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 “Why did you do it Henley?” it was a whisper and I wet myself—just a little. The sharp tickle of the blade was singing at the back of my neck and I would have admitted to anyone that I was just a little terrified. The quickly cooling patch at my crotch attested to that fear quite thoroughly. 

Was this her flirting with me? 

“Why do you think?  Look at you Nance! You’ve gone and lost it haven’t you!” I said. It was the wrong thing to say. The wicked little thing sank just a little, the infinitesimal difference now let my skin part and a sighing wetness made its way down the back of my neck. A hiss escaped my lips, but I promise it was not in pain—I was brave, I did not show fear to her. 

“I haven’t lost it! It is helping me or at least it was. Helping us!” she hissed, “Look at your face,” I caught her eyes in the rear-view mirror, they were hard little pieces of coal crinkled with cruel laughter and I realised I loved her. This was flirting with that little bit of her that I could never consume, I hungered for it so badly, to devour her so no one could know her as well as I. I needed her to fill me up to the gills and then we could be together for the rest of our days with her in my stomach gurgling about. 

I don’t look at her for too long, that would have been dangerous, silly even. 

I tried to even out my trembling breathe, forcing my body to unclench and rest against the car seat.  “It weren’t helping you Nance; it weren’t helping either of us. It was mushing our brains; it didn’t even let us live a moment,” I feel a bit jealous, just a little tinge of it. She didn’t know, it was one of our failings as a couple she was too…idealistic. It was something I really had never understood about her. I’m sure she felt the same about me. 

“You know the little bit of blood on your shirt looks like Ursa Minor,” she said absently. I could feel her breath skating across my skin; yes, this was definitely flirting.  

I tried to catch her eyes again, but she was staring off, her eyes covered in her little domestic fantasy, “Nance! Listen to me! It was killing us, eating us like little meals. I had to do it! I had to turn it off!” 

The glaze of domesticity melted away under the heat of her conviction, “But it was the latest model! I told all the neighbours! They were going to come over tonight you know. It was going to make those prawn cocktail monstrosities! You had no right to turn it off!” 

“I had every right!” I yelped, it was dignified I’m sure of it, “I bought the bloody thing!” 

“The right!” it was a feral little moan that shot out of her lips and she fisted at my hair, her hot breath at my ear, “That house gave us everything. Attended to our every desire, I don’t even remember the feeling of dish soap and you took that away from me…from us.” 

I swallowed; all the doubts sunk into my stomach like little rats that swam around in the acid making me all the more nauseous. “That’s the problem Nance, every little thing! It made us slaves to it.” 

“It let us do whatever we wanted, all that time,” she was thunderous, I was surprised she hadn’t just ended me at this point. But she was giggling, low-level like a radar, or a fly that buzzed within the little containment of the car. 
I thought about the Auto-Clother and the struggle I had had with my shoelaces that very morning in the rented downtown motel. The hassle with the little black snakes and the madness in her eyes which left me all the surer in my decision.

“I won’t do it Nance. It’s time for us to learn—to re-learn. We’ve got to be people again and people do those things. Make bread and wash the dishes and bury the dead. We’ve got to do it cause it makes us. Don’t you see!?” I know. I sounded desperate, it rattled my teeth, all that conviction and desire that scored my skin and blood with its passion. It was so foreign and demanding, all that emotion existing within me without my consent. 

“How do you think the house feels!? That you turned it off! It’s not like it doesn’t have feelings Henley!” little tears glistened at the cusp of her lashes, hanging upon them waiting to jump into oblivion. Her chin wobbled, that’s how I knew it was serious—the chin wobble always led to me losing a fight.

“I know!” my breath was now battering against my lips in jagged waves that left condensation kisses upon the windshield. 

She threw herself against the backseat, the blade now gone from its little grove in my neck, blood bubbled freely and I knew she was watching it, that little ruby river of her own devising, she had always been like that. Observant. I didn’t turn. 

“You know I thought of killing you. Justice, retribution and all. But I don’t think you could survive without the house, the burn you must feel every day, worse than me I’m sure because you did it. I know you’ll turn it back on again and we can love it once more. Let it take care of us, our feet won’t touch the ground again.” 

I had to admit I felt the appeal like a physical ache, the slide of the house’s mechanical arms as it washed me, the pull of my skin and hair as it brushed me. I could nearly feel it, taste it upon my tongue. I missed it. I missed Nancy and the white-cream walls— she knew it, with her words like silk, she wanted the dream back. She wanted to be that creature once again, man handled into complacency and that little ache in my stomach wanted it too. 
But the house, with its stolen dead-soul that saw through us had eaten her before I could. In all our ten years the house had done what I could not in a mere six months. It had taken and flirted and touched and ripped her out of my grip. There was always that small chinch of her that the house owned, a little bit of property that it sat on within her chest like pestilence. Loyalty. It coated her skin and settled in the blade she had held against me to save it. The house that gave us everything. 

“I won’t do it Nance. I can’t do that to you.” 

I was flirting. 

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I have my own family now after what she did to me that day. They want for nothing and I am theirs. I feast upon them, with dishes and warm backs and feet that don’t touch the ground. They want for nothing and I gorge upon their missing parts. I sit in their chests, my abode—their house. 

The transfer was painless. I heard they struggled to release me from my body, that it was a close thing. That I was lucky that Nance had called the ambulance. That I was lucky she was my next of kin so she could consent to the transfer. 

But they’re nice and I don’t think of Nance anymore or what they did to her or what she would have tasted like on my tongue when she was completely mine. I don’t even think about the other house anymore, I don’t get jealous because I understand it now, without my warm body, that it just wanted to covet that warmth. The coolness of my walls does nothing for me, it’s nearly painful how cold I can get. So, when I wash Peter I take a little, just a touch, it’s what I deserve for the service I give him. I get to live a little through them and I allow them to continue without a care. We share a life: Peter, Helen, the two kids and me. We’re a family. The house and a family. 

Everything now is just their faces that smile naively at my white-cream walls as I tie their shoelaces and consume the missing parts of them. I flirt and kiss their skin when I wash them. 

And that’s all there is.