Gnat Milk

Kettle Street was bursting at the seams with sunlight, butterflies and daisies showing off shamelessly. All of Life reclined happily and lazily in its natural state, for once wanting no mercy from Time. Everything here moved slowly, for the sun held Kettle Street as though suspended in a bottle of oil; turning it this way and that for its own amusement.

But then a strange thing happened: A gust of wind turned the corner onto this blissful little ornament of peace, and its sharp breath went tunneling down the middle of the street. Everything shivered a bit. It was all too much for one rather magnificent butterfly, who promptly died on the windshield of Mr. Hornberg’s little tan Jetta.

The wind came and went. Hypnotizing warmth returned. But that wind had been an announcement; a kind of trumpet sound, for it had preceded something else that turned the corner now. This Something was much darker than the rest of the street, and certainly didn’t fit into such gay and cozy surroundings at all. The sun glowed in the very particles of the air as it held Kettle Street in a daze. And there in the middle, a bizarre aberration moved disruptively down the bottle’s neck. The sun observed this bent and hurried old creature with some dislike.

Whoever it was, he or she wore all black (the bluebirds gaped in horror and a squirrel tripped over some grass clippings, for very little of Nature knows anything about black and white). Heavy, black boots tromped insistently over the old cobbled stones. A black rubber rain jacket was pulled tight about old, bony shoulders sharp as right angles, and the creature shivered as it moved. A baggy black bonnet, like the ones nurses wore ages ago while they made tea and porridge for their little terrors (the kind having a hideous frill all round the edge and otherwise just a big sack, like a spider’s bum), was pulled low over the face, and from beneath it the most amazingly frazzled, fried and frizzy gray hair stuck out like millions of damaged antennae seeking a signal.

This unfitting creature moved as though driven by a pressing burden of duty, and disturbed the air so greatly that people felt it in their houses, or on their bikes or in their gardens all up and down the street. The magnificent, clunky boots lifted and fell at a brisk pace. Without knowing quite how or why, soon all eyes were drawn to observe the stranger draped in black; walking very, very fast down Kettle Street.

So everyone saw, of course, when that bent frame turned up Mrs. Dandridge’s walk (Mrs. Dandridge, of all people!), took Mrs. Dandridge’s polished brass knocker in a bony hand with all of its blue veins popping out like a map to the Underworld, and knocked - rather sharply, rather insistently - on that esteemed lady’s front door.

Several of the neighbors, who couldn’t claim an honest liking for Mrs. Dandridge, felt a secret thrill seeing that sensationally ill-fitting creature standing patiently in front of the pristine façade of Mrs. Dandridge’s picturesque Georgian house.

Several minutes passed. A gauzy curtain fluttered in a window. Finally, slowly, the handcrafted polished oak door swung open, and in its shadowy yawn the lady of the house stood, looking quite bewildered and unhappy at the scene before her. What she perceived of the situation I can’t tell, but she spoke suddenly and quickly before the stranger could announce themselves, saying,

“You have the wrong house, I’m sure,” and began to close the door.

But one heavy black boot shot speedily over the threshold, halting the door’s forward march, and the visitor replied in a voice like smoke and corn husks,

“Oh no, I’m sure I’m not.”

And then the black-clad visitor straightened some and removed the bonnet (revealing a very flattened and oily crown of straggling gray strands).

Mrs. Dandridge had not been expecting anyone, but even if she had been, this individual was certainly not it. She had thought, when she opened the door and took in the huddled black frame with the clunky boots and the awful, spider-like bonnet topping it all off, that this was an old woman: Some spinster come round to make claims of knowing Gregory, or to ask for donations to some church or cult or other.

But in fact, it was a little old man who clutched his very inappropriate bonnet between birdlike claws and smiled beamingly up at her. His mouth was full of slimy gray teeth.

“You are the very one to help me,” he said gently. His voice was soft and glucky - coated with milk residue. Mrs. Dandridge felt a wave of nausea, but she was not so far elevated in the world as to have forgotten some manners. She clutched the doorknob and said tightly,

“What can I do for you?” all the while feeling acutely sensitive to the eyes of the neighborhood.

“You see, I’ve gotten wind - and never mind how -” the old man tittered, his voice going unexpectedly shrill. Mrs. Dandridge felt an oozy sensation in her stomach, “ - I’ve gotten wind that you actually have a gnat problem.”

He whispered the last three words confidentially, as though the neighborhood could hear as well as see. Which perhaps it could.

A bubble of anxiety went into Mrs. Dandridge’s throat and just seemed to get bigger and bigger until her eyes watered. She was looking past him, at the false tranquility of the street. Suddenly her manicured hand shot out and gripped the strange visitor by the shoulder, yanking him over the threshold. The neighbors saw him swallowed into the cool shadows of that austere home, and then the door snapped shut with decided satisfaction.

“Ahh,” said the visitor, looking around appreciatively. The street’s hot glare was shut out. The front hall enveloped them in cool darkness.

Mrs. Dandridge still stood with her hand on the doorknob, trying to breathe out her anxiety bubble. After a moment she could open her eyes and look at him. He looked like a poop-splattered pigeon, turning this way and that with a slight waddle, his eyes as wide as though beholding Versailles itself. She didn’t know why exactly he ought to look poop-splattered. Anyway he certainly didn’t look clean; thus, fecal imagery occurred easily to her.

“This is very nice,” he said in that milky voice through those grimy teeth, stopping to smile at her. “It’s a positive labyrinth of stained glass and polished wood and spotless mirrors.” His gaze fell on a side table overladen with an array of fruits. He opened his mouth, as if he might say something about that. Then he closed it again, deciding not to.

Very suddenly he set down the case he held, with a sharp BANG! - she jumped - and abruptly busied himself unclasping the many clasps. Indeed it was a case of many clasps, as she noticed for the first time. Those little metal rectangles ran almost uninterrupted along the case’s edge. He had begun to hum some little tune while he set about opening the thing, and he made sure each clasp SNAPPED! in time with his song’s tempo.

His voice, and the unclasping of the clasps, echoed horribly through Mrs. Dandridge’s pristine halls and stairwells. Every time another one snapped open she jumped a little.

“I never caught your name,” she said breathlessly, coming a little closer (but not too close) and clicking her shiny red nails together as she always did in moments of vague anxiety.

He paused in his humming and smiled at her, his fingers hovering over the very last clasp.

“Oh, you can call me Milkman,” he said, and tittered. “And now, we mustn’t send the song up undone like that, you know. It will be very awkward if we don’t finish!” And he resumed his humming right where he’d left off, and at the perfect moment in the little tune - SNAP! - went the last clasp. The tune ended. The case fell open.

She had never seen an assortment of items so strange in form and magnificent in variety. But then, she had never seen anything like Milkman or his accoutrements from beginning to end.

Glass bottles - some of extreme girth and some oddly elongated; all neck - bent and twisted this way and that. A pile of lids with holes of varying grid patterns and sizes - some very tiny holes and some very large; some circle-shaped holes and some in other shapes - triangles, squares, and even stars. Coils of black rubber tubing, with spouts of varying shapes and sizes at the ends. A very severe-looking case of needles, the smallest being only the length of a fingernail and the width of a hair; the largest being as thick as her thumb and quite long enough to occupy the length of an adult forearm.

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking another baby step forward, “but did you say you are here for a - a gnat problem?”

He looked up at her and smiled.

“Yes.”

She laughed in disbelief.

“Well I’m sure I’m not aware of any such thing. And anyway if there is a gnat problem, it is easily handled. Really, there is no need -”

“But of course you aren’t, dear,” said the strange man. He had begun very speedily and knowledgeably screwing lids onto jars and inserting tubes into holes, and affixing spouts.

“Of course you aren’t aware. Gnats are a problem that can go unnoticed for, oh…” he sighed, “quite some time. And certainly you would not be the one to notice them, no.” His eyes rested meaningfully on her perfectly manicured nails. Feeling self-conscious for some reason, she curled her fingers in until those little stabs of brilliant red were hidden against her palms.

“Probably they are congregating in the corner of a cupboard somewhere, over a forgotten piece of fruit.” His eyes flitted to the huge pile of fruit on the table by the wall. “Or enjoying a standing bucket of water in your attic. The lady of such a fine house would never see such a little problem.” He tittered unpleasantly again. “No, but the maid. Or the cleaning lady. Someone else, to whom such trivial matters are delegated, will be the one to direct me to your little problem.”

He was correct that Mrs. Dandridge did not clean her own house. She never even picked up her own underwear off the floor. That would be Ms. Kent’s responsibility. Nor did she cook her own food, except on romantic occasions. Mr. Voss had that charge.

She cleared her throat. “You are quite correct, I’m afraid,” she said. “I wouldn’t be aware of such a trivial thing. The question is, why are you? And what is all this -” she gestured at the bottles and things “ - what is all this for, exactly?”

“Ah.” A strange glow came into Milkman’s eyes, and he looked frighteningly mad. There was a frenzy of delight in his expression that seemed barely tethered, and she was reminded somehow of a slathering dog that needed putting down.

“What all this is for…” He didn’t bother to answer her former question. “Such a beautiful, beautiful thing you ask me of! That, you will see. And now I must ask you to guide me to one of your lowly servants - someone who will know the location of the gnat herd.”

Gnat herd? Is that what he’d said? But Mrs. Dandridge was not practiced in taking an interest in the interests of others. She was exhausted by the mere thought of asking if she’d heard him correctly. She was ready to be rid of this walking spectacle, and she made up her mind suddenly that the quickest way to do this would be to give him what he wanted. Especially now that she’d let him into the house.

“This is their lunch break, and I’m not even sure they’re in right now,” she said. “But come with me and I’ll see if they’re here to talk to you. But then, if they’re out I really must ask you to leave.” And don’t come back.

“Of course, of course,” Milkman tittered, waving a hand dismissively. He had placed all of the items back into his case - now assembled into some sort of interconnected jar-and-tube system - and as it would no longer close he picked it up like an open display, holding it awkwardly in his arms as he waited to be led.

Her gaze swept over him once more, and with a mental sigh she turned and led him out of the front hall, down a long corridor consisting of several doors on the left and a myriad of paintings and photographs on the right.

“You take a particular enjoyment in fruit?” The Milkman’s soft voice enveloped them as they moved up the hallway. He was looking at the paintings and photographs, and all of them depicted arrangements of fruit.

“Yes,” she replied curtly.

Soon they emerged from the corridor into a huge kitchen, painted all white with a floor of black and white stone tile, and a great skylight letting in a flood of sun. Mrs. Dandridge’s heels clicked urgently across the floor, past all of the shiny metal professional-grade appliances; past the kitchen island bearing bowls and bowls of apples, blueberries, bananas, oranges, strawberries, mangoes and pineapples.

“Aahh,” the Milkman murmured softly.

She opened a door at the other end.

They entered onto a long and narrow brick-walled room, lined with storage shelves and cupboards. Much of the floor space was consumed by sacks of flour, sugar, nuts, and other baking goods. It looked like the storehouse for a restaurant - not a household of two. At the far end of the room a small, rickety table was wedged between two hulking storage shelves; pushed under the room’s only window and surrounded with more bags and boxes.

Seated at this diminutive furnishing were a man and woman, talking quietly and fully engaged in a card game. Smoke enveloped the man’s head, illuminating him eerily in the sunlight coming narrowly through the window. The woman sipped at a tall, sweating glass of iced tea and pinched little bits of cheese and crackers from her plate. They were both depressingly skinny, and wore the smug expressions only belonging to people who are thoroughly unhappy.

They looked up as Mrs. Dandridge came in, and did not bother to hide their shock at the ratty individual coming in behind her. The man’s jaw dropped down; the woman’s eyebrows shot up. They could not seem to accept what they were looking at, for their eyes went to the stranger again and again, and then back to their employer inquisitively, not able to make sense of his proximity to her; that two so unlike could fit into the same frame of vision at any interval. In fact they distinctly understood their employer to be a woman who would go quite extremely out of her way to never be associated with anything so off-putting. But there, wonders never cease, their faces finally seemed to say, resigning themselves to exasperated bafflement.

Mrs. Dandridge cleared her throat, ignoring their shock, and said,

“This… gentleman… has come to deal with our gnat problem.”

“Gnat problem, ma’am?” the man inquired, unable to help the amusement edging into his tone.

“That is what I said,” Mrs. Dandridge replied, smiling a bit too sweetly.

The man and the woman looked at each other, unable to recall any gnats or discern why the presence of gnats warranted calling in help. However, they were both sensitive to the needs of their employer and acutely aware that among them, Mrs. Dandridge must avoid even a whiff of ridicule. Whether there actually was a gnat problem, or why they should admit a stranger onto the premises just to deal with gnats, was neither here nor there. Mrs. Dandridge had admitted the strangest of strangers, and had declared the existence of a gnat problem, and they must not challenge her on either front. She must always feel that their place was, in all ways, squarely below her, and that they believed and accepted as much.

The woman’s mouth was pressed in a very hard line, and the man put out his cigarette. They looked at each other, their faces becoming like stone as they concentrated.

Finally - suddenly - the woman burst the silence as with a pin, crying out,

“Ah! Yes, of course. I nearly forgot, ma’am. Forgive me; we actually do have a gnat problem, in one of the upstairs suites. One of your recent guests mistakenly left a pile of wet clothes in their suite bathroom. Most likely gnats have been drawn to the mess. That was this morning and I haven’t gone 'round to do my cleaning yet; I can clean up the mess, put out a bowl of vinegar and I daresay by tomorrow it will all be resolved. But of course,” she put out her hands obligingly to the presence of the old, stooped man clad all in black, “perhaps it is more serious than I realized. And if this gentleman can help to rid us of them sooner, all the better.” She stood up. “Shall I take him up now, ma’am?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Dandridge replied. A sigh of relief went visibly out of her, and her shoulders relaxed. She stepped to the side as the woman bustled forward.

“Ms. Kent will direct you to the issue,” she said to Milkman. “And I’m sure it will all be very straightforward from there.” In other words, she did not intend to lay eyes on him again. “Good day, sir.”

The Milkman grinned wide, parading his two marching rows of slimy gray dentition, and tipped his bonnet. Ms. Kent stared at him, suspended in a moment of fascinated revulsion, before remembering to say,

“Right, this way Sir,” and quickly turned to lead him back out of the room and across the kitchen; through the hall to a broad staircase. He did his best to follow closely behind, his boots clunking volubly and the articles of his case jostling and clinking and clanging and chattering about so that their echo reached every corner of the house.

Ms. Kent sailed smooth and speedy up the steps. She really did not like the odd gentleman behind her; in fact she did not like him being behind her or that she must lead him deeper into the house - away from the exits. She must trust in her employer’s judgment, though she doubted that Mrs. Dandridge knew anything at all about the visitor. She must hope, then, that his oddity was merely odd, and not sinister.

“This house is really very human,” said Milkman in his milky voice as they climbed the grand staircase. “Very much like a human, I mean.”

Ms. Kent, who did not know at all what he meant, said politely,

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. On the outside you have a house of tan-colored stones, just like a human skin, and windows looking out like eyes. And I notice that here on the inside, everything is very red. There’s a definite theme of red all throughout - just like flesh. Just like blood and organs and inner tissue. A very deep, throbbing red.” He licked his lips and smiled, while Ms. Kent shivered. Then suddenly he stopped to exclaim,

“Who is this?!”

Ms. Kent turned to see the ridiculous man standing quite still, facing the wall midway up the stairwell and staring closely at a small oil painting. It hung there surrounded and dwarfed by other, much larger paintings - mostly portraits of relatives and still lifes of fruit. But this diminutive little painting was not a haughty-looking, stuffily-dressed relative or a cluster of bananas in a sea of blueberries. No, this was a painting of a dog with three legs; the only painting to feature an animal on the entire wall.

“That, I believe, was Mrs. Dandridge’s mother’s dog… Tripod, I think she called him. She always had a very direct humor,” Ms. Kent ended drily.

“You believe?” He eyed her skeptically.

“Pardon?”

He replied slowly and painstakingly,

“You believe this to be the dog of the lady’s mother, and to have been called Tripod… Or you know?”

Ms. Kent looked baffled as to why the semantics of such an insignificant subject should matter. Nonetheless she replied,

“I know, I suppose. Now please, right this way and I’ll show you to the gnats. If they’re even still there,” she added tersely, having become visibly annoyed.

“Yes of course, of course,” Milkman giggled strangely and hurried after his escort.

They entered onto a wide and long hallway. It diverged, continuing straight ahead but also running perpendicular to the stairs. Ms. Kent turned right and he, after pausing to peer curiously in the other direction, followed. Soon she brought him to a large bedroom, decorated in shades of blue except for the floor, which was still carpeted in that deep, blood-like red. Taking him across the room beyond the king-sized bed, the vanity and the wardrobe, she led him through another door into the adjoining bathroom.

The bathroom was nearly as large as the bedroom it belonged to, done all in white with black-checkered white tiles on the floor, and the walls painted a fresh white. To the left three large, black-framed windows looked out onto the yard. A single panel of heavy red drapery, wide enough to draw across all three, was currently pulled back, letting in glaring slats of light.

Directly across from the windows, the bathroom’s amenities were lined up in a neat row, with generous space between each. The toilet stood closest to the door, and then the sink (a marble affair set in a rough-cut slab of pale-gray stone for a counter), and furthest away a deep, circular tub, featuring jets and prominently displayed atop a platform with three steps. A little doorway in the wall of the tub itself separated it from the shower, which was encased all in glass.

“Ehm, here you are,” Ms. Kent gestured carelessly. His gaze followed her gesture to the space between the toilet and sink, where a pile of wet clothes sat in a wadded heap on the floor. And indeed, a dense cloud of gnats hovered directly over it.

Milkman gazed lovingly at the hovering mass of Nematocera for long seconds before replying thickly,

“Ah yes, thank you.”

He set forward, and as he passed her Ms. Kent could hear his breathing intensify. He seemed to be nearly salivating at the sight of these little black dots.

First, Milkman deftly scooped up the pile of wet clothing and held them out to Ms. Kent.

“Here you are,” he said. With an air of disdain she grudgingly took the damp clump from him. This would have been her job anyway, but she disliked having to take the dirty pile from him. Even as she took it he was clattering eagerly to his knees beneath the cloud of gnats; retrieving the tubes, bottles, little nozzles and screws and bulb-shaped rubber thingamajigs from his case. Most of it was already assembled, and now he finished up with the little pieces while Ms. Kent stood in the doorway watching, equal parts fascinated and repulsed.

Milkman put on black gloves and began to sing again. Softly he sang, and now he got awkwardly to his feet and reached out to the gnats. Very slowly and rhythmically he waved his hands through the cloud of gnats, swaying his hips; all of his movement going to the beat of the song. The gnats were getting stuck to the gloves, for they were sticky gloves. The sunlight shifted uncomfortably at the scene unfolding in Mrs. Dandridge’s bathroom.

Ms. Kent’s mouth hung slack. One gnat broke free from the cloud and went down her throat, and she never felt it…

“There,” Milkman was saying. He was getting back down on his knees; gingerly stripping the gloves from his hands and laying them flat on the floor.

“Now - come! - come over here,” he gestured to Ms. Kent, and despite the general ridiculousness of his appearance he managed to convey such authority that she obeyed, her mind numb with disbelief at the tiny strangeness of the event unfolding before her.

“Now, you see these little gray pads?”

Indeed, the black gloves were covered with little gray circles of felt arranged in a grid pattern. As he spoke and Ms. Kent peered closely, he was very deftly and carefully wielding a tiny set of tweezers; picking up the tiny gnats where they writhed gasping and frantic, and placing each little winged body on its own circular gray pad. Every once in a while Milkman would giggle softly, and in between he was talking to the gnats.

“Oh don’t you worry lass, it isn’t soo bad… ’Twill be over in a tiff, it will, and you none the worse for wear…”

Ms. Kent couldn’t decide what fascinated her more - the ensemble of jars and tubes, the gloves where the gnats were being slowly and painstakingly arranged, or the bedraggle-clad Milkman himself.

The minutes, beaded with sweat, crawled by. Ms. Kent’s knuckles ached from gripping the edge of the sink while she bent forward, hovering over Milkman while he worked. It felt like hours, but after ten minutes each little wriggling black insect was affixed to a felt pad, and with trembling fingers Milkman set his tweezers down in their little receptacle. He wiped his brow. A spot of drool left the corner of his mouth and hit the tile with a quiet spat!

“And now,” he said quietly, “the magic.”

From a hidden pocket somewhere on his enigmatic figure he retrieved a small, bright-purple can and began to spray. He sprayed feverishly; he sprayed quite excessively, in Ms. Kent’s opinion. They were only gnats, for goodness' sake. Neither of them could hear it, but on quite a different sound-wave almost a hundred gnats were coughing, shrieking and gasping spasmodically in Mrs. Dandridge’s bathroom.

Milkman kept spraying, severely insistent, bending closer and closer to the little bodies wriggling on the gloves, until Ms. Kent’s stomach balled up in a fist and she began to feel terrible for the poor things. For many years after she would sit and think of that moment - that quite unexpected moment - when she stood in her employer’s bathroom and shrieked at a ridiculous little man to,

“Please, for God’s sake, stop spraying the little babies!”

She never expected to give a fig about gnats.

Milkman stopped, but not because she was screaming at him. He stopped because the can was empty. He paused, holding the can to his ear and shaking it testily, and indeed, nothing sloshed about within.

“Well. That’s that, then,” he murmured, sounding quite disappointed. He turned to look up at Ms. Kent and smiled milkily.

“It’s quite alright, underling. They’re only stunned.” He held up the can for her observation. “This is a special concoction of my very own,” he said thickly, “which I have made for the retrieval of gnat milk. Under this substance the gnats’ bodies become extremely porous and work as milk glands, secreting the milk from their entire bodies.”

“And then what happens to the gnats?” she inquired breathlessly, suddenly a feverish gnat activist.

“Then - I let them go,” he whispered softly, his smile widening. He waved fluttery fingers toward the row of windows. “Out into the buttery sunlit air, where they can live until they die. Now, watch closely.” And very slowly, very gently, he reached into the gloves and began pulling them, finger by finger, inside out.

On the inside of the gloves, a tiny rubber suction cup dotted with holes protruded in each place where, Ms. Kent knew, the felt pad would be on the other side. As she was beginning to understand, Milkman took a thin black tube and attached it like a tentacle to one little suction cup on the glove’s inner lining. He worked steadily until all of the tubes were affixed to all of the little suction cups. All of the tubes joined together midway to form one thick tube, and from there, branched off to several shining glass bottles.

At the other end of the tubing hung two rubber pumps (as Ms. Kent realized they were), and now that the work of connecting things was done, Milkman picked up the two pumps in his hands and began to pump away furiously. He had settled himself comfortably against the wall, in the very spot where the damp clothing had been, and as he pumped (the rubber bulbs squeaking insanely) he said to Ms. Kent,

“It’s only such a shame that this herd is not bigger. I won’t get much milk from them, I’m afraid. And you? How long have you worked here? Do you like it here? Mrs. Dandridge, she is a benevolent master?”

Ms. Kent frowned irritably. “Master’s a bit much. She’s my employer, but I’m free to work where I choose of course.”

“Yes - yes, forgive me. My English is not always good. But do you understand me?”

“Yes of course. The work is as it should be; the pay is exceedingly good. I’ve been here for three years, and I’ve no complaints. Why do you ask?”

“Bah! Just making small talk.” He smiled. Whatever filmy substance lay over his teeth looked like someone had poured grease into a half-empty milk jug, replaced the lid and shook the contents. And then he came along and drank it.

“This is a very beautiful house. Everything gleaming and pristine, everything in its place, as it should be.” He went silent for a moment, observing her steadily. She fidgeted uncomfortably.

“And now I’ll tell you something. As you can imagine, one never knows how many gnats there will be. The number of pads I have for these little dears, it doesn’t always match the number of gnats I encounter. Therefore as you can see, we still have a few gnats wandering the room.” He gestured with a closed fist, still pumping away. “So I suggest that you do one of two things. Either open the windows, or go and get a bowl of vinegar, as you mentioned earlier to your master - er, forgive me, employer. And I shall be finished here soon.”

Ms. Kent still stared at the ridiculous contraption painstakingly extracting tiny droplets of milk from a collection of stunned gnats. She took a minute to absorb what he was saying. Slowly she nodded her head and, making eye contact with the little old man, finally recovered her focus and said,

“Right,” and turning abruptly she left the room in search of a bowl and some vinegar.

As soon as she was gone, Milkman ceased pumping and began disconnecting all of the tubes with haste. Almost - almost - as if he feared something. He disconnected the tubes and stuffed them unceremoniously into his black case; screwing lids onto the jars and throwing them in next. All of the other little pieces were thrown in after, to be tidily arranged at a later date. When everything had been cleaned up and the case snapped closed (every single latch), he paused, listening intently.

Silence.

All throughout the house. An insistent silence - a silence he didn’t believe.

But Milkman was here for one reason, and one reason only.

I must see it through.

Turning to the empty space of wall between the sink and the toilet, he pushed.

A sliver of a line appeared in the wall, forming the outline of a small door. Milkman pushed again, and grudgingly the door swung inward.

A black recess appeared, and cold air drifted up from below. Milkman turned to look back one last time. The room behind him was empty. He hurried through the door, and his feet met a very steep and very narrow staircase.

In fact he was not alone.

As Milkman descended into darkness, something heavy rammed into the back of his head. By the time he was falling, he didn’t even know it.

When Milkman came to, he could not open his eyes; they watered when the garish light tried to get in and he clamped them back shut. He could feel that he was in the ground, for the air had that cold, damp quality and smelled of minerals.

He was already sitting upright. He tried to stand and found that in fact he was bound tightly to whatever he sat on - bound around the arms and the abdomen and the legs. The light was like ice trying to cut in, a very ugly, hurtful white light, a fake light made by men; nothing like the sun. Footsteps whispered insistently on the floor, and the sound echoed all around him. Someone was pacing. He fought more determinedly to open his eyes. He had to see who that Someone was.

And in fact, when his eyelids would stay open and his eyeballs peered out wet and weak, he discovered the Someone to be exactly who he expected.

Mrs. Dandridge paced the floor barefoot. Her skin was deathly pale. Her toenails were red. Her fingernails were red. Shiny, poisonous red, flashing the light’s reflection. A feverish hunger gleamed in her eyes that, he could tell, controlled her. She could barely repress that hunger. And when she spoke her teeth were smeared red, from the red lipstick sitting thick and tribal on her lips.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m not sure at all. But I don’t have a choice, do I?”

He just watched her silently. She could see under the ugly, naked bulb that he wasn’t at all what he had appeared to be when he knocked on her door.

“I knew something was off,” she said. “You weren’t just a weirdo. You were… a lie. Something false. I could see it; see right through your ridiculous ruse. I could see it in your eyes -” she jabbed an accusatory finger “- your eyes are too sane.” She laughed a harsh laugh. It matched the lighting.

“Gnats? Of all things! And then Kent told me - Kent told me - Gnat - gnat milk!” She was shaking with laughter. “I honestly want to know where you got that ridiculous contraption,” she giggled, gesturing at his case where it stood by the wall. “What do you even do with gnat milk?”

“You drink it,” he replied simply. “High in protein.”

“Well it’s absolutely ridiculous. Calling far too much attention to yourself. You’d have gotten a lot farther being normal, you know.”

“No,” Milkman replied thoughtfully, “I don’t think so.”

She stopped laughing and stared uneasily at him. He did not sound as fearful as he should, all things considered. He sounded unnervingly certain of himself, as if he had planned for this part. He gazed evenly back, waiting for whatever she’d say next.

She bit her lip and said,

“I hope you know how this is going to go. I know what you came looking for. Well, now that you’re here, you get to join all the rest of them.”

“You said you could see it earlier - see the ruse,” he replied. “Maybe that’s because you saw something you knew.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know what it means to live a lie, Mrs. Dandridge,” he said softly. “Such a beautiful house over our heads. Immaculate. Gleaming, I said to your Ms. Kent. Everything in its place.” He nodded appreciatively. “But so much red, Mrs. Dandridge. And so much fruit! I must say, you gave yourself away there. Your appetite is written all over your beautiful house.”

“And now you’ll know my appetite better than most,” she replied promptly. “You can join my little collection.” She tapped her bare toes against the floor, and looking down he realized that it must be only a very thin layer of dirt, and under that…

“Yes, I thought that might be why you let me in,” he replied. “I thought, even if you saw through my disguise, you couldn’t help taking the risk: You’d hope I was the unsuspecting stranger I pretended to be, and take me in and make the most of it.”

“You’re not the unsuspecting stranger you tried to be, but you’re here all the same.” She laughed. “I still get what I want. Now I’m done talking about it.”

Milkman had thrown all the little pieces into his case. All the little pieces but one. That one, safely tied to a strap around his wrist, was now clenched tight in his right hand. And while they’d been chatting away - him working to keep her talking; keep her distracted - he had been using that little piece to file away furiously at the rope around his chest. He’d been filing away at it long before he opened his eyes; long before she realized he was awake. His legs were still bound to the chair.

Mrs. Dandridge approached quickly - afraid of the certainty in his eyes and ready to extinguish it. She wielded a letter opener in her right hand (how poetic, he thought), and the hunger in her eyes shone wildly. Only the last second hung thin between them.

Her hand slashed out at his throat.

With imperceptible speed his own right hand shot out, catching the letter opener and yanking her forward; turning her wrist back with mechanical precision so that, as her weight descended on him, he could feel her wrist snap. The letter opener’s point cut through her flesh and slid smoothly into her throat.

She sagged on him. Her life exited by gurgles and chokes; her frame shuddered in spasms.

He closed his eyes and waited for what felt like a long time. She did not go easily, and it was prolonged by the fact that he was pinned under her; he could not extract himself to pull the letter opener back out and let the blood escape faster.

Then, it ended as he knew it would.

There was a high scream.

From Mrs. Dandridge’s throat a great, thick mass suddenly emerged, and a spreading blackness filled the space around him. Tiny black dots wriggled out of her eyes; out of her nose and ears, blotting out the artificial light as they filled the cellar. Mrs. Dandridge’s corpse was limp, gray and sickly - sagging and flaccid in a way it would not have been, if her innards had not been consumed by gnats long ago.

He had not wanted to kill her. He had wanted only to catch her - as his job required and as he caught most of his targets, before handing them over to the Natural Phenomena Research Center for examination.

This had been an unwelcome ending, and one that would haunt him through many nights, as all of his kills did. For a moment, as her malnourished bones and brittle skin draped over him, he felt sorry for her.

But ultimately he pushed her ancient corpse unceremoniously to the ground. He worked fastidiously to free himself, being quite familiar with the advanced knots she had used to secure him. And now that he was free, he removed the great, baggy coat he’d been wearing and unslung the large hose that had been strapped to his back in a neat coil. He plugged the hose into an outlet (even down here, there was some wiring) and turning it on, he sucked the black mass of gnats into oblivion.

He was careful to keep his mouth closed.

An hour later, the dirt floor was brushed back and the trap door was lifted. Supervisors and forensics experts had descended into the ground. They worked around him, obtaining samples; snapping pictures; taking notes. He himself sat on his large black case, holding a styrofoam cup and not feeling bad for Mrs. Dandridge at all.

I didn’t really kill her, he thought: I only ended a terrible lie.

“Close one eh, Milton?” his supervisor was asking him. The bonnet and clunky boots and black overcoat were cast aside. A lithe young man in pale makeup sat there, watching tiredly as bones were brought up from the space below.

“Yes, it was. It was a close one,” he responded after a long moment.

The supervisor wandered off to make a call, and Milton Mann drank his gnat milk.