, meanwhile, saw a hooded-eye, confirmation that this was a world-weary house, filled with pain and regret, eager to rest.       

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[Take care taking care, and Happy Halloween if it’s your thing, love Linda xx]