Mount Dora by Travis Dahlke

Afternoon

Hear it? How the floorboards are creaking like that? I’d bet you anything the tiles in your bathroom are loose too. You got a termite infestation here. The property manager, Sonny, puts his finger in a hole he’s gouged in the drywall and scrapes out a little sawdust. He asks if the propane line is in the pantry. He says, country farmhouses like this often have gas running through the kitchen to heat their root cellars. Airbnb is going to hit you with a gas surcharge a mile high, but the guests will appreciate the novelty. Outside, our skin turns green, refracting the pastures that roll against the far road. Sonny draws a hexagon in his Camry’s coat of dust. We’ll get some gravel for the driveway, he says. He makes small talk with Britta about how much he loves our stone walls. There are miles of them in New England, he says. You know how they say your intestines are long enough to wrap around the Earth? This is like those intestines, but with stone walls. Britta squints at the miles of braided stone. She asks where all the horses went. Sonny scribbles out the hexagon. None of this was for horses, he says.

Night

We lie awake listening to something chewing. It travels across the water damage on the ceiling. Britta inflates the air mattress once reserved for guests at our old apartment. Are termites this loud? What about mice? Britta’s phone, a few feet away on the floor, is permanently suckling from its charger. Whenever the screen glows we are filled with dread. The stain on the ceiling is like a cloud, I say. Like the shadows of clouds over summer grass. Britta agrees from the beginning of her dream.

Afternoon

Bathroom tiles splinter beneath our mallet. We pry off window trim and slather cedar green paint on the walls. The fumes sting my voice. I try to open a window, but they’re all painted shut. When Britta pretends to faint on the sofa that came with the house her body inflames a slow haze of dust from the cushions. We discover gnawed engravings in our unpacked sneaker laces and candles. In the aloe plant Sonny gifted us. Mice, Britta says. I told you.

Night

Whenever Britta’s phone chimes, our dread floods into the room. I know it’s Essex Meadows. Britta’s mother is getting worse. After our dread evaporates, it leaves behind an acrid blue mold.

Morning

The fields wash themselves in dew and sunlight. Britta orders bird feeders online along with inspirational cursive placards for the barren living room. Sonny drops by with paperwork for us to sign. He looks out at the stone wall braiding our pastures as he draw in his breath. It’s the space, he says. People are gonna pay top dollar just for the space. The grass is getting long, I say. Sonny snorts at something in the air.

Morning

Beneath the couch, Britta uncovers the first pile. Glass, wax, plastic shavings, down. Britta calls them nests. She scoops them up with paper towels and throws them in the kitchen garbage.

Night

Our friends Lena and Peter are visiting from the city. Before they arrive, we drive into town to pick up mouse traps and pizza, using a little of the melted cheese as bait. I hide the traps under the sink and play Spotify jazz to hide the snaps. In the living room, we drink Tacate from patio furniture and then ramble into the yard to shoot old hairspray cans with a rifle we found in the attic. Lena takes a photo of the crumbling barns. We lead our friends through the fields where Britta invents a ghost story about a boy who, after walking home from his prom drunk and falling asleep in a hay field, was run over by an unknowing farmer’s plow. Lena attempts a photo of the stars. She says her and Peter have an early start tomorrow. I watch Britt watch their taillights roll away over the hill.

Afternoon

The IKEA delivery person cannot stop coughing. He puts little nets over his boots. He says the religious drivers don’t come out this far. He says not to wear the mattress out, but the mattress is not for us.

Night

We call Britta’s mother, Nan. The sinew pulled taut against the bones documents her past life as a marathon runner. Her wiry grays blossom from the bleached blonde we comb each night. We move the TV into her room so she can watch Bravo. I can hear Britta over the baby monitor telling her mother she’s sorry for how she was when she was a teenager.

Afternoon

I sit beside Nan’s bed, watching Real Housewives. Britta applies Vaseline to her mother’s lips. As Nan’s milky breath veers toward the Gerber mangoes spooned to her, I notice the new patches of scalp. In a voicemail, Sonny says our Airbnb application was declined. It’s the red tape. I’m sorry, you seemed like nice kids. The crown on my molar has disappeared along with the leftmost knob on the stove.

Morning

The next day’s pile consists solely of hair, white and yellowing at the tips. I hear Britta tell her mother a ghost story through the baby monitor, except in the story it’s the people who disappear.

Night

We’re waist deep in the hay fields. Our home is one tiny rectangle of orange floating in a black sea. Half of Britta’s sweatshirt is missing. I guess the longer we stay, the less there’ll be of us, she says. We lie down with the deer ticks, letting warm air become our blanket. Wind chews on the bowing, dead parts of the grass. The grass is the fingers, I say. Britta pretends to sleep. Yeah, the grass is the fingers.

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TRAVIS DAHLKE — Travis is the author of Milkshake (Long Day Press). His work has appeared in Joyland, X-R-A-Y, Pithead Chapel, and The Longleaf Review, among other journals and collections.

Art by OCH GONZALEZ — Och’s work has appeared in Brevity Journal, Panorama Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, Lunch Ticket, Complete Sentence Lit, and Santelmo Journal, among others. Her essays have also been included in the literary anthologies in The Practice of Creative Writing and Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology. You can find her art at och_gonzalez.