This House is Trying to Eat Me

‘It did though!’ Molly said, slamming her hands on the dining table.

Orange juice sloshed over the side of Ted’s cup and the milk in his cereal teetered precariously close to the rim of his bowl. There was a moment of pause while Ted looked at the chaos on his plate, then the toddler erupted in an almighty wail.

‘Wahhh!’ 

Molly’s mum rubbed her temples with her fingers like she always did when Molly was telling one of her stories.

‘There, there,’ said Molly’s dad, as he picked Teddy up from his high chair and wiped orange juice from his hands. ‘Honestly, Molly, one more story like that and there will be big consequences.’

‘It’s not a story!’ Molly stood firm. She put her hands on her waist and dared her parents to say it again. ‘It has giant brown teeth and a big red tongue! The fridge really did try and eat my finger!’

Molly’s mum pushed away from the table and took Teddy from her husbands’ arms. ‘I can’t,’ she said simply, waving a hand in Molly’s direction. ‘You’ll have to deal with this today.’

Molly didn’t wait for her dad to give her another scolding. Saving him some time, she threw her head back and headed straight for the staircase that led to her room.

‘And stay up there until you apologise!’ he yelled after her.

Molly stomped all the way up the stairs until she reached the landing, then she pounded her feet extra hard until she reached her bedroom. With a thumping thwack, she slammed her bedroom door shut, not before yelling, ‘It wasn’t a story!’

Molly flopped onto her bed, holding her finger up to the window. It hadn’t been a story. Not really. A tiny embellishment maybe. Just a whisker of an exaggeration. The fridge really had caught her finger. And she was sure it probably would have tried to eat it, if she hadn’t managed to pull it out in time. She had kind of seen teeth, though it could have been the eggs that sat in the top shelf, and there was a chance that the tongue might have been the leftover ham from the night before. But either way, she was fairly certain the fridge had in fact tried to gobble up her finger, and she wasn’t going to admit otherwise.

Hours passed as she sat in her room, her belly grumbling and her mouth dry. She wished she had thought to take a glass of water, or a bowl of cereal for her all-day strike. Downstairs she heard her mum pottering in the living room, while her dad was out the back pushing Teddy on the swing. 

She slid off her bed, and walked over to the window. The sun was beaming down on the backyard, Teddy squealing with delight as Molly’s dad pushed him higher and higher. 

That used to be Molly on that swing. Used to be her dad telling her to aim her feet for the clouds while her mum made sandwiches and brought out fresh lemonade for all of them to have a picnic. But things were different since Teddy arrived. He was okay. A ball of wrinkly flesh and a butt that emitted toxic sludge. But as far babies went, he was pretty good. Molly actually quite liked Teddy, but she missed her parents. Was that why she told big stories? Maybe. Or maybe it really was that the house was out to swallow her.

First there was the water hose incident. Molly had sworn it had wrapped itself around her foot when she was walking to the veggie patch. It even twisted its way around her waist and was creeping up to her neck when her dad found her. 

‘Impossible’ he had said. 

But Molly had been certain. ‘It was moving!’ she had proclaimed. No-one had believed her but they comforted her anyway. 

‘Sure it was, love,’ her mum had said, giving her a tight squeeze.

Then there was the microwave. Molly had heard it in the middle of the night. It beeped her name. She wasn’t sure how it could beep the name ‘Molly’, but she had definitely heard it. She woke up with a fright and snuck downstairs to see what was going on. By the time her parents had woken up, Molly was stuffing the microwave with bags of frozen peas to keep it quiet. Tiny little green gems were scattered across the entire kitchen.

‘Molly…’ her mum had said, an air of annoyance about her this time.

‘Come on, Molls,’ her dad had taken her by her arm and put her back to sleep.

Things had taken a turn by the time Molly declared the wood fire in the living room was trying to burn her alive. 

‘It was spitting flames!’ she told her parents. ‘Look!’ She held out her arm to show spots of pink, raw flesh. ‘The flames were big and red and when I tried to turn it down the door flew open and a giant mouth made out of flames burst out!’

‘Molly, that’s about enough,’ her mum had said, with Teddy tightly against her chest as she attempted to stamp out a smoldering flame in the rug with her foot.

Molly’s dad had rushed in with a fire extinguisher and promptly put out the tiny spot fires that Molly was to be blamed for. ‘This is getting dangerous, Moll’s,’ he had said, his brows furrowing.

Molly was certain all of those events really did happen. The house really was trying to eat her. But as her belly gurgled and her tongue felt like sandpaper, she could feel an apology nudging at the back of her throat. 

When she couldn’t hold it back any longer, with a huff she conceded. ‘Fine.’

She padded out her bedroom, peering out the door. Molly heard the backdoor swing open and her mum greet Teddy with a big ‘Wow! Look how high you are!’

Molly headed for the staircase, still angry about having to apologise. She was still grumbling to herself as she took the first step.

On her second step, mid thought about that microwave and the frozen peas, the balustrade began to shake.

Molly gripped the railing, as she looked down and saw a giant crack in the stairs appear beneath her feet. It travelled down the stairs, like a lightning bolt, wood splintering along the raw edges.

‘Oh no,’ she whispered. 

The wooden staircase creaked and groaned, and then with one giant SNAP it pulled completely apart.

‘Help!’ Molly screamed, as each of her feet got stuck on opposite sides of the stairs. Beneath her the giant black maw of the staircase opened wide.

‘Mum, dad, help!’ she screamed again.

From the top of the stairs, she could see out to the backyard where her neither her mum or her dad was looking over.

‘That’s not an apology!’ her dad yelled through the open door, without bothering to look up.

‘It’s the stairs!’ Molly squealed. ‘They’re trying to eat me!’

Molly’s mother didn’t even reply, instead she picked Teddy up and began discussing the cost of steak at the supermarket with Molly’s dad.

The dark cavern beneath the staircase was widening. It was pitch black and seemed to Molly like it continued on for eternity. As the two halves of the staircase pried apart, Molly had nowhere to go. 

‘Please!’ she yelled, her knuckles white as she gripped the railing, staring desperately out into the backyard.

Teddy was perched over Molly’s mums’ shoulder, and just as Molly’s feet slipped from the polished wood and she began to fall into the dark nothing, Teddy wailed and cawed. He slapped his mother’s shoulder and pointed inside the house to where Molly’s fingers were disappearing from the balustrade.

‘Molly!’ Molly’s parents yelled as they came dashing inside the house. But it was too late. Molly felt herself falling, falling, falling, until with a thud, she landed against a hardwood floor.

Above her the staircase began to close, the tapestry of snapped wood weaving itself back together.

‘No!’ her dad screamed, throwing himself against the staircase. He reached his hand into the darkness, the wood unable to patch itself together around his arm.

Molly sat upright, gingerly gazing around. She couldn’t see much from within the belly of the house, but as she looked up to the slivers of light sneaking around her dad’s arm, she could clearly make out the panic etched on both her parents' faces. 

With a smugness that filled her empty belly and warmed her cheeks, Molly lazily leaned against the wall behind her and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I told you the house was trying to eat me!’