Rufus by Corinne Engber

On the last day of the school year, Aria Wilson stayed in her seventh-grade classroom until eight pm to take down all the bulletin boards, and then went home to find that her boyfriend Sam had killed himself.

Everything after that was a bit of a blur. If pressed by her therapist, she could recall it in pieces—Sam’s mom wailing on the floor at the casket selection appointment, crunching through under-seasoned macaroni salad at the wake, cutting the palm of her hand badly on the tape dispenser’s serrated edge as she packed up their things—but in truth, any recollection of the time between discovering him curled up on their brand-new low pile rug and pulling the U-Haul into the driveway of her parents’ empty house nine hundred miles away felt more like imagining scenes between cuts in a movie. Half-formed, awkward sequences, filmed only to carpet the cutting room floor.

Her parents were in Iceland. They fucking loved Iceland. Aria had never met two people who loved a place more aside from literally everyone she’d ever met from Cleveland, and at least the people who loved Cleveland had the moral fortitude to stay when the weather got cold. But this reverse snowbird migration meant that the house in Westbrooke, Ohio—her childhood house—stood empty all summer. A place to land for the broke prodigal daughter, with the bonus of a de facto summer house sitter while she got her shit together.

As if she wanted to. As if she could.

The house was enormous and pink. It squatted on a full half-acre, ringed around back by a rich copse of trees, and bent slightly over the driveway like a child benignly watching ants through a magnifying glass. The lilac bush by the front door was gone, replaced by rapacious honeysuckle. Two spaced windows above the garage resembled lidded eyes, the garage door itself a tight and grinning mouth. Welcome home, baby girl. Come on in.

Aria stepped down from the U-Haul’s cabin into lazy silence. Ribbons of heat rose from the fresh blacktop, her sneakers thumping as she approached the garage keypad. It did not respond when she pressed the buttons.

“Just go in through the garage,” Aria muttered to herself, retrieving the hideakey from beneath the front doormat. “Of course the batteries still work. Typical.”

Inside: unchanged. Her parents decorated the house once, at the turn of the millennium when they bought it—off-white carpet, fish-themed bathrooms and fake Persian rugs. The kitchen’s yellow floral wallpaper peeled where it met the cabinets. A ring of fresh-cut house keys waited on the kitchen island. Aria pocketed them, returned the hideakey to its place and set to work unpacking her truck.

In the hour it took to empty the remains of her measly life onto the driveway, not a single car drove through the neighborhood. The nearby houses—standing apart from each other, separated by trees or fences or privacy shrubs—appeared well-tended but vacant, their shutters closed and cars sequestered in double-wide garages. Once, as she carried a box past the bikes and her father’s dusty sedan, she thought she heard children laughing somewhere through the trees. The faint ring of bike bells echoing in the neighborhood cul-de-sac, a good seven-minute walk away.

Already dripping with sweat, Aria set her box in the foyer, sat on the stairs beside the railing and stared up at the vaulted ceiling.

“This will be good for you,” her therapist said, just before the move took Aria outside her license’s purview. “Spend some time thinking about what you want to do next, without the financial pressure. I’ll send you the contact info for a colleague of mine out there.”

Aria did not want the contact info of a colleague out here. She did not want to think about finding a smaller apartment, or going back to her job, or her fucking finances. Weeks of weeping and thanking strangers for their condolences had left her voice worn thin, her capacity for desire diminished to only the basics: food, warmth, quiet. To be alone.

So she would spend the next few months alone. She would read and cook and swim laps in the rec center pool. She would smoke legal weed in the land of lawns.

Through the window above the front door, the sky was going orange. Aria got up, cracked her wrists and stepped outside.

#

She didn’t see him lying there at first. The next-door neighbor’s grass grew tall and tangled around the porch, and between that and the dappled light through the trees, he was nearly invisible. Only when Aria stooped to pick up another box did she catch sight of his hair, and then the rest of him, curled up in the shade.

A smear of color cut across her vision: Sam on the rug, eyes closed, back curved. Pale and limp as a jarred fetus. Involuntarily, she went: “Hey.”

The figure did not move.

“HEY!”

She was across the lawn before he lifted his scarlet head. A boy, or just more than one—dressed in a polo and light wash jeans, with freckles on his forearms. Fine stubble colored his raw-boned face.

“Are you okay?” Aria asked, breathless.

Still horizontal, the boy yawned hugely and stretched all four limbs parallel to the ground. He tilted his chin up, blinking in the late afternoon sunlight. His eyes were a vivid, inhuman hazel. “Yes.”

Instantly, something felt off. She pushed the sensation away. Everything felt off now. “What are you doing?”

Languid, the boy propped himself up on one elbow. “Slee-ping.” His voice, thin and affected, crawled from his red mouth. “Who are you?”

“Aria,” said Aria, before she could think better of it. “I’m sorry, I saw you and thought… Are you all right?”

The man cocked his head back and forth with a soft crunch. “Yes. Only rest-ting.” Huge irises, shifting with his eyes on a half-second delay. Oversized color contacts reduced the sclera to slivers. He tapped his chest with the curled knuckle of his index finger. “Ru-fus.”

A creeping sensation began in the base of Aria’s spine, but she tightened her core against it. She’d seen far weirder things than someone asleep in the sun on their own front lawn. “You shouldn’t lie in long grass. You’ll get ticks.”

Rufus made a low humming sound and pushed himself upright, his hands in loose fists against the dirt. His gaze shifted to the boxes behind her.

“Not seen you before,” he said. “Moving in?”

The feeling got worse. It was the voice—creaky, as if damaged by years of screaming. But that wasn’t his fault.

“Uh,” Aria said. “Not really. Temporarily. But I used to. Have you lived in the neighborhood long?”

“Mm.” He was still sitting on his heels in the grass, leaning slightly forward onto his hands, staring up at her. “A while. Your family live here too? Boyfriend?”

Of course. Of course. “Yes,” Aria said loudly, “my boyfriend and I live here together.”

Again, Rufus looked at the driveway behind her. “He make you unpack? All by yourself?”

Aria’s face went hot. Broad daylight still, but the other houses sat quiet and far away. Her hand wandered to her pocket for her keychain, but it, and the unused canister of mace, rested inside on the kitchen island. “He’s coming later. After his krav maga class and court-mandated anger management therapy.”

To her surprise, Rufus drew away. Still on his knees, he inched backwards toward the porch, a furrow cut between his eyebrows. “Don’t be scared. Did not mean to scare Aria.”

The creeping feeling was in her stomach now. Blood beat in her palms. When she didn’t respond, Rufus cocked his head again. Something jingled around his neck.

“Aria… scared of dogs?”

“Now, see.” She could kick him if he came at her. Really hard, in the mouth. “We’re not doing this. Cut it out.”

“Don’t worry. Rufus is a ve-ry good dog.” Without extending his fingers, he pulled down his collar to reveal the leather strap buckled around his neck. A heart-shaped tag hung from the front loop, lasercut with his name. “People own him, train him very good. Not mean or scary to anybo-dy. Promise.”

“I’m gonna stop you right fucking there.” The sun was sickeningly bright, her whole body hot with adrenaline. “I do not have a problem with any of this, okay? Whatever you do in your house is your business. But you cannot do it with strangers. Stop this right now and talk to me like a normal person.”

Rufus let out a yipping laugh. “Aria person.” He tapped his chest again. “Rufus dog.”

“Stop it.” Tears rose fast in her sore eyes. She’d always been an angry crier. “I’m serious.”

Another low sound. “Aria scared. Did not mean to scare, not at all. Rufus go, not scare a-ny more.”

But he didn’t stand up. Through the blur of her tears, Aria watched him rise to all fours, amble through the grass, up the porch steps and through the flap in the neighbor’s front door.

She stood there crying for a long time. Sobbing great wracking sobs until her throat closed and snot ran into her mouth. Across the street, the houses watched, and nobody came out. The birds chattered. The wind blew through the trees. She was thirty-five and fucked.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?”

Her scalp was sweating. Her hands smelled sweet and familiar. Nearby, somebody cut their rumbling engine.

“Ma’am?”

She looked up. A pickup truck had parked at the curb, its red wheel wells chewed up with rust. Several bags of mulch slumped in the bed, a riding mower in the utility trailer. Inside, a man with short fingernails and a cap pulled over his curls leaned from the window.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“No,” said Aria. “I am not okay.”

The man’s arm dangled over a peeling label on the door: Dylan’s Landscaping. He dug around inside, then as if approaching a baby deer, stepped gingerly onto the grass with his hand outstretched.

“Here,” he said. “If you want.”

Aria stared at the twin packets pinched between his fingers: a rumpled sleeve of tissues and a blister pack of cinnamon Extra. Her face twisted.

“Why are you offering me gum?”

Helplessly, Dylan said, “I don’t have anything else. Unless—” he touched his breast pocket, “—do you want a cigarette?”

Sniffling, Aria took the tissues. “Do you have a cigarette?”

He produced a rigid red box, put two between his lips to light and then said, “Shit.”

“I’ll smoke it,” Aria said. “I don’t care. Just give it to me.”

She hadn’t smoked a Red in years. The filter tasted garlicky, but it made her pulse slow.

Dylan did not ask for her name. He did not ask why she was crying or if he could have her phone number. Instead, he stood there quietly, smoking, and took the butt when she was done.

“I should let you get back to it.” He tilted his head at the U-Haul. “I’d offer to help, but figure you’d rather not have a strange man in your house.”

“I’ve got it. Thanks, though.”

“No worries.” He moved to get back in his truck. “Have a good night, ma’am.”

Aria said, “Wait. Do you have a card?”

“For?”

She gestured to the lawn, the overgrowth of weeds at the treeline. “Landscaping?”

“Oh! I… I don’t have any on me. But, uh,” he reached through the open window and jotted down a number, “here. I don’t have a lot of regulars in this neighborhood, but you might see me around sometime.”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” said Aria. “Thanks for the smoke.”

Then, heart still thrumming, she watched his truck until it turned the corner and disappeared.

#

Keeping busy was a fool’s errand. Grocery shopping, laundry—things that would take an hour in the city took upwards of fifteen minutes in the suburbs, and driving around ate more money than free time. In the first week, Aria slept ten hours a night and still managed to burn through forty-five hours of podcasts, none of which distracted her for even a moment from the miserable trudge of her thoughts. At dusk, she sat on dirty patio furniture languishing in the ample backyard and sucked her vape until it tasted like batteries. She could almost see Sam’s shadow in the chair beside her.

He hated this house. She’d only brought him for Christmas the once, and he hadn’t slept at all. Too hot in the guest room, he said. And the carpet smelled weird.

It did, but she’d resented him for it then, and the longer she sat there, getting chewed by mosquitos, the more resentment came up inside her. If you loved me, she thought, you’d have left a note. And then: I’m sorry. This is all my fault.

Even then, as the velvet dark filled the empty second chair, she knew it wasn’t. She tried to think of what she could have done, what he might say to comfort her now, but there was nothing. Funny. His presence had been so huge. Aria slumped back, rubbing her bare heels on the concrete patio. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog began to howl.

Every bit of her flesh crawled. She had done her best to push Rufus from her mind, had not even seen him since that first day, but he still crouched in her brain, poised on his knuckles. An uncanniness.

Aria was not easy to shock. Her first year teaching, a fifth grader as tall as she was threw his chair at her head. Her second, a shooter got all the way up to the second floor and walked past her full classroom before another teacher disarmed him. Every year, something new, and yet she rarely raised her voice and could bring a room to heel with a look. She would not be frightened by some weird twenty-year-old.

But when the howling didn’t cease, she went inside, popped a Trazodone and dreamt of men, nude and kneeling, baying at the moon.

#

Her parents were difficult to reach, and during the brief calls that did connect, they only wanted to talk about Iceland. Anything she asked about the house next door either required so much repetition that she gave up, or did not seem to go through at all.

“A couple rents the place,” her mother said briskly, during a spare moment of clean air, “and I think they have a son, but I’ve never met him. You don’t turn off all the lights at night, do you? There was a burglary in the cul-de-sac seven months ago, and I don’t want anybody to think the house is empty.”

“I keep a light on,” Aria lied, “but—” The call dropped for the second time. She didn’t bother putting it through again.

All around her, summer continued its plod. Through the triptych of kitchen windows, she drank scaly Keurig coffee and watched sunlight scorch the neglected backyard, the overgrown place where her swing set had been. Sometimes, she sat in the public library until dark, or got lapped in the rec center pool by wiry old ladies. Her routine took shape by inches—lazy mornings, late nights. Lots of books and frozen meals, and a subtle definition in her shoulders. Occasionally, mostly in the dark, she thought of Dylan.

Then, about three weeks in, she made a mistake.

There was a summer storm—one of those big ones, the last great scream of a hurricane. Aria slept through most of it, but when she emerged from the garage the next morning, the carnage was everywhere. Enormous branches littered the lawn, and a huge chunk of the fence had been crushed by a fallen tree. One of the privacy hedges next door was down, and as Aria picked her way around the house to assess the damage, a flash of red caught her periphery.

Rufus sat in a lawn chair on the neighbor’s finished back deck. Before him, a shattered patio table lay in a billion beads. He was barefoot, his face screwed up and puffy, crying into his knees.

Automatically, Aria went, “Rufus?”

He startled and tried to scramble out of the chair.

“No, wait!” Aria held up her hands. “Don’t get up, there’s glass everywhere.”

Rufus froze. Without the glamor of sleep, his features were painfully human,. His hair hung limp in the front and stuck up in the back. Without opening his mouth, he made a soft, anxious noise, and turned his head away when Aria stepped to the edge of her property.

“Are you all right?” she asked. He still wore those contacts, and the collar, but she looked instead at his exhausted, miserable face. “You shouldn’t be out here without shoes. You’ll get cut. Is anybody here with you? Do you want me to call someone?”

Rufus shook his head no. He could have been twelve then, or six—a child too scared to sleep in the storm.

“Hey,” Aria said, and cleared her throat. Her voice was hoarse from lack of use. “Listen. You go put on some shoes, and I’ll get a broom. I’ll help you. All right?”

The way he looked at her. Blinking, like he was staring into the sun. When she returned, ratty broom and dustpan in hand, the empty table frame was upright and he knelt in the grass, sweeping glass into a dustpan of his own.

Only after the mess had been cleared did Aria look at Rufus, still on the ground, and say, “Are you sure there’s no one I can call? Your parents, or…?”

She expected a reaction, some nameable emotion, but the contacts sucked the nuance from his eyes. His eyebrows knit and unknit convulsively.

“Rufus people gone,” he said.

Why wouldn’t he break character? Did he expect her to play along? The thought made her skin itch. “Enough. Stand up,” she said, and Rufus turned his head abruptly like he’d been slapped. His collar jingled.

“People gone,” he continued without moving. “Trained Rufus, went a-way. Rufus wait-ting. They come back soon.” A lilt to his voice. “Hap-py to wait.”

Aria’s gaze flicked to her damaged fence, then to the empty street several yards away. He’s not hurting anyone, thought her most generous self. He’s only playing. There are a thousand innocent reasons for this. Trauma, social anxiety.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Tone light, mind open, but revulsion still rose in her. Every second spent standing here, she was encouraging him. Like glancing over at some creep in a bar by accident. “Do you ever… see anyone else?”

Rufus cocked his head. “See neighborhood. See Ari-a.”

Paranoia lit like a match in her skull. “I should finish cleaning up.”

He brightened. “Rufus help?”

“No, no.” That uneasy feeling, up from some ancient tar pit. “You stay here. Just stay here.”

Obediently, Rufus sat back on his heels. Hours later, when she glanced out the window into the dark backyard, she could just make out the shape of him, kneeling there. Looking into the night at something she could not see.

#

Aria hoped, naively, that if she ignored him, he would stop. She left the house at dawn and returned at dusk, driving twice past his empty porch only to pull into her driveway and find him ambling on all fours to the property line. Once, on a rare occasion when she went to get the mail, he trotted the full length from door to box with a red rubber ball in his mouth, calling her name.

“Aria! Aria! Aria!”

Desperate, she knocked on several neighborhood doors and received either no response or a rebuff about solicitation through the mail slot. She thought about calling the police, but this was the suburbs—shoot first, questions later, and as unsettling as she found Rufus, Aria didn’t want him dead. So she kept up the charade, ignoring his bids for attention and vaping out the open kitchen window.

Then the grass got long.

Dylan wanted her. Not in the base, slavering way of a young man, but subtle, almost shy. She knew it the first time he came to tend her lawn, the way he lit their cigarettes, his big hand cupping the flame. He wasn’t forward, or coarse. He didn’t touch her. But when she asked if he’d like to stay for dinner, eat on the patio and watch the fireflies, he said yes with such urgency that she almost laughed.

“I’m really not much of a cook,” she lied, just to hear him argue. “You’ll have to grade me on a curve.”

 “I’m not picky. Mind if I take an hour to change?”

“Sure. I’m not going anywhere. Just don’t leave me hanging.”

She stood on the driveway to watch him go, and where the guilt and shame should have been, there was only drowsy anticipation. She did not imagine what Sam would say. She did not think of him at all.

She turned back toward the front door, and there was Rufus.

He squatted on the welcome mat, knees spread, knuckles to the concrete. In all those weeks, never once had he crossed the property line, and now he sat at her own threshold, blocking it.

Aria’s fear lasted only a moment. She’d seen enough of him that he had become ordinary. A lonely creep with a crush.

Without moving, she said, “Get away from my door.”

Rufus pawed nervously at the ground. His eyes scanned the road and the empty windows on the other side.

“Get away from my door,” Aria said again. Rufus rose to all fours, straining front limbs, his skinny hips locking into place beneath his cargo shorts. He padded down the driveway with his head bowed. He stopped and sat several body lengths away. Beneath his chin, a shaving cut stood out clotted and scarlet.

“I’m not playing this game with you anymore.” Teacher voice. I’m-not-fucking-around voice. “Get off my property or I will remove you.”

Rufus growled up in his sinuses. “Not pla-ying,” he yipped, without mirth. “You let him in?”

“Excuse me?”

“In.” He tossed his head toward the door. “In Aria house.” His lips peeled away from his teeth. “Saw you.”

“You were spying on us?”

“Not spy. Just see. Don’t want Aria let him i-n.”

She advanced on him. “It is none of your business who I let into my home.”

Rufus shrank back. “Rufus know things. Aria should li-sten.”

“No. You listen to me. I already told you I do not consent to this, and you have repeatedly ignored me. Unless you stand up and speak to me in your normal voice, this is the last conversation we will have. Do you understand?”

Rufus did not move. The cords of his throat tightened. Then, gruffly, “Only one voice. This voice, only.”

Aria turned back toward the open garage. If he followed her, she would scream and somebody would come. Somebody would come if she screamed.

He did not follow her. By the time Dylan arrived with a case of beer under one arm, the driveway was empty. But Aria thought of him. He lay curled up in her mind all through dinner, his hands folded neatly beneath his chin. Only after two beers did she begin to think of anything else.

“Got any siblings?”

“Nope.” She got up from the kitchen table to put their empty plates in the sink. “Just me. You?”

“Three younger sisters.” A tipsy flush crept into Dylan’s face. “They’re all gone now, though. Moved away.”

Aria popped the top on another, feeling his eyes linger on the embroidered back pocket of her jeans. “Nothing to keep them in Westbrooke?”

“Not much to keep anybody in Westbrooke.” He’d changed his shirt, changed his pants, probably changed his underwear, but the smell of grass and diesel still clung to his hands.

“What about you?” Aria asked.

“What about me?”

“You’re still here.”

Dylan shrugged. “No money to go anywhere else. But it’s nice around here. Quiet. Everybody minds their own business.”

“Is that so?” Barefoot on the linoleum, the humid air tonguing the back of her neck. “For some reason, I’m finding that hard to believe.”

He laughed. “Okay. Maybe I don’t mind my own business. But for some reason, I’m getting the sense you don’t mind so much.”

“I don’t.” She stepped one long, careful leg between his thighs. “Want another beer?”

All at once, he was on her. Thumb through her belt loop, pulling her pelvis-first against him. Delighted, Aria realized that without his boots, he was an inch shorter than her.

“How about dessert instead?” he asked, and sucked in a breath when Aria cupped the diamond tenting his chinos.

“Yeah,” she said, “let’s have dessert.”

They fumbled to the couch. Dylan wrenched off her jeans and panties with both hands, his tongue flat, unhesitating. Aria grasped for his hair.

“I’m on a lot of medication,” she said breathlessly. “I might not be able to…”

Without lifting his head, Dylan gave a thumbs up. Dead tissue lit up against his face. A howl, a flush of color—carbonation rising in her bloodstream. Warm light. She jerked against him, pressed his ears between her thighs. Her head turned toward the window beside the TV and the half-foot of night between the blinds and the sill.

A set of bulging eyes peered in from the dark.

Aria screamed. She scrambled for the afghan on the back of the couch, screaming and screaming until Dylan could extract himself to run outside. He returned empty-handed, the flush dead on his cheeks.

“I walked around the whole house twice. There’s nobody out there.”

“I saw him,” Aria said.

Dylan pulled down the blinds and sat beside her on the couch. “There’s nobody. Maybe it was a deer, or a stray cat?”

“You don’t understand. There’s a…” She paused. There’s a man next door pretending to be a dog, and nobody’s seen him but me.

Dylan was looking at her expectantly.

“Never mind,” Aria said. “You’re right. It was probably just… a cat.” A levitating cat, with dinner plate eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Dylan brought his face close to her neck. “Just relax.”

Aria stared at the white phalanx of the blinds. The illusion of inside, separated from the long, low dark. A flimsy boundary.

Too loudly, she said, “Let’s take this to the bedroom.”

When Dylan picked her up, his mouth on her shoulder, she didn’t resist.

#

Afterwards, nearing sleep in the windowless spare room, he asked if she was okay.

“Me?” She had been thinking about Sam. He never held her like this after they made love. How much must he have hated her, in those final days. If he even thought of her at all.

Dylan propped himself up on his free elbow. His belly pressed against the small of her back.

“Yeah, you,” he said. “What’s up? You’re quiet.”

It was too soon to have done this. She couldn’t turn to face him. “I’m just thinking.”

“About?”

“Nothing. Do you do this with all your clients?”

A soft laugh behind her. “No, can’t say that I do.” He shifted onto his back, and after a moment, Aria rested her cheek against his warm shoulder.

“I don’t, either,” she said. “Not that I know many landscapers.”

They lay there, watching the dusty ceiling fan oscillate. His heart thudded slowly under his ribs. “Gotta say, I’m glad I stopped a couple weeks back. Usually wouldn’t in a neighborhood like this, but you were so…”

“Soggy?” Her voice stayed light. Detached. “I must have looked awful.”

“Nah. Just sad.”

“Scared, more like.”

This seemed to surprise him. “Of?”

She couldn’t say. She shouldn’t. But he felt so close and careful beside her. “My neighbor, I guess.”

“Your neighbor?” Dylan shifted. “Which neighbor?”

“The one with the porch.” Then, when Dylan abruptly sat up beside her, “What?”

“There isn’t supposed to… I mean, I know the folks who live there.” Tension bled into his voice. “Nice older couple. Cut their grass once or twice, but I thought they were away for the summer.”

His reaction threw her. Immediately, she thought of Rufus, hiding in the crawlspace or sleeping curled up between a pair of corpses.

“I’ve not met them,” she said. “My parents said they might be renting, or maybe it was their son.”

“They told my boss they were gone. Their son’s been weird to you?”

“He’s been… I don’t know. He just doesn’t seem well.”

“How?” His attention made her suddenly self-conscious. “Did he make a pass at you?”

“No. It’s hard to say. He hasn’t done anything.”

“But he creeps you out.” Dylan paused. “Do you want me to go over there?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not? I wouldn’t mention you.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything. Please, just leave it.”

Dylan settled onto his back again, his shoulder touching hers. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

But she could feel his curiosity breathing beside her all night, like an animal in the dark.

#

When she woke, the covers were still warm. She unfolded herself from the bed, slipped into her robe and emerged into the silent house.

“Dylan?” Her voice travelled up to the vaulted ceiling.

No reply. Maybe he had gone out to his truck, or had an early appointment. Feeling vaguely slighted, Aria began to open the blinds in the kitchen. The freshly manicured backyard looked wonderful, if you liked that kind of thing. In the family room, she hesitated, tempted to just keep the blinds closed and block out the house next door completely.

Relax, she thought, and pulled up the blinds.

Dylan was on the neighbor’s porch. He stood before the open front door, gesturing to somebody just out of sight. As she watched, eyes wide, he threw his head back and laughed.

Aria tore through the house and spilled out onto the front lawn. The sun hovered hot over her neck like an open mouth.

She had nearly reached the porch before she saw him.

Rufus, two-legged, standing on the threshold of his house.

He was awful to look at, badly constructed, all cheap, cartoonish angles. His shoulders rolled forward like a chimpanzee’s. His mouth was open.

She could almost smell him—earth, wet hair. A dog, dressed as a man.

From the porch, Dylan turned, raised a hand.

“Morning!” he called, as if they were strangers. Blind to the lurid horror standing over him. Then, back to Rufus, “Tell your folks to give us a call when they get back, all right?”

Unblinking, Rufus nodded and disappeared into the house.

The trance broke. Aria stalked up the porch steps, dripping sweat. She raised her fist and hammered hard on the chipped white paint.

“Rufus!” she screamed. “Rufus! I know you can hear me!”

“Whoa, whoa!” Dylan held out his hands, but she could not see him through the bloody tunnel of her vision.

“I know what you’re doing! Come out here and play your little game!”

Dylan stepped between her and the door. “Aria, calm down.”

Something exploded inside her, like a glass falling from a cabinet onto the kitchen floor. He moved to take her shoulder, and she slapped his hand away.

“I told you not to speak to him.”

Dylan drew back. The late morning light carved triangles beneath his cheekbones and eyes.

Coolly, he said, “I wasn’t talking to him about you.”

“But now he’s seen you.” Aria’s face crumpled. “He knows I told you!”

Dylan caught her wrist when she swiped at him again. “That’s enough.”

“Let me go.” She pulled, but he held her fast.

“Not until you calm down.”

The sound that came from her started low and rose into a wordless, full-body scream. Across the street, no one emerged from the houses. “Let me go. Let me go!”

Dylan did not let her go. His eyes raked over her, wide with disgust. Sam’s eyes.

“Fine,” he said. “But if you hit me again, I’ll hit you back.”

Aria buried her dripping face in her hands. “I never want to see you again.”

The sound of his boots tromping down the porch stairs. The jingle of his keys. Burnt orange afterimages decorated the backs of her eyes and within, an absence. A hole in the shape of a dog.

#

Aria called her parents three times before they answered.

“I can’t stay here. I need to go home.”

“Aria? We’re hiking Látrabjarg,” said her mother. In the background, seabirds shrieked at each other. “What is it?”

“Please… Please send me some money so I can go home.”

“Slow down.” Her father sounded like he was speaking through a tin can. “What do you need money for?”

“To go home. Please?”

Her mother said, “Did something happen?”

“I… I just need to go…”

Go home? To where? Her lease was done, her few friends living in one bedrooms without room for an air mattress. She had no savings, no job until her contract renewal in the fall.

“What happened?” asked her parents. “Is this about Sam?”

The future peered at her through the lensless eye of a pinhole camera—tiny, upside down. “Not everything is about Sam.”

“Then what?”

An absurd calm took her. It stirred through her sinuses up to the shallow veins of her scalp. Why should she go? What could Rufus do when the worst thing she could imagine had already happened?

“Aria. Are you still there?” Her mother’s voice took on the teacher’s edge. “Answer me.”

“Forget it.” She hung up.

She spent the rest of the day at the rec, where she swam until her legs shook walking back to the car. No sign of anybody when she drove past the house, but she lapped the neighborhood anyway, noting illuminated streetlights and a single lawn flooded with kids’ toys. Inside the house, she retrieved the hideakey and examined each closed room. Then, satisfied, she checked the locks again, popped a Trazodone and fell into bed.

The sleep that came was soft and deep, the sheets cool on her legs. She slipped down, down into the murk, down into the windowless dark.

#

It was still dark when she woke. Unthinking in her haze, she stretched out her limbs.

Her foot struck something solid.

Her big toe traced the edge of it, then glanced off into the expanse of unoccupied sheet.

She opened her eyes to pure black. Darker even than the map in her mind. She could not make out the battered recliner in the corner, or the bathroom’s door frame.

But she could see the shape at the foot of the bed.

Her eyes shut. The afterimage remained: a pile of fair skin.

She was dreaming. She had to be dreaming, and yet she could move, and think. Inches away, the figure shifted. She felt the air change.

The smell. The smell. Indole. Saline.

A breath stayed locked behind her teeth. She didn’t dare open her eyes again. Rufus would know. He would raise his head and train his bulging, whiteless gaze upon her.

She could not let him realize she was awake. But she had to breathe.

Aria exhaled silently through her nose. The trembling outline of her chest went down, and up, and down. Her heart beat like a rabbit’s.

Slowly, her foot drew toward the edge of the mattress. Her flesh rasped deafeningly against the sheets.

Slower. Her pinky toenail breached the duvet. Then the rest of them, one at a time, until the whole foot was out.

The carpet creaked as she set her foot down.

The mound did not move.

With great effort, she began to breathe again. In and out. In and out. Slow.

With both feet on the carpet, Aria couldn’t bring herself to stand.

Okay. Okay. To the car… no. She couldn’t open the garage door without rousing him, and how could she know he hadn’t tampered with it somehow? The house with the toys spilled across the yard came to her. She would cut across to the cul-de-sac and scream until they let her in.

All that remained was getting to the back door.

The pile on the bed seemed to pulse. It did not stir as she slid out from beneath the covers, nor when her knee popped under her weight. With exaggerated slowness, she crept for the door. The pile remained still, dreaming. Sweaty hand on the shining doorknob—a soft click.

To open it, she had to look away from the bed. She turned her head and the shape disappeared. Would the hinges squeak? Not if she opened it in one push. Aria gripped the doorknob and shoved. She was through. Her head snapped to the bed.

The figure was gone.

Aria shot down the hallway, clipping the wall with her shoulder, the kitchen and its screen door just a few feet away.

He caught her by the hair before she reached the kitchen island: the silk bonnet slipped away from her skull. Another grab for the back of her t-shirt, and she was ensnared. The floor leapt up to meet her. She fell hard, scrabbling for the kitchen tile, and then she saw him.

He was naked, his penis bobbing against his belly like a dowsing rod. His hands, enrobed in black nitrile gloves. His face obscured by a balaclava.

No. Not a balaclava. A mask. A leather dog mask, its muzzle hanging loose by a single rivet to reveal a smear of gums and teeth. The eyes, shining black from their holes.

The systems of her body failed. Her joints locked. Her bladder let go.

Through a mouthful of shining teeth, Rufus said, “Told ya, Ari-a.”

Aria could only groan.

“Told ya not to let him i-in.” When he spoke, something fluttered and dripped from his mouth. “He come back, when Aria gone. Case neighbo-rhood. Check windows and locks. Rufus see.”

“Wh…what?”

“Burg-laaar.” His voice lilted, self-satisfied. “He came here to-night to Rufus house. See if somebody home. Aria’s too. And Aria all al-lone.” He shook his head. Cold saliva and blood spattered Aria’s face. “But Rufus catch him. Rufus good dog.”

“Rufus.” Her nails dug deep in the carpet. “Where is… Where is Dylan?”

Rufus tossed his head toward the door. “Outside. Rufus stop him. Then Rufus come to check. Make sure Aria safe.” He bent forward, panting slightly. From his neck dangled a dripping key. “With copy.”

“You made a…” All at once she could see it. The hideakey. The fucking hideakey. She let out a high, keening sob.

Rufus’s lips curled. The air around him stank of blood and shit. “Aria lonely,” he rasped. “Rufus stay with her. Protect her.” He tilted his chin down, and the scant light caught the hazel in his eyes. “Rufus good do-og.”

Aria forced herself to hold his gaze. Her digestive system squirmed.

“Y-Yes,” she said. “Ru… Rufus is a good dog.”

Instantly, his body language changed. His head came down, his shoulders rounding. The awful limbs curled in obediently.

Aria sat up and said, “Come here. G-Good dog. Good boy.”

Bent almost double, he pressed his face into her outstretched palm. The leather fold of his ear slotted between her thumb and forefinger. From between the fences of teeth, his rough, bloody tongue lapped at her forearm.

Crazily, she thought of that urban legend of the girl woken by her puppy licking her hand, only to find the animal disembowelled in the tub and the message, Humans can lick too.

“Oh, what a good dog. Aria’s good boy.”

Her other hand reached up to cup the back of his head. A tuft of sweaty hair pressed flat and fanning from the hem of the mask. She brought him forward, into a half crouch, so he could look into her eyes. “Come kiss my face, good boy.”

   The tongue pulled itself from her arm, moved to her neck. Her chin. She could smell the offal on his breath. She cradled his whole head in her arms now.

And turned abruptly making him stumble. With the force of his falling, Aria smashed his face into the wooden slat. Gripping the mask, she smashed it again. And again, and then she was on top of him, fingers in the eyeholes, twisting the mask around until its gaping face screamed up at her.

Aria pulled. Rufus’s neck craned backward, hands clawing the carpet. A cry through the skintight leather seal over his mouth. Reek of bile, clotted blood.

With both hands, Aria wrenched the mask back until his bones creaked. He thrashed, gasping, beneath her. Then the hands went limp.

Long after he was still, long after it was over, she remained on top of him—straddling his back, fists full of leather. Only when her shoulders shrieked in pain did she let go.

His head hit the floor with a thump. Panting, Aria stood and, without looking back, staggered into the backyard.

A finger of indigo breached the horizon. She lurched forward, onto the grass, and stepped in Dylan.

Little more than a shape in the dark, he crunched like a spider. Aria convulsed. “I’m sorry,” she said, weeping, pulling her foot free. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this.”

Through the space in the fence, into the next lawn. The cul-de-sac, the children’s toys. Only a seven-minute walk away.

#

Rufus came back to the sound of a telephone. He could not see, but reached backwards and found his face on the other side of his skull. The interior smelled rotten, until he turned the mask and smelled hair and dust instead.

The telephone ceased, then began again.

Frustration welled in him. How could she do this to him? He’d been a good boy, she said so. Had he not explained how he was protecting her well enough? Or had she not been listening?

The telephone shrieked. He answered it.

“H’lo? Aria? No, she’s not here. No, I’m her… neighbor.” His breath came in soft, exhausted puffs. “No. Somebody tried to break in. She asked me to stay with her, but she just stepped out.” A pause. “No, ma’am. No. She left me in charge. But she’ll be right back. Yes, I’ll tell her. You too. Bye.”

The line went out. Rufus rolled his neck, then rose on his legs again, and performed an experimental growl.

A good dog is patient. A good dog would wait. But it was so dark.

She couldn’t have gotten far.