Talk Vomit

By Benjamin Davis

What Happened When Frank Died Episode 5

Frank died. The table was set. David prodded at the empty plate in front of him. He wore a green sweater with sleeves half-rolled to his elbows. Alice reached down to brush the hair from his face. “Use your fork.” She kissed his forehead. Frank sat across from them. She smiled. “Why did you let me die?” Frank smiled back and passed a bowl across to her. “Thank you,” she said. She wore a blue dress. So young. She was so beautiful. David sat up in his chair. He’d be four soon but already so mature. Frank smiled.

Alice dipped a spoon into the hollow bowl. David jabbed his fork at the plate—maybe chasing an escaped pea. “Why did you let me die?” 

Frank looked at Alice, trying to focus. Something pulsed in his ears, as if they were cupped by large seashells—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

“Why did you let them take me?” 

David pressed the fork against his cheek. 

“What?” Frank asked. The whooshing grew louder. They were looking at him now, both of them. David dug the fork deeper into his cheek.

“Stop that!” Frank said. He whacked his hand on the table so it wobbled, and the dishes rattled. David didn’t stop. 

“Why did you let them take me?”

“Why did you let me die?”

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

David’s face was bleeding now. “David! Stop it. Alice, take the fork from him.”

Alice’s neck cricked, so it sat at an odd angle. Shadows grew around her eyes. She was saying something, but Frank couldn’t hear over the noise. It filled the room. Invisible waves crashed around them. David’s lips moved, but Frank couldn’t hear. Blood dripped down the fork, diving as they reached the end of the handle like little fearless animals to splat against the plate.

“I—” Frank closed his eyes and opened and closed his jaw, hoping to clear his ears. “I need a towel.” He pushed back from the table. They had no dining room, so they ate in the kitchen. Frank walked to the closest cabinet. Inside was lined with bottles. He closed it. The next one was no different. The next and next. He left them open as he went. “Alice, where are the towels?”

It was quiet. “Alice?” 

Alice and David stood beside the table, wooden arms pinned at their sides. Their black eyes pinned Frank to the spot, every hackle raised, filled with a sudden terror—an inopportune moment for the screaming to start.  

Frank ran, his mind dropping pieces as he tried to fill the gaps of what was happening. How did he get here? That wasn’t Alice. Not David. The screams took on an almost joyful quality as they followed, becoming almost squeal-like in pitch, words somehow forming through the racket, “Why—me—why—take—them—you—why—”

Frank found the bathroom and slammed the door behind him. Silence.

Directly across from the door, the window looked out not onto the street, as it should have, but instead into an eerie nothingness. It was not his bathroom. It was not his home. He needed to get out. GET OUT. Frank walked to the bathtub. He climbed in, burying his head in his arms.

\\\

Elsewhere, Death had identified twenty-seven anomalies. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was enough when combined with everything else going on. Unsettled, she let herself unravel into her natural state as a sensory blob: snuffed candles, snapped violin strings, sunsets—that sort of thing. The blob beside her was less purposeful: teeth cleanings, an itch behind the knee, belly flips on roller coasters, expired cough drops. They laid out the tapestry for Death; the twenty-seven anomalies spread like BB holes across a tin roof. 

They took it all together, trying to piece it together; another hole pinged through the fabric. Go get him, boss, they said. Death became entropy, then the credits of a movie, a postscript, an echo of an echo, and into the body of an eleven-year-old girl, the only form she could stomach that didn’t make anyone’s eyes bleed.  

\\\

“Why did you let me die?” 

Alice had such a sweet voice accompanied by something dragging down the door frame. 

“Why did you let them take me?”

“Why did you let me die?” 

“Why did you let them take me?”

“Why did you let me die?” 

“Why did you let them take me?”

“Why did you let me die?” 

“Why did you let them take me?”

“Why did you let me die?” 

“Why did you let them take me?”

“Why did you let me die?” 

“Why WHY WHY WHY WHY—”

They scratched at the door. It echoed off the bathroom tiles and into the bath, where Frank curled up, holding his ears. The whole room rattled. “I didn’t! Shut up! Shut up! It wasn’t my fault! Stop!” 

It was no use. The door shook. A crack split the middle—scaring Frank up and out of the bathtub. He pulled the top off the back of their toilet and used it to try and smash through the window. It was no good. He caught his reflection in the mirror—a man, an old man, unclean, unhealthy, unwell, gray hair matted and messy in equal parts, eyes unfocused. His hands shook at the sight of himself as if the last thread of control he’d held had snapped. All he could do was fall — against the mirror, hands clasped above his head. He struck with what little he had. 

Shards exploded around him. A dagger-like sliver fell into the sink among the rest. Frank grabbed it and placed it on his wrist. Just before he cut, he looked back up into the mirror. But there was no mirror, no hardboard backing, no wall. A room? No, a hall. Not part of the house. Not anywhere Frank had seen before. He looked out at the black-bricked walls. There were voices. He stuck his head out. Black doors lined either side. He heard cries and moans and a whoosh…whoosh…whoosh. 

He pulled his head back into the bathroom, and it took a moment before he noticed the door was no longer closed. David and Alice stood; their fingernails had been ripped off, blood poured down their hands onto the floor; their twin blue eyes had been scratched out in thick, dark, squirming lines like black worms in twin teacups. 

“Don’t leave us again, Frank.”

David held out a bloody hand. Four deep punctures decorated his face. “Stay. Daddy, stay.”

“You aren’t you,” Frank told them. “You can’t be.”

“No!” They said together. “NO. NO. NO.” They cried. The tears came as long, dark squiggles crawling down their cheeks onto the floor. They didn’t stop there. They slithered toward Frank.

Frank scrambled up onto the sink and pushed himself out through where the mirror had been. Glass ripped through his robe, catching against weak strips of skin that broke easily as he fell into the hallway. He crawled away until he could turn and place his back against the far wall. Across, Alice and David stood unmoving, framed in broken glass. They could have been a photo.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He turned and began to make his way down the dark hall. Along either side were different windows of all shapes and sizes. Some were as small as the one he’d crawled out of, or smaller, some so large he could easily walk through them. All of them looked in on different happenings – different people. In one, a man was being held down by three young women as they whispered into his ear. They poked him. Each time, their fingers easily broke through into his stomach, ribs, arms, and chest as if he were a bleeding, screaming cake. 

The further he went, the deeper he went, the more he felt like someone was watching him. There were no turns to take, no corners to hide around, nothing to do but walk and watch through the windows, hoping for something that might show him a way out. 

In one the size of a door, looking into a rustic old wood cabin, an old woman sat on the chair beside a small bed. She hummed to a little boy sitting in bed, staring at her. He was four or five, and his face was blank. 

It struck Frank that, unlike all the other scenes he’d passed, neither was crying or screaming. The boy was saying something, and as Frank got a bit closer, he began to make it out. He was saying: “Why’d you let me die? Why, Mommy? Why did you let me die? You killed me, Mommy.” 

The woman kept smiling and saying, “It’s okay, I’ve got you, Charlie. Off you go, baby – shhh.”

“You killed me, Mommy.”

“That’s right, baby.”

“It was your fault.”

“It is time for sleep now, Charlie. Come. I’ve got you now, don’t I?”

Frank wasn’t sure, but the boy seemed annoyed at the woman for not being upset. He kept rephrasing his words and tone.

“You couldn’t take care of me, and I died.”

“Yes, baby.”

“Because of you.”

“Never again, baby – never again.”

The woman held him close. Nestled in the crook of her shoulder, the boy watched Frank. He didn’t move, didn’t cry or scream. Somehow, the stillness felt worse. It unsettled Frank. He backed away, turned, and walked on. The boy’s eyes never left him. In the silence, Frank could hear the whooshing grow louder. Somewhere, something was coming closer.

\\\

Death was not having a good time. She hated this place. The misery seemed so unnecessary. She’d done her hair up in a bun. Her loose t-shirt hung halfway down her slim thighs. She wore bland white sneakers that squeaked on the polished black floor. She stood on tip-toes to see into a rectangular slit along the wall—a man standing over a hospital bed. “Look at what you made me do,” he said. His hands were covered in blood. She kept going. 

Something was not right. Death had figured that much out. She tried to listen for it. This place was so loud. So unnecessary, she thought. She closed her eyes and concentrated on pinpointing the thrum below the screams. Whoosh…whoosh…whoosh…

She reached out with her eyes closed as if leading a game of Marco Polo, grabbed the air, and pulled at reality until she felt a snag. When she opened her eyes, the old man was right in front of her. He cried out and jumped backward. 

“You,” Death said. The man turned and ran.

\\\

Frank hadn’t expected a small girl to appear in the middle of the hallway dressed in what looked like a black nightgown, but he’d lost track of what might be expected based on his immediate circumstances. The way she had pointed at him, known him—not to mention how her eyes had gone black as the air around her contorted—had seemed a strong indicator that staying where he was was the wrong move. 

It was hard to say whether the running, his blood pumping through his body, made the sound louder or if it was getting closer. Frank looked through window after window as he went, looking for a way out, a door, a scene that didn’t fill him with instant dread. 

\\\

Death watched Frank run from a reasonable distance, pulling herself forward bit-by-bit, keeping up as she tried to work out what to do. This idiot, she decided, has no idea what is going on. Well, that was something. 

The other one, though. He was being more careful this time. But he’d have to come eventually. If only she could—oh hell. Death stopped dead in surprise as Frank had slowed, stopped, and then thrown himself through one of the windows.

\\\

It was David. David was there in the corner of the dark room. His face was gaunt, hair hacked near the scalp, but Frank was certain. He’d forgotten about the girl. The whoosh-whoosh was deafening, but he barely heard it. He’d forgotten where he was. None of it mattered. “David!” He ran toward him, but David backed into the corner, crouched and feral-looking. Frank slowed and held his hands in front of him. “David, it’s me. It’s your Pa.” It was so dark in the room he worried his son didn’t recognize him. “Feel my hand, boy, it’s me, here.” He half his hand out, the one with the knobby thick scar David used to fiddle with. The boy reached forward tentatively, hand shaking. Then, the wall behind him tore away. In its place was a crushing, swirling void that pulled David in before Frank could think the grab hold. The boy unraveled to ribbons, and from where he’d vanished, a man in a space suit stood, domed helmet reflecting the storm around him. He reached out and grabbed Frank’s still outstretched hand.

\\\

Death watched all this from where she sat on the window sill facing the room—legs thump-thumping off the wall below. She recognized him now—the spaceman. She’d felt him before—long ago. So, right before it all came apart, she waved. 

To find out what happens next, tune into Talk Vomit’s summer ’24 edition.

Read Episode 1 here.
Read Episode 2 here.
Read Episode 3 here.
Read Episode 4 here.