Nothing But Bones

19: Spaetzle

Her feet are in the water again.

It's the way it has been for months, she thinks. It's the way it has been for a year: wicker cage, linen slip stained with blood, admission of guilt resting behind her teeth. It takes her a moment to look away from the ripples and refraction, from the sand beneath, from what she assumes are wicker bars holding her in place.

When she looks up, the bars simply aren't there. The wicker pokes out of the water in irregular intervals, sprouting into trees and tall stalks of plants that were never native to Earth.

There's a woman in the house. Tiff can see her through the window, dusting above the fireplace, skirt puffed out and peachy, apron stark white and edged with lace like the petals of water lilies. She turns so that Tiff can't see her face, just brown hair curled below her shoulders, just green lights flashing from the kitchen.

It's the Winters' place. She knows that— though the windows aren't boarded up, there's no real sign of skeletons or zombies, and she feels in her heart that it's her own house. What's the point of a house if there isn't weird shit in it? What's the point of living if your life isn't fun?

She steps forward, through the water that slows her down to nothing, snail's pace on a carpet with nothing to secrete.

That's the way of it, the way the dream always goes: she approaches the house with that particular brand of nervous excitement she has come to know and tolerate. Either she's going to get exactly what she expects, or she's going to get something bright and shiny and new. Can she ask for anything more?

Waterlogged trousers, bare feet, half-tucked dress shirt, undone tie. She isn't really her, is she? It's a role the dream has cast her in. She's nothing if not willing to get forced into playing.

She wipes her hands on the sides of her trousers and turns the brass doorknob. All she has to do is go inside. No matter what's waiting for her, she just has to go inside.

The twinkling lights of domesticity infect her. She steps into the foyer. It's somewhere between the Winters' place and her new house: sectional couch with a decades-old afghan over the back of the corner; a fireplace that shouldn't be there; something watching when she isn't looking, like shadows in the corner of her eye and eyes under the couch's skirt. (The couch isn't supposed to have a skirt. She's just going to have to accept that the couch has a skirt.)

She tries to duck down and see what's underneath, but a flash of pink fabric and white petticoat draws her attention. She has really no choice but to follow it, head cocked like her neck is leading the way to the kitchen.

It's where the lights are, anyway— horizontal pillar of yellow into the dusty dark paisley. Somewhere else, there's a waltz playing. It sounds like a Gabler piece, but she isn't sure if it actually fits into his canon. (Why does he haunt her?)

The kitchen's all set up for dinner, the dining room table is surrounded by cabinets and stoves, by lime-green carpet soiled with stains— mud, dirt, blood, things she can't place. The table itself, dark wood under a deep purple tablecloth that's striking against the backdrop of yellow cabinets and counters, is set with several places and covered with dishes between them. Through the steaming glass, all condensation on frosted florals, there is corn; asparagus; there is some sort of noodle in a covered glass dish. Is that spaetzle? Why is there spaetzle?

She wants to ask why there's spaetzle, but the words never leave her mouth. When she looks up at the woman sitting at the opposite end of the table, her mouth runs dry.

Even with the string of pearls, even with the hair curled and sprayed and held back with a hard, gleaming strip of white, even with the peach dress and the blur over her features, even with the complete lack of scars across her shoulder and spiraling up her arm, Tiff knows that face. Those green eyes; those seemingly-endless freckles; she sees them every time she looks in the mirror, when she remembers to look.

Two Tiffs isn't unheard of. How many conversations with Nothing has she had, now? How many times have they sat together on cement and obsidian and argued about nothing?

She catches her reflection in the spoon at her table setting. Distended as though it may be, warped by the curve, she knows this isn't a Tale of Two Tiffs. It's just Bloodsaw again, shirt untucked and tie undone.

Across the table, that Other Tiff smiles at her. When she turns her head, she catches a glimpse of pearls set in gold in her ears. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? That flash of luxury set in stone in the back of her head?

"It's time to eat, honey," the Other Tiff says, voice too sweet.

It turns her stomach. "What's for dinner? Is it creamed corn?"

"It's spaetzle and roast."

She lifts the lid of some of the dishes in front of her. It's only tangentially spaetzle. In the blink of an eye, everything on the table is dead. Rotting. Maggots squirm in and out of creamed corn kernels; mold covers each spear of pan-roasted asparagus, more pungent than the garlic involved; and the crockpot in the middle, like the glass dish of spaetzle, holds something else entirely. A stewed face, eyeballs like dumplings, green and bloated, coated in algae and teriyaki marinade. A molar bubbles to the surface; and what of the tendons in the spaetzle? The bits of cartilage? The way the woman at the head of the table melts and disappears and all that is left of her seems to be in the goddamn German egg noodles?

Her stomach rumbles despite the thick white worms and larvae threading in and out of every dish, dangling from her fork and knife. There's a serving spoon in her hand, and she has never been one to pass up a meal.