House of Flies - The Magnus Archives - Melanie King

[aroberuka]

Title: House of Flies
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Challenge/Prompt: Genprompt bingo - That moment in detail
Content Warnings: Body horror; graphic depictions of illness; emotional torture/manipulation.
AO3 Link: here

***

"Do you want to know what really killed him?"

Elias's face is impassive. Smug bastard doesn't have a smirk for her, not now. When he opens his mouth she can barely hear him over the flies.


(There's so many of them. There's not a single one. The air is thick with them. The air is empty.

Where are they coming from?)


Finding Ivy Meadows had been such a relief, one single stroke of good luck in a fucking awful year. Melanie hadn’t been sure she could afford any place at all, and she’d heard enough horror stories of people wasting away in bad nursing homes to be wary of anything that fell within her limited price range. But Georgie had recommended this one and it was— fine , it was fine. Homely and clean, and everyone so friendly.

There was a little garden plot in the backyard. Her father had been growing tomatoes the last time they spoke.


(Her father had been growing flies, skin splitting open like ripe fruit, oh-god-oh-please-I-Do-Not-Want-To-Know.)




"Awful, isn't it? He really suffered. Not really your fault. Just bad luck. That doesn't comfort you, does it?"




(The pain had been constant in the end as his body started to rot alive. Skin flaking away. Muscles withering to nothing. Maggots feeding on his flesh. Robbed of his dignity, his mind, his self. Nothing to do or think about except what he was becoming. His entire body a gaping, festering wound.

Same as her leg.)


(Why did I think that?)


When they'd told her about the fire she'd sat on the kitchen floor and tried to remember the last time she’d made the trip to Woodley.

It shouldn’t have been so hard. She didn’t go every week but it was damn close. She made sure. She made time . But there’d been all the drama with Andi’s ex, and then they’d had to find someone to fill in for June in a pinch—Ghost Hunt UK was just starting to pick up traction, she couldn’t just put everything on hold—two months? Three?

She hadn’t thought anything of it. Just her own rotten luck. She’d get there soon enough. And anyway it wasn’t like her father was on his own up there. He had friends in Ivy Meadows. He was cared for, that was the point . If anything happened he would call her. Someone would.


(The phones didn’t work anymore. The doors and windows were locked tight. They'd been cut off from the rest of the world, left to fester and rot.

To incubate.

There was comfort in that, when he could think past the pain. At least the filth wouldn’t spread. At least Melanie was safe, at least.

But sometimes the flies would bubble and buzz under his skin in ways that sung of home, and he’d wonder then when she would come to see him. His little moth. She should meet her new siblings. They would love her oh so well.)




"Take it back, take, take it back..."

"I'm afraid that's not really something I can do."




There’s a letter opener on the desk. Blade sharp and ready. Within arm’s reach. Elias left it there on purpose. Making a point.

She will not hurt him.


(Hurt, her leg hurts, pain-pangs-rot spreading from where the bullet hit. Didn’t hit. There was no bullet. There is. It’s calling to her in the quiet. Singing its song of anger and violence. Singing of home, too, in its own twisted way. She wants to drown in it. It would be easy. No poison, no knife, no letter opener; she’d tear him apart with her bare hands. It would be easy. He is not a strong man.

He is.


Hurt, her father hurt. She knows his pain. She Knows—

Her leg hurts.)


She digs her nails into her palms until she bleeds.




When he finally allows her to leave he doesn't even have the decency to gloat.