by Gabrielle Bleu
(820 words)
Loveatfirst.com Dating Profile for Asher K.
Age: 27
Gender: Wingin’ It
Hobbies: Streaming, videogames (Knights of False Caiman 1 and 3, but NOT 2), podcasts. I used to like cycling, but not anymore. The house in the high grass has a bicycle leaning against its side. I wonder about that bicycle. Who stopped on their ride to visit the house? How long has the bike been there? When I drive past in my car, I can see the gleam of its bare metal out of the corner of my eye. I don’t like bicycling anymore. I sit inside and stream videogames, now.
Hiking is fine, if it’s in the mountains during the day. When the sunlight hits the mountains, they light up in golds and greens. It is beautiful and safe in the sunlight. Only in the sunlight. Only in the mountains. Not in the dark, not on the plains.
What I do: Phone jockey by day and streaming hero by night, haha. My commute’s about an hour each way. Not too bad normally – I like to listen to podcasts on the drive. It makes me feel like someone is riding along with me. That I’m not alone out here, not the only one who can see what waits out on the plains.
The little house is at the halfway point of my drive, so small it’s almost swallowed up by the high grass. It’s got a porch light on it at night, the only light for miles around.
It is not a house when the light is on.
Likes: Public transportation. I just think buses are more eco-friendly, you know? More safe. No one on the buses seems to react to the house on the plains. Cars swerve sometimes as people rubberneck towards the light. But I pass the buses, and no one even looks out the window. They couldn’t stop the bus if they wanted to go inside. Not like the cars, abandoned at the shoulder. Eventually they disappear, taken away. But there’s always more empty cars the next day.
I hope the bus drivers keep driving, like I do.
Big fan of LED lightbulbs too. Y’know, because of the environment. Big environment fan over here. I don’t know what kind of lightbulb the house in the grass by the highway uses. The porchlight is a trap though. In the daytime, driving up one way, the house is just a house, I think. Boxy, vinyl siding, non-descript. But at night the yellow porchlight pulls at me. I always want to stop my car and go in. I haven’t yet, but the light lingers in my rearview mirror, long after I’ve left the house behind.
Favorite color: Is this a deciding factor for anyone, haha? Any color is good, really. Just not red. There’s too much red around the house, on the guardrails at the edge of the road. Illuminated by my headlights. Bodies. Roadkill. Whole herds, warrens, dead on the roadside, piled high in front of the house. They disappear too, in the daylight, the twisted fur and limbs reduced to a normal amount. Just the single dead rabbit or deer like you’d expect on the highway. But the roadside is a graveyard at night, all mangled fur and splayed out, arched spines. Back legs coated in mud, a desperate escape to kick out and run from whatever drew them near the house.
Gray’s not a fave, either.
Hit me up: If you’d like to get coffee sometime. If you want to discuss bad videogames and ludonarrative dissonance. If you have seen it. If you have driven past and not gone inside the house. You know the one I mean? Have you seen its porchlight at night? It’s waiting, you know, for you to be tired, for you to pull over, soothed by the light amidst all that dark. There are faces in the dark. Have you seen the faces in the long grass behind the trap of the house and its light?
Great gray faces like stone. Their mouths gape hungry in the night as they search for those the house lured in. They push out of the waves of whispering grass, surfacing. Or maybe it is they who are whispering dread things in the night, and not the long grass. Their faces are too large to be human, to have ever been human. Their bodies beneath the long grass must be huge. The light from the porch illuminates them as they rustle up from the earth to check their lure of the waiting house.
The porch light is always on. Inviting me in to the home of the things in the grass on the plains.
I will not stop the car. I will not go inside.
Message me if you know what I mean.
It pulls at me.
Does it pull at you too?
I will not go inside.
(User last active 13 days ago).
END
Gabrielle Bleu writes science fiction and fantasy. When not writing, she watches birds and admires lichens. Their work has appeared in the Arcanist, Utopia Science Fiction, and the Crone Girls Press anthology “Coppice & Brake.” Follow them on twitter @BeteMonstrueuse for birdwatching photos and the occasional thoughts on werewolves, and find more of her work at gabriellebleu.com.