Two Toes, One Finger

Two big toes and an index finger was all that was left of Ramona. She had been making an earl grey, like she did every morning, when she combusted. It was late afternoon by the time Charles got home and found the bloody remains of his mother splattered all over the kitchen blinds, linoleum, appliances and the various bits of crockery collected from jumble sales over the years. It was an alarming sight to come home to, to say the least. He wondered at first if an early-rising murderer had stormed the pink cottage, knifed her to death and cackled with glee as they tossed her innards around like confetti in some deranged killing frenzy. If it was murder, whoever it was had really gone to some trouble to make sure the room was painted crimson. He stood frozen in the doorway pondering the possibilities, until he saw the finger on the kettle. His eyes darted around the space, absorbing the blood caked on the ceiling, architraves and in crevices he had never noticed before, until they settled on two dismembered toes by the refrigerator. His pupils dilated and his jaw tensed. He felt his chest tighten, his fists clench, and that thicker-than-average vein in his temple start to throb. There was no knifeman on the loose. The combustion had finally happened.

‘Shit,’ he whispered, stepping into the room carefully, drawing a chair out from under the table, brushing a tuft of bleached hair from the seat and lowering himself carefully onto the vinyl. It was cold outside and his knee joints objected, but Charles barely noticed. The asbestos house had barely changed since it was bought by his family in the ‘50s. It was poorly insulated and often felt damp when the fireplace wasn’t burning. The kitchen cupboards had doors with rounded edges and button locks, the wooden drawers made a thunking sound when pulled from their sockets, the ceiling was probably once a crisp shade of white but had since aged into a peeling shade of grey, and the brown speckled floor felt tacky under his Nike’s. He had asked Ramona if she would like a new kitchen many times throughout his adult life, but she flatly refused. She hated change. If she could somehow see the mess she had created, she would be furious. She’d probably hurl something heavy across the room, Charles thought, as a broad smile spread across his creased face. He immediately felt guilty, but struggled to suppress a giggle that came bubbling to the surface. He smiled wider, looked around, and began to howl with laughter. ‘How do you like that?’ He yelled into to the vacant room. His voice felt echoey and hollow. He had never yelled in that house without Ramona yelling right back, but there he was, roaring into the void with no one to stop him. He laughed so hard he doubled over hit his knees with his forehead. His diaphragm hurt, his cheeks ached, his eyes were watering and he struggled to breath. The laughing turned into coughing and he knew he’d overdone it — it was probably the ghost of Ramona, spiting him for the last time, as if combusting on his watch wasn’t enough. He coughed wildly into the palms of his hands, feeling thick phlegm jettison from his lips and into his outstretched hands. He rested his palms on his knees, spread the stringy mucus over his jeans, and focused on his breath — inhaling deeply and deliberately. ‘Fuck,’ he croaked.

He had suspected the combustion was coming, everyone in his family did, but he didn’t know it would happen quite so soon. According to his uncle Jim, the issue was always going to be trying to explain her death to police. ‘That’s why your grandad’s in jail,’ Jim told a 20-year-old Charles. ‘He didn’ get on with the police too well so when he said “me wife exploded”, he couldn’ prove shit. Charged with murder. Never saw ‘im again.’ It was supposed to be a word of caution, but Charles didn’t want caution, he wanted a solution. From what he gathered, someone in every generation in his family had been locked up for murder because no one had figured out a way to explain to the authorities that spontaneous combustion was a genetic trait. From the outside, they looked a little like a family of murderers.

‘But what should I do if it happens?’ He asked Jim.

‘When it happens,’ Jim replied, tapping his nose knowingly.

‘Will I combust?’ he blurted. ‘Are we all going to combust?’

Jim laughed.

Charles felt frustrated.

Was it some perverse rite of passage in their lineage to have a loved one explode and work out how to explain it to everyone yourself? Jim winked at him with every follow-up question, his aunts brushed off all his queries, and no one would tell him what jail his grandad was in. ‘Why does no one see grandad?’ he finally asked.

‘Aw, well, he weren’ too nice,’ Jim said casually, opening a wet bottle of Hahn. ‘Bes’ stay away.’

Charles had desperately wanted to ask his grandfather what to do in the event that his mother combusted, but Jim’s advice — however unhelpful — resonated with him. If his grandad was anything like Ramona, he was better off steering clear.

Charles spluttered again and cursed Jim. He died of liver failure about a decade ago, having never found himself in the predicament that plagued his forefathers. Charles didn’t necessarily believe in the afterlife but, if Jim’s spirit was wafting aimlessly around, he hoped the old man heard his curses. He rose slowly out of the chair, knees cracking as he did, and carefully dodged entrails as he walked over to the kettle. Ramona’s index finger was curled around the handle, as though she was mid-lift when disaster struck. The bone was all brown and splintered around the nub. A thin stream of blood that likely oozed from the body part following the explosion had dried and turned into a crusty trail of maroon that pooled around the base of the appliance. Charles plucked the digit from its resting place at the base of the handle and carried it over to the table. Sitting in the middle was a large piece of chocolate cake. How had he not noticed that before? Upon closer inspection, it was flecked with bone and hair. Charles closed his eyes and fought the urge to vomit. Breathing deeply, he wove his way over to fridge to retrieve his mother’s toes. One was stuck to the white metal like a magnet. ‘Greetings, from where you’d rather be,’ a nearby post card read, with a panoramic of Honolulu. Charles suppressed a shudder. He wondered how a big toe could possibly stick to the refrigerator for hours without falling off, but he soon realised it hit the smooth finish with such force that it had kind of splattered its way on. Charles, yet again, struggled not to gag as he plucked the toe, still festooned with magenta polish, from the white good. The dead muscle made a crackling sound as it peeled away, leaving a brown and brittle toe-shaped outline on the metal. Holding the flesh delicately with two fingers in one hand, he stepped to the side of the appliance and picked the left toe up from the skirting board. It was in much better condition that her other digits and appeared almost completely undamaged, dismembered state aside. He carried them over to the table and placed all three phalanges side-by side. They were the only recognisable parts of Ramona he had left and figured he should collect them for a private cremation service, or something. He gazed at them helplessly.

Charles figured that if anyone heard the explosion, they would have called emergency services long before now. Ramona only really left the house to buy groceries and go to the club. She always said she had friends at bingo, but Charles knew they were acquaintances — she was not someone who could easily hide her emotions, and made ordinary questions feel like an interrogation. But even if she only saw a few people a week, it was enough for someone to notice her absence. Charles closed his eyes tightly, took his phone from his pocket, scrolled through his contacts until he reached his cousin Andrew. Andrew had held him over Jim’s pool by the ankle as a small child and took great delight taunting him about his receding hair line as a young adult, but he seemed to have mellowed as he aged. He was worth a shot. Charles clicked ‘call’ and waited to hear his older cousin’s raspy voice on the other end. But it never came. The phone rang out. ‘Oh my god,’ he moaned, dropping the phone so hard on the table that Ramona’s right toe jump to attention on its nub. ‘Ugh,’ he sounded, disgusted, and knocked it back down onto its side. Charles flopped back onto the chair. Even if he did somehow manage to purge the kitchen of human remains, what would he do with them? Surely the garbage-sorting overlords were usually on alert for body parts. Charles felt his chest tighten for the second time that evening. He had visions of himself as an old man living in the same house he was born in, screaming at kids to ‘get off my lawn!’ not because he cared about the lawn, but because he didn’t want anyone to find his mother’s body secreted away in the attic. Even if he kept her in the roof, possums, rats and maggots would swarm her decaying remains. The stench would be unbearable. When the police came around, which they inevitably would because someone at bingo would express concern, he wouldn’t be able to mask the smell of rotting flesh from their prying nostrils.

He reached into his front pocket for a Marlborough, but instead pulled out an empty packet. Frustrated, he tossed it on top of his phone and stared at the red and white packaging. ‘Oh my,’ he said aloud. Charles tentatively reached into the pocket of his jeans for a box of matches and placed them carefully on the table next to the left toe. A raging asbestos house fire probably wasn’t the best idea but, then again, he was sure he wouldn’t last a day in jail. With your grandfather, he suddenly thought. Charles shook his head furiously, trying to purge the thought from his mind. That couldn’t be allowed happen, obviously. The house had to go. Charles felt a burst of energy. He jumped up as fast as his knees would allow and leapt over pieces of carcass to the fireplace in the living room. He piled it high with wood, sticks and leaves from the kindling bucket, and pages from books his mother kept on the nearby shelves. He splashed kerosene over the stack and threw some matches in, before racing back into the kitchen, opening the oven and turning the gas on. Charles was smiling widely — he couldn’t help it. Maybe his grandfather and everyone before him were too stupid to come up with a way to avoid life behind bars, but not him. He stood in the middle of the kitchen and laughed raucously. ‘Fuck you, uncle Jim!’ he bellowed, cackling so hard his diaphragm start to ache. Charles bent over to catch his breath, but was alarmed when he couldn’t. He stopped laughing. A burning feeling began to rise up his oesophagus, extending into his fingers, ankles and mouth. Charles’ eyes began to bulge and he felt his tongue balloon in his mouth. He couldn’t breath at all and was starting to panic. His belly swelled, his legs ballooned and the pressure in his hands was starting to build until, one by one, he watched his fingers pop off his hand and hit the walls of the kitchen.