The Vent

The giggle arrived from the vent around 3:15 in the afternoon. Not a peculiar time by any means. But this is the time the clock stated as I walked across the graying carpet into the bathroom, and present above me in some abstract gravity I could see the tiny pestles of two eyes staring. To say that he was smiling would be an obstruction of truth, but the skins on the sides of his eyes (the outer sides, that is, closer to the ears) were crinkled, with age but obviously not with age, a youthful unsmile. Crinkled as if to say I have only ever bathed in butter and the sound a fly makes when caught between a window and a screen. This happens a lot in my household. It is not uncommon.

After managing to find the correct type of screwdriver (in this case, a pair of scissors) I went to work attempting to divide the cheap browned plastic of the bathroom vent from the cheap browned wall paper, though being affixed to the ceiling one might call it paper here, in reverse. In any case, I found the scissors next to the bleach. The bleach itself was on the shelf called Roger, which in itself is a shelf designed for this sort of thing. Utility.

Perched on at least two chairs working there I began to hear a hiss. Not the sort of hiss that arises with an oven dominating its own internal, but the snake caught between the boot of a traveler and the ground of its home. Is the traveler a threat, or is it merely attempting to comfort the demon? Sources appear with differing opinions, and I am not one to complicate matters. (citation needed).

Once I managed to unearth the space between the vent and the ceiling, although in many ways I had only worked to earth it, unsky it, I was surprised to view so clearly that this thing, he, had not two eyes but perhaps more, directly next to his original pair of eyes (although I reckon now that these two eyes might have been there first). In any case, these eyes were directly about and between the ears and the buttered skin, and when they looked between the sink and the general area of my torso there was a great clacking, as if somebody was dropping marbles on a wood floor, or showing the quite unbreakable nature of unbreakable glass. The noise was loud, but manageable.

Odd it might seem, as the creature reach towards my face it was only the revelation of space that crossed my mind. The space of the vent, which reached in two directions: the bathroom and the not bathroom. Unable to make no assumption on the discretion of the creature to relate to the not bathroom, it then became present to assume that, had the creature been living here, it would have been privy to those moments called private, for when I am in the shower, I sing. Mostly I sing Every Little Star by Linda Scott. People comment on my voice, and I wear these things like a sash won at a local super market for being the one-millionth customer. It allows me to exit stores with something that is rare in this day and age: a feeling of success.

The clacking and grabbing was reminiscent of a larger iceberg, and this made me thirsty. The thirst that accompanies one who cannot drink, for I could not drink, but was playing host to this upward oddity. Certainly it had pressed my face with a modicum of grace, though the grace was violent. But in the mirror opposite of my cheek the drip of blood, descending rapidly, was a letter of not indignant presence, but instead a sort of autograph, and with a great rustle he was gone.