The Spot

by Corbett Buchly

“What is that? A water spot?” Kate asked her friend Lola. Lola was curled up on Kate’s couch, her feet tucked under an over-sized cream sweater, and sipping on the port wine the two had been sharing.

“I don’t see anything,” Lola replied. “Come back to the couch and tell me about the run-in you had with John.

John was Kate’s boss at the print shop where she worked. But she had forgotten about John with the first sip of wine. She ran her hand over the cool, pale blue wall of her apartment, but felt nothing other than the subtle bumps of the paint texture. “There’s something,” she said, her voice trailing off.

Lola squinted at the wall from the couch. “No, your eyes are playing tricks on you. There’s nothing. Come back.”

Kate turned around, faced her friend. She gave her a small smile then stared at the front door. She felt distracted. Was there something she was forgetting? After a few seconds, she realized that she had been listening, listening for a sound that would never come. The sound of her father jiggling the handle, then knocking. Always in that order. As if he had been testing her. Was she safe enough? Living alone? Lock the doors. Never get home later than 11 p.m. Carry her mace in her hand. Ready. Primed.

She eased herself onto the couch, perched on its edge and picked up her wine. “John is a jerk,” she said at last. “Same old story.”

Kate’s cat leapt onto the back of the couch. Languidly, she arched her black- and gray-striped back then stared at Lola with unblinking eyes.

“Hey, Deckard,” Lola said to the cat. “Seen any good movies, lately?” And she booped him on the nose.

In the evening of the next day, Kate entered her apartment and slumped down on the couch. Deckard leapt onto her legs and promptly bedded down, growing quite still.

Kate stroked his back and stared ahead blankly. She’d worked up her anger that morning on the way to work, and before she knew she was doing it, she had hip checked her boss John hard into the plant stand. He tumbled into the philodendron, clutching at branches before he spilled onto the floor. She’d apologized immediately, pretending it was pure accident. But John had stayed away from her for the rest of the day.

As she reviewed the day in her head, she noticed the stain on the wall. The water spot that had been nearly imperceptible before had now grown considerably larger. There was no mistaking it now. She had half of a mind to call Lola over.

Giving Deckard a final scratch behind his ears, she pushed him off her lap onto the sofa. He gave her an angry whine, as she stepped closer to the wall.

As she approached the wall, she could see a strange flickering at the center of the stain. Almost an inch wide, the flickering seemed like a trick of the light or the shimmer of a spinning watch being reflected. She looked around for an obvious source of light or reflection but could not locate one. Colored light fluttered there, almost as if projected from a tiny video projector. But the shapes were vague and indistinct.

“What is going on?” she mused out loud.

Deckard leaned against her leg, looked up at the stain and purred.

I wonder if this something I should get repaired or something, she wondered.

Kate went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Opening the cabinet, she stared at the line of mismatched mugs, mugs she had collected and carefully curated over the years to reflect her personality. There on the left side was the gray Columbia River Gorge mug that her father had brought over and never retrieved. He had drunk his tea from it every time he had visited.

Slowly, as if handling a rare artifact, she extracted the mug and placed it on the counter. She supposed it was a rare artifact. She ran her finger over the handle, one large chip missing. Something cold ran down her spine.

Before she started crying, she turned toward the kettle and began to prepare it.

Later, she fell asleep on the couch, watching an old Katherine Hepburn movie, with Deckard draped over her calf.

In the morning, a beam of morning sun from the transom window warmed Kate’s face. She blinked her eyes open, to face a sudden change in the wall before her. She sprang up from the couch and blinked at the sight before her.

The small spot on the wall had widened during the night to reveal a rough four-foot-by-four-foot … thing. She didn’t know what to call it.

Like the smaller space of flickering light of the previous night, this space revealed a moving scene of the countryside. A small valley covered in wild, yellow-green grass extended downward before her, straddled by two ridges, each dotted with scraggly hickory trees. The leaves had all turned a vibrant gold with the onset of autumn.

The scene was so lifelike, as if the stain on her wall were really a window. But Kate lived near downtown, and there was certainly no countryside on the other side of the wall, in fact, the wall was an internal one. Her bedroom was on the other side. To be sure, she strode to her bedroom wall and peered in. But the wall on that side was normal, no stains, no weird windows. Nothing. Just smooth wall from floor to ceiling.

Kate came back to the living room side and stood before the wall. But the scene had changed. Now she was looking at a low wooden fence. The same kind of weather-beaten hickories spread across the field on either side of the fence.

“I know this place,” she whispered. Her father had taken her and her brother there when she had only been eight or nine. Her brother was a few years older. She had never returned there. She knew the place was vaguely upstate, but she wasn’t sure she could even have found it.

Kate reached out to touch the scene. When her finger neared the wall though, she felt resistance, as if her finger were a magnet being repelled by another magnet of opposite polarity. “What the fuck?” she said. She pushed harder, and the resistance built up against her, her finger grew warm as it wobbled against the pressure. At last, she withdrew her finger when the sensation grew to an uncomfortable heat.

As she stood there, studying the field, she felt connected to the image as if it were a part of her. That’s just dumb, she thought. Somewhere in the distance of the image, a dark shape flitted through the trees.

She turned away and picked up her phone. She found the number for work and called.

“Print Works. How can I serve you?” a man’s voice asked. It was John.

“Hey, John,” she said. She made a coughing sound. “I think I picked up something. I’m going to stay home and take care of myself.”

There was a pause on the line. “We still have that big order from the Community Center,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Kate said. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” he finally said. “Take care of yourself. Get back when you can. I’ll tell Austin.”

She hung up the phone, then immediately called Lola. “Get the hell over here.”

This time, Lola could see everything. “Oh my god!” Lola said. She stepped up close to the wall. “It’s so … it’s so … real.”

The image on the wall had widened again and was almost floor to ceiling. The outdoor scene had changed to that of darkly lit corridors with blue, flickering light, as if every fluorescent bulb was in need of changing. The view moved through the corridor, as if the viewer were walking, searching. Right, left, left, left, right, the view moved. Sometimes at the end of each passage, strange half-human forms shot by, on the edge of sight.

Kate stood behind Lola and gazed. Again, a wave of familiarity swept over her.

“I thought you said it was the countryside though,” Lola said.

“It changed,” Kate said quietly. “I remember this.”

“But this is like a movie. It can’t be real.”

“Well, I remember something like it. In a dream. Right after my father had his first heart attack.”

“What? Really?” Lola turned and grabbed her friend’s shoulder.

Kate nodded, refusing to look away. “I feel sick.”

“Sit down. Sit down,” Lola pushed her back toward the couch.

Reluctantly, Kate took a few steps back. “I still want to watch it.”

Lola paused, studying her friend. “Yeah, me too. This is too good. Here, let’s do this.” She shoved the sideboard that blocked out the bottom quarter of the strange window toward the kitchen. A small, black and brass clock sat there, and she took care not to let it roll off the table. Then she dragged the couch around until it faced the aberration squarely. “There. Sit.”

Kate sat down on the couch and leaned back without taking her eyes away from the scene. Her eyes were damp at the edges.

Lola sat beside her, and soon, Deckard had leapt up between them and curled into a ball of fur.

The scene changed abruptly, and they were staring up into a night sky, only they weren’t looking upward but outward into the wall. Kate felt a momentary tinge of vertigo. The scene felt familiar but that was all. Dark shapes flitted between the stars. The two friends watched quietly.

After a few minutes, the scene changed again, and they were looking down into a section of a college campus. The commons were covered in a blanket of fresh snow. Dozens of foot tracks crossed its smooth surface.

“University,” Lola said.

Kate nodded. “Winter break,” she answered. The winter when her father had come to visit her when she had been sick with the flu and unable to come home.

“It’s incredible. You should charge admission to this,” Lola said.

“No!” Kate reacted instinctively.

“Sorry,” Lola said. “I just thought. Well, it’s a scientific marvel, right? Speaking of university, you need to call in a physicist or something.”

“No,” Kate said again, more quietly. “Not now. Not yet.” Her voice was hoarse.

“Yeah, okay, Kate. It’s your wall.”

After watching the wall for several hours, Lola fell asleep. The aberration on the wall, which had now spread across the entire six-foot-by-seven-foot section, was utterly unpredictable. They had witnessed scenes of Kate’s childhood, video games, unreal pastiches of flashing images and even a one-hour bus ride.

Kate stood and stretched. She decided she would get them both some Thai food from the restaurant on the corner. Quietly, she left her friend dozing on the couch, with Deckard tucked awkwardly under her arm.

As she was standing in line to pay, her phone rang. It was Lola. Kate answered it. “It’s gone,” Lola said. “I woke up, and the wall, the thing on the wall, whatever, it’s gone. It’s just a wall.”

Kate paid quickly and could barely stand the wait for the food before dashing back to her apartment. Before she could even pull out her key, Lola opened the door with a crestfallen face. But Kate, looking past her to the wall, could see the aberration still played its images. This one, this one was of her kitchen. “Lola,” she said.

Kate stepped past her friend and looked toward her kitchen. The scene on the wall and her actual kitchen were almost identical, but not quite. A Tupperware had been left on the counter in the version of her kitchen on the wall. Deckard perched on the countertop, prowling. But in her actual apartment, Deckard watched her from the arm of the couch.

“I don’t understand,” Lola said behind her. “It was gone, I’m telling you. I promise you. It was gone, Kate.”

“Well, it’s here now,” Kate said.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s back, alright. Like you needed a duplicate kitchen. For your takeout.”

Kate laughed at that. And Lola laughed too.

Sometime before dinner, Lola left at last. She had plans with her cousin, visiting from out of town.

Kate paced behind the couch, stretching her legs, glancing back at the wall, waiting for it to change from its street scene. Cars whizzed by in the rain.

Deckard was restless too, and he stood prowling back and forth along the wall, as if hunting. His movements slowed to a crawl. Kate turned to watch him. He was acting so strangely. Which, or course, was typical. Deckard, her unpredictable beast. She forgot the wall for a moment and studied his copper eyes, she saw then a deep luster she’d never noticed before. Deckard paused in his slow prowl, then curled around to pace back along the wall in the other direction.

As he did, something changed in the scene behind him. Kate didn’t look at first, but Deckard did. He froze and craned his neck ever so slowly to peer at the new scene. As he did, he lowered himself into a crouch as if to spring. But where, thought Kate. There was only wall before him.

 At last, she followed his gaze to the scene on the wall. It was her apartment again, this time the living room. In fact, it was a mirror image of the room she stood in, couch turned askew and all. And perched on the couch, as if watching them back, was a mirror copy of Deckard.

And then, like a taut rubber band suddenly released, Deckard launched himself at the image in a blindingly swift pounce.

Instinctively, Kate shouted, “No!” Nothing should have happened, so why would she react in such a way? But something did happen. As Deckard met the wall, his paws seemed to dip into a ripple, as if the wall were made of air with qualities of water. And then his snout and his body, and lastly his tail passed through. The ripples lasted for only a second and then were dissipated. And there was Deckard, in the image, stalking toward the mirror image of himself. But the mirror copy of Deckard was gone. There was only one Deckard, and he was in the wall.

A sharp pain stabbed Kate in the temples, and she knelt down, groaning. The pain subsided and she looked back at the wall. The scene had changed again. The view was as if someone hiked along a frozen lake. And Deckard was there, standing on the surface of the lake, scratching frantically at the ice.

Was it her Deckard? How could it be? How could it not be?

Kate stepped close to the wall and watched the cat. “Come on, Deckard! Come on out of there!”

Deckard paused in his scratching and looked at her, his head turned to the side. He purred once, then went back to scratching.

“Come on, boy!” she cooed again. But Deckard ignored her this time.

There was a figure in the distance standing at the lake’s edge. As the view moved forward, Deckard moved too in relation to the view, but without moving. He continued to paw at the ice. The visual effect disoriented Kate.

The view reached the figure, who turned toward her. It was her father, as he had been ten years ago. He held no cane, and he was grinning, his hands stuffed in his pockets. His warm breath coiled through the air as he exhaled. He seemed to see her, but look through her at the same time. “Hello, Kate,” he said. But the view shifted and he wasn’t looking directly at her anymore.

“Dad?” Kate said quietly, alone in the room of her apartment. She reached her hand up to the wall. That same resistance pushed against her, holding her out of the vision. Deckard had entered the wall. Why couldn’t she?

The scene changed again, and Deckard who had been pawing at the ice was now on the bright patterned carpet of a kindergarten. He looked up abruptly, startled. He looked back at Kate and meowed in distress. He took a few steps toward Kate but didn’t seem to move any closer. The dimension of space seemed to be off somehow for him, or for the space between him and Kate in her living room.

The pain stabbed her in the head again. “Ugggh.” She held her temple, trying to relax her head. When she looked up, she said, ‘Stay there, Deckard. I’ll be right back.” What else was he going to do?

In the bathroom, she swung open the medicine cabinet and fumbled for the aspirin. All she could see in her mind’s eye was Deckard, stalking through her thoughts. It was as if her cat sat like a giant weight on her temples.

She placed two pills on her tongue, leaned down and gulped water from the faucet to wash them down with a swallow. 

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and sent a quick text to Lola, “Deckard went through the wall. WTF?”

She wondered what Lola was doing right then. Was she telling her cousin about the aberration on her wall? But as she imagined Lola speaking with her cousin, her cat Deckard prowled on the table between them.

What was going on? Deckard had leapt into the wall, and now it was as if he had imprinted himself into her internal visual landscape.

The pain in her head was intense, and she stumbled back out in the hallway, grabbing at the wall. Was the wall some kind of window into her head? Oh, Jesus. Hadn’t she seen a movie like that somewhere? No, that wasn’t quite right. As she thought this, she imagined her cat saying these things to her, like her very own jiminy Cricket. If Lola hadn’t been there with her before, watching the same scenes she had, she’d be frightened that she was losing her mind. Maybe she was anyway. Oh god.

She re-entered the living room and let herself fall onto the couch. Then, peering through her fingers, she looked back toward the wall, that infernal wall.

She was looking down the length of the Eiffel Tower from somewhere near its top. She’d visited Paris once as a child, perhaps this was a memory? The feeling of vertigo set in again. Looking out to look down. She hadn’t noticed it before, but Deckard was clinging to the side of the tower, his paws scrabbling at a beam. He started meowing furiously.

Surely, he was going to fall. And it wasn’t an image cat, it was her real cat, who might fall in this idea-scape on her wall. But fall to his death? Was that possible?

She willed the scene to change. Oh god. Change. Change. Change. Anything. She thought of the college campus. She willed the snow-covered scene into existence.

But nothing changed. Think as she might, the scene would not change. She was not in control.

Deckard slipped. He began to slide down the tower. Faster and faster.

“Deckard!” she shouted and leapt from the couch. Taking three quick steps toward the wall, she punched her hand toward the wall. But her hand was thrown back with as much force as she had thrown toward it. “Ow!” she yelled, clutching her reddened knuckles.

The cat began to spin away, when at last, the scene changed. She looked into an old diner. Her father sat in a booth, eating a slice of blueberry pie. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look in Kate’s direction. He just quietly ate his pie. Through the window of the restaurant, across the parking lot, she noticed Deckard trotting along the street in the distance. But her father grunted, adjusting himself in his seat, and her attention was drawn back to him. He picked up a folded newspaper next to him and a pen. He always worked the crossword puzzle in pen, a fact for which she always needled him.

“Dad!” Kate shouted. But the figure in the scene didn’t move. “Dad!” No reaction.

She pounded the cushions of the couch.

She had lost her father two months ago. He had passed away slowly, after a stroke had all but incapacitated him. His heart had just been two weak. And every day she had wished for him to come back. But not like this.

A short elderly woman entered the diner, pushing open the door. The bell over the door jangled, and Deckard slipped in behind the woman. He leapt up onto the table her father sat at, but he didn’t seem to mind. Deckard stepped in his blueberry pie and still he didn’t notice.

“Oh this is too much,” Kate said. She picked up the brass clock next to her and hurled it at her cat. The clock punched through the wall just as the cat had done, pushing through the ripples, and floated across the space to her father’s table. It landed on top of his crossword puzzle, but he acted as if it had always been there. Deckard looked quizzically at the clock and gave it a tentative lick.

Her father took a sip of coffee, and Kate screamed.

The scene changed. The ocean. Waves lapped at a deserted shore. The sky was gray. She imagined it to be chilly. And there nestled in the sand was her brass clock, with Deckard alongside it.

”I have to get out of here,” Kate thought. She grabbed her wallet, phone and keys and stepped outside. The streetlights had come on, and the moon, nearly full was out. She looked down at her phone. No return text yet from Lola. It was nearly 11 a.m. Her father wouldn’t have approved. But imagining her disappointed father, she saw him holding the clock in one hand, which clearly read 11 a.m., and Deckard, who never liked her father in real life, asleep on his lap.

She ran down the flight of stairs to her car. Unlocking the car, she slid in behind the wheel. But she found it impossible to concentrate as images of her cat and that persistent clock filled her senses. Tick tick tick tick. A second hand swirled around her.

And that’s when Kate knew she had to destroy the wall. I have to burn it all down.

She had a spare can of gasoline in her storage unit. She brought this in and set it beside the wall. It took her three minutes of hunting through kitchen cabinets and drawers to finally locate her box of matches. She approached the wall, stalking it. On it, the brass clock spun around the cat, as she rocketed through space, rounding the moon.

There was a loud of knock on the door, and she realized someone had been knocking for a while, but she had ignored it. How long? It couldn’t have been more than a minute. Or perhaps the clock and the cat had preoccupied her thoughts so much that it was hard to focus on anything more than her mission.

She dumped the gasoline all along the wall and along its base. It splashed messily into the carpet and on her khaki canvas shoes. She was hurtling through space with a match in one hand. Her cat was whining. The clock chimed. The door knocked.

Her father’s face loomed broadly, plastered across the entire surface of the wall, dwarfing the cat who sniffed the clock in the bottom corner. Her father laughed, silently. Then he frowned. Her father held up something in front of his face. It nearly filled her vision. A cigarette? She lit the match.

Corbett Buchly published his only short story in Singularity. But he has also published the chapbook W/Make (Bottlecap Press) and over 90 poems in journals, including SLAB, Plainsongs, and Barrow Street. He is an alumnus of Texas Christian University and the professional writing program at the University of Southern California.