It Seemed a Little Thing

        As I write this I sit alone in my room, having returned home although , no doubt the  authorities are already on their way. I feel compelled to make some note of the events earlier in the day, even should it incriminate me further. I don’t know what will become of the record should someone find it, or how it has made its way to you, but, regardless of the circumstances, what I write here is the truth, in my own words  

        It seemed as ordinary a Christmas Eve as any other. we were told to lock up the shop by nine and it was half seven. The small store at which I work, located off a carriageway bypassing the two nearest towns, was empty most of the traffic having dwindled off. By seven thirty I completed the last of the sweeping and settled in to wait for the shift to end at nine o’clock. waiting for the night to end.

        I was on one of those dating apps, mindlessly swiping again and again, no one being of particular interest, when my supervisor entered the small back room in which I was sitting.

        “Well, ya’ able to do a car?”

         I put my phone away and, in an attempt to appear impassive followed him out onto the shop floor where I saw the woman waiting outside. She was pretty, perhaps in her early thirties, and wore an expensive looking cream coat. I approached her wearing the visor and gloves and she smiled at me.

        “I’ll bring the car over now.” She smiled revealing a set of perfectly white teeth set equal and square in her comfortable looking gums. She was rather attractive when she smiled. She pulled her car up in front of the entrance to the carwash and I removed from my pocket the small set of orange keys I needed to work the machine.

        I should say it was Baltic, without wind or rain, but with a quiet heaviness in the air that seemed to foretell an oncoming blizzard or storm.  Located across the lot from the entrance to the station proper, the car wash was little more than a cuboid hut, blue in colour, with two large jets hanging from the roof. The first was for water and the second for soap and, as the carwash was not mechanized, I was required to use the jets and supplied tools to clean each vehicle that came through.   Only half the strip-lights in the carwash worked and so one side of the car was hidden almost completely in darkness while the other was visible to me. I set to work. Through the windows I could see the woman getting comfortable, scrolling on her phone, oblivious to me. I hosed the car down, strips of dirt coming away with the pressure.

When I saw the child, its profile outlined as it was in that shadowy space, it seemed a little thing, nestled in the protective chair facing toward the back of the vehicle. I think it was a girl, although I have no idea why, it could have as easily been a boy, but regardless, as I washed the window by where it sat I became aware of its staring at me, unblinking, and the inexplicable expression of disgust that gradually animated its features as I carried out my work. I thought little of it, the child being a thoughtless creature, and carried on, but as I passed the hose across the window through which it regarded me the infant began to wail.

        I quickly made a face in an attempt to hush it up but, poor as the visibility was, I could tell it was flailing and upset. The mother turned toward the child and in so doing activated the internal light and, perhaps it was the suds and water cascading down the windowpane, or the odd lighting of scene, but as I peered within the baby’s face seemed to crumple in around itself in an expression of unspeakable malevolence and anger. There was no sadness in those eyes, just rage. The colour in its eyes was gone completely and instead was only hollow darkness. It seemed to melt beneath the spray of the water on glass. The mother took the baby up and out of sight. My descriptions do not do it justice. It wasn’t even human. Shaking my head to clear it I finished at its door, the stopped crying and the moment passed. I went around the back of the car to collect myself. I couldn’t bare to catch another glimpse of it but I couldn’t get its features from my mind. I imagined it, crawling on all fours, its joints popping at uneven angles as its mother sang it rhymes. I gripped the hose and felt something leaking from the darkness, one long finger at a time.

        I stumbled around the other side of the car and glanced in through the window.  The baby snapped its head toward me and I knew it knew me, all my thoughts, knew I was scared, and wanted me to be. It’s face was long dead of human feeling, something else was withering there instead. The interior light lit every crack and angle in its face, something come from nightmares. I moved, as any sane and upright citizen of life would have.

        When she heard the door open the woman turned around and looked at me, I don’t recall the expression on her face but she struggled as I put an end to the thing she cradled in her arms. The evidence of what I write is there no doubt, smeared across the inside of the car. The hellish muck still coats my fingers. They must have found it, I can hear sirens in the distance.

Iarlaith Cunningham is a third year creative writing student in NUIG. He writes poetry and fiction. His work appears in The Galway Advertiser, Pandemic.ie, Sonder as well as others. He is EIC of Neuro Logical, an online magazine.