The Shining Girls

Harper ^{13 JUNE 1993}

The flash is blinding. The force spins him into the wall.

Harper touches the hole in his shirt where a dark stain is congealing. First it feels blank. Then the pain comes, every nerve along the trajectory of the hole the bullet bored through him lighting up at the same time. He tries to laugh, but his breathing is wet and wheezing as his lung starts filling with blood. ‘You can’t,’ he says.

‘Really?’ She looks beautiful, Harper thinks, lips pulled back to show her teeth, eyes bright, her hair like a halo around her head. Shining.

She pulls the trigger again, blinking involuntarily at the crack. And again and again. And again. Until the chamber clicks. The detonations in his body register only dimly, as if he is already peeling away.

Then she throws the gun at him in frustration and falls onto her knees and buries her face in her hands.

Should have finished me, you stupid cunt, he thinks. He tries to move towards her, but his body won’t respond.

His perspective is skewed, distorted at an obtuse angle. The whole scene is laid out beneath him, as if he is falling up and away from it.

The girl with her shoulders shaking, as the flames lick up from the tangle of chair and curtains and totems, spewing a black, chemical smoke.

The big man lying on the floorboards, swallowing hard, his eyes closed, holding his stomach and his chest, blood running between his fingers.

Harper can see himself standing against the wall. How can he see outside of himself? He is looking down on everything, as if he is wedged high against the ceiling, but still tethered to the lump of flesh with his face below.

Harper sees Harper’s legs go slack. His body starts sliding down the surface of the wall. The back of his head smears dark globs of blood and brain over the cream wallpaper.

He feels the connection slip. And then it snaps.

He howls in disbelief, clawing to get back down. But he has no hands to grasp. He is a dead thing. So much meat on the floor.

He stretches out, reaching for anything.

And finds the House.

Floorboards instead of bones. Walls instead of flesh.

He can pull it back. Start again. Undo this. The heat of the flames and the choking smoke and the howling fury.

It’s not so much a possession as an infection.

The House was always his.

Always him.