Beige Goo Splat (part 1)

 

My room was nothing fancy but easily large enough for my double bed, desk and other stuff. It had a high ceiling and a big view down over the town which often distracted me when I was working from home. Monty had settled in nicely and I felt lucky to find a landlady who would accept my little dog. 

 

Mrs King had advertised my room as being recently decorated and although the paintwork looked fairly fresh, there was one very large and quite offensive flaw in one of the walls. An unsightly circular patch of what can only be described as beige goo, about two to three feet in diameter. It was worse in the centre, lumpy and wet looking, around the edges it faded and flattened to the surface of the wall.

 

I avoided leaning anything against it. One evening after Monty had been whimpering and barking at it, I became curious and gently placed my fingers upon it. The texture was squishy but it held together and nothing came off or stuck to my skin. I smelled my fingers but there was only a faint whiff of butterscotch, wood shavings and glue.

 

I rarely saw Mrs King since she had her own quarters in the house, a sort of self-contained flat in the basement. We shared the kitchen though and one morning over breakfast I quizzed her about the beige goo on the wall. She was difficult to speak to and I had to work myself up to asking her.

 

I turned down the radio, took a deep breath and said, ‘Mrs King, I wanted to ask you something…if you don’t mind.’

 

‘What? What is it, is there something wrong with the room? You won’t get another room in this town, not at that price and with a dog too!’

 

‘The room is great. I really like the view but it’s just… that thing on the wall…’

 

She looked shocked, frightened even. Her green eyes widening as she said, ‘What thing on the wall?’

 

‘The thing, the big beige splat or whatever it is…on the wall. Is there any way it could be cleaned off? It spoils things a bit. I don’t mind doing it myself.’

 

‘Don’t go near it,’ she looked away and poured some Bran Flakes into a bowl, ‘it’s a sort of fungus. A sort of,’ she stared me right in the face and her voice changed and became threatening as she said, ‘rot.’

 

‘Oh,’

 

‘It’s common round these parts because it rains so much, you know, here in the West. It would take a specialist to remove it and I don’t have that sort of money.’

 

‘I could paint over it at least.’

 

‘You’ll not touch it lad, you’ll make it worse. It’ll spread.’ She peeled the lid of the milk bottle, licked it and dropped it onto the work surface. ‘Don’t mess with things you don’t understand.’

 

I felt a lot worse about it after that conversation. Even at night when I lay in bed with the lights off and Monty lying next to me, his rough fur tickling my chest, the beige splat seemed to glow slightly in the darkness and there was a strange sound, a high pitched ringing. It could have been my tinnitus, there was no real way of knowing.

 

Perhaps I was going a bit mad but some mornings I could swear that the texture of the surface of the splat had changed. It occurred to me that I could take a photograph and monitor it but I thought better of it. Don’t mess with things you don’t understand, that’s what Mrs King had said and if it was changing that indicated some sort of lifeform which frankly I’d rather not know about.

 

The town was friendly enough. I’d moved there to get away from a very dramatic woman who drained every ounce of my energy until I had nothing left, either in my bank account or emotional tank account. I was still in the process of renourishing my mental health and had yet to make any real connections but I did know a few names and faces.

 

The local pub was reliable in that the beer was always fresh, a rarity these days, and the same six or seven local men were always there offering a greeting of sorts; a grunt, a nod of the head. They were neither friendly or unfriendly but if you asked for local information then they would become animated and noisy, competing to impart their wisdom, often culminating in a disagreement between them. The landlord usually had the last word and then they would settle back into their positions.

 

Being a dog owner gave me a distinct advantage when it came to forming connections but I’d noticed something odd. Whenever it got to the point of getting familiar with another dog and their owner, they would suddenly vanish and I’d never see them again. This had happened enough times for it to be notable; I would see the same person with the same dog at the same time for so many days, we would greet each other and smile and I would make a decision that on the next encounter I would strike up a proper conversation but then I would simply never see them anywhere again.

 

I once brought it up in the pub, choosing my words carefully so that it was light-hearted. ‘You know it’s funny,’ I said, holding Monty gently in my lap, ‘but Monty and I seem to see the same people every day on our walks and then all of a sudden we never see them again…or their dogs.’

 

The locals stared at me gently and then glanced at each other but in a slow way, relaxed as the beer dictated. One of them took a deep breath and said, ‘People go missing in this town.’

 

There was a long pause before one of the others nodded and followed up with, ‘and then they come back.’

 

The others laughed and then the landlord chimed in with, ‘Aye yes, so they do.’

 

I stored the familiar dog walkers images in my head, their dogs too in the hope that they would return one day and hopefully remember me and we could pick up where we left off, somewhere in the park with a friendly greeting. I could ask them where they’d been and hopefully the answer would be mundane enough for them to become my friends.

 

Following Covid I had been fortunate enough to work from home almost every day and had slipped very comfortably into this routine. It suited me and enabled me to achieve my dream of getting my own dog, Monty, a Border Terrier. The only problem was that occasionally I was called into the office and didn’t really know anyone well enough to entrust them with dog sitting.

 

Mrs King didn’t like strangers coming into her home so on the rare occasions I had to go into work I was forced to leave him alone in my room. I planned those days carefully so that we had an early start, a long walk for Monty, his favourite radio station on low. I set up his bed by the window so that he could see down into the town and I cut my working day short. I concocted a story for my bosses, something about an elderly relative relying on me for evening meals so that I could leave work at four.

 

It seemed to work well and he was usually fairly relaxed when I got home although very happy to see me. All except for one day when things took a shocking turn. I went up the staircase to my room, the key already primed in my fingers so that I could get in quickly, get to my little dog, cuddle him and get his lead so that he could go out and relieve himself. He was usually waiting on the other side of the door.

 

I had a funny feeling when I got to the door, a hollowness which I didn’t understand. I pushed the door open and Monty wasn’t behind it. ‘Monty?’ I uttered as I looked up to his bed, it was empty. A panic began to rise inside me as I scanned the room and then crouched down, searching under the bed and desk. He was nowhere to be seen. I checked the windows, they were tightly shut.

 

Immediately I felt bereft, sick without my best friend. I rushed downstairs to the kitchen, calling out for Mrs King. I raised my voice, ‘Mrs King? Mrs King!’

 

The door to her quarters opened with a creak. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is something on fire?’

 

‘No, no. Have you seen Monty, my little dog? He’s missing, he’s gone missing from my room, have you seen him?’

 

‘No,’ she shook her head and began to shuffle up the five or six stairs in her old worn out slippers, up into the kitchen, ‘he’ll be in the garden won’t he or in the park..’

 

 

‘How could he be in the park? I’ve just got home from work and he hardly goes into the garden, it’s full of rubbish and dangerous!’ 

 

Stupid woman, I thought and somehow reading my thoughts she gave me a cold hard stare. ‘Alright Love,’ she said patronisingly, ‘I was only trying to help yer.’