Spackle (Short Story)

Author's note: this story contains suggestive and disturbing content. Please proceed with care.

My walls must be full of holes. They are being patched up, but not by me.

I noticed it getting out of the shower a few weeks ago. There was this rough little piece by my linen cabinet, looking like my flat decided to grow stubble. It looked shoddy. Someone - my landlord, I assumed at first - had taken some spackle and a spatula to the plaster, then painted over it without sanding. The colour was different, but barely; like determining whether you’re looking at eggshell or bone. I ran my thumb over it, unthinking. It felt like the wall bulged, bucked against the skin and I reminded myself it was just part of the shitty paste job. That thought  didn’t stop my stomach from turning over. 

I mentioned it to my friend the next day, who started on a predictable yet cathartic tirade about how landlords always need to give notice before intruding, even for maintenance. That was, surprisingly, the first time I thought about how there hadn’t been a hole. 

The next week passed uneventfully. My landlord had never done anything bordering on impolite before,let alone trespassing, so I quietly assumed I had just never noticed the patch job before and moved on. Until I saw the next one. This one was in the bathroom too, but in the corner of a separate, walled off area for the toilet. I sat there, bored, picking pictures out of the swirls in the cheap veneer door when my eyes trailed higher. This one was around the same size as the first, the same colour painted over the same lumpy gauze and filler beneath it. Once I’d washed my hands, I got a footstool from the living room to stand on so my eye was level with it. It felt like it… watched me. My heart skipped for no reason as I assessed position and the impossibility of never noticing this one. The linen cupboard? Sure. I never use the linen cupboard. But I use the toilet. I’ve spent hours of my life in this tiny room. I know every corner due to curiosity born of sheer impassivity about shitting. My stomach roiled as I stepped down from the footstool and my back burned from the imagined stare from that palm-sized patch. 

I took it to my landlord that time. Asked about any maintenance performed recently. No, none, they said. You would know, they said. We are legally obligated to provide notice a minimum of 48 hours before entering the property, they said. I asked about past maintenance - had there been any holes patched before I moved in? Only one in my flat, they replied, frustrated about my insistence. To answer my questions, they needed to check records kept in a filing cabinet. That job was for the floor, they said - a board under the carpet needed to be replaced, no plaster involved. I nodded like someone who had been appeased and thanked them for their time. I went home to my flat and another new patch. 

This one was inside my bedroom cupboard, in the plaster at the very back. The cupboards didn’t have shelves in them, so they were filled with boxes up to my waist. There is a floor length mirror on the door I use when I’m getting dressed up. I was primping for a night with a friend when I noticed it. Or rather, I noticed its stare. My skin felt touched by a shock, flooding my body with the knowledge I was seen. It was almost erotic, like I was being undressed by a lover’s eye. Perhaps it was enticing for the patches, but my blood ran so cold I felt made of ice, even beneath the sleeping summer heat. I turned the light on, hurriedly looking around for an answer to the feeling. I wish I didn’t find one. I slammed the cupboard door and cried into my skirt, hiding within myself.

A few more appeared in the living room after that, one even popped up right above my kettle in the kitchen. About 17 craggy little patches of shoddy plaster, bulging and seething with their own voyeurism. It seemed at times the paint strained to contain it. I waited for the day it popped like a water stain and flooded my home, choking me finally in its grasping lust.

Walking around in that boxy flat, hungry gazes licking at my heels every hour of every day, I did consider getting help: going to therapy, signing in at the hospital, “Please, doctor, I see bad drywall repair everywhere, you have to help me!” I just couldn’t do it. I became, ironically, agoraphobic. I hated it inside my flat, but the outside was just too big, too empty. And no-one stared at me. The adrenaline from the gazes of the watching patches spiked me into a continuous fever, my hair stood erect at all times, and I eventually stopped drinking tea or coffee due to the shakiness of my hands. Although, I would still stand by the kettle so the kitchen patch could get a good look at me for a few hours. It was only fair. 

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes on the last day was a bright and shiny new patch on the ceiling, perfectly aligned with my eyes. I wondered if it would change where it appeared if I had woken up in a different position. It bored down on me with a hunger. Obediently, my hands quaking with shock - and maybe some madness - pushed down my thin summer sheets to  expose my body, slicked with sweat. Nightmares racked my mind. I hadn’t slept well in weeks. I  wondered more than once if they made me have bad dreams to watch my body thrash and writhe. It wasn’t enough for them to just… watch me. They needed constant stimulus, and I was the object of their attention, their affection. My new patch was the biggest. It seemed to throb, undulating with a steady beat as the sheets came away from my skin. They always seemed to like it when I slowly revealed my knees. Whenever I bared them from under skirts or pants or socks, I felt a great shiver thrum through the walls, causing them to sigh with ecstasy in the dead silence. It did this now, the sight only seen by my bedroom ceiling patch seemingly ricocheted to the others and relished, the image turned over in their collective mind with a heaving, moaning pleasure. It repulsed me as much as it thrilled me.

I was struck with a similar pleasure, not the first time it had occurred. But this one was powerful, pounding through my flesh with the primal drum of lust. I opened my legs and gripped my throat, my voice straining to be heard over their chorus. I wanted them to touch me, I wanted their gaze to ravage me, to feel the clammy paint against my skin, the stubbled plaster inside me. I reached a hand toward the ceiling, which I noted had come within arms distance. How considerate. My fingers slid along the smooth roof until I felt the pulsing gauze and chipped spackle of my lover, now over two feet wide, breathing heavily against my palm. I arched my back, bringing my sex upwards, begging to be one with their hard and stinging stare. I could almost feel it smiling, teasing for a few precious moments before they obliged. In a quick motion, I was brought flat with the roof, my body pressed between the bed and the ceiling, with no room to move. The patch itched and wriggled against me, rubbing repeatedly against my chest, my knees, my stomach, my thighs. As the crackling patchwork expanded further, I could finally kiss it, my tongue digging against the rapturous dust that sang down my lungs. The roughness chapped my skin, but my pleasure only increased as I thrust with what little strength and space I had against the patch, which finally, blissfully, penetrated me with a shifting hiss. I dug my nails into the flesh of the wall and cried out. Light behind my eyes exploded with something I can only assume is the physical equivalent to meeting God. I felt myself enveloped by the plaster. It crawled along my skin, finally quelling the electric current that had riddled my body for the past few weeks. The bliss of removing that adrenaline was almost as blissful as finally having my wandering eyes inside of me. My throat, arms, thighs, and my adored knees were wrapped lovingly in gauze as my body relaxed into this holy union. I wondered passingly if the next tenant would mind me watching them like this. I could feel my loving wall penetrating deeper, their touch growing in length as I was coated in them, until, thrillingly, their spearing grasp split through the usual boundaries of a human body and up into my intestines. 

I tasted something metallic for a split second before grinning as the spackle filled my mouth, climbing down my throat and into my lungs, pulsing with the heated lust of something that wanted to see absolutely every part of me.  

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