The Oven

by Michael Farfel

Erik Mclean

Very late, past the hours of the moth, a loud crash and bang came from the kitchen. Strange noises are common here. Tree branches come unhinged, old houses settle and yawn—birds and their nests, wolves and their packs. This sound though, after everyone had gone to sleep, was different. Like a metallic splash; iron and mercury in their liquid states skidding to a halt, perhaps. Some kind of otherworldly cataclysm opening up beneath the sink.

The dark-haired father barrelled into the kitchen with his double-barrelled shotgun. He’d never hunted a day in his life; in fact, the gun wasn’t even loaded. An heirloom of his grandfather’s meant to scare intruders and embolden whomever held its old wooden stock and leather grip. He twisted around the corner. His children huddled at the top of the stairs, their mother holding her finger to her lips.

“Who’s there?” he screamed.

And nothing. No alien life, no trespassers.

He flicked the lightswitch. Still, no enemy in the brightness.

The oven door ajar. Had it been left open? he thought. Could that be what had made that awful sound?

“Dear,” he cried out, “Dear, there isn’t anyone here. But, come quickly. The oven, for some reason, stands open.”

She hovered at his side and agreed, the oven door was open. “That can’t’ve done it though,” she said. “Woke us all, that noise, as if liquid lava had turned to stone above my head. As loud as all hell.”

He nodded, “Hell, for sure. Like Satan’s own cracked back.”

The children scurried down the stairs and stood at knee and hip.

The younger of the children, still reddish in his youth, reached out to touch the oven door.

His mother quickly kicked it closed and held it closed with a slippered foot.

“No,” she said. “It could be full of some kind of, some sort of noise-making beasts, or worse an awful magic.”

Her husband agreed. “Stand back,” he said.

He used the dual barrels of his gun to open it. Once opened, he leaned over and peered in. His wife held her breath and the two children fidgeted and leaned back and forth and pulled on her robe. The man gasped and jumped back and everyone followed suit. He was as pale as if…

“A ghost?” cried out his daughter.

“A dracula?” cried out his son.

“What is it?” cried out his wife.

He closed the oven door and said, “We have a problem. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. Call the maintenance man.”

“The maintenance man?” his wife responded.

He nodded, still colorless.

“It’s awful late,” she said.

He blinked and shook his head, “an awful sight, dear.” He gestured toward the oven with his gun.

A knock came at the front door. The man of the house, dragging his shotgun behind him, swung it open. And there, in the ever-darkening dark of the night, stood a young woman. She wore the coverall’d uniform of late-night maintenance, lime-green with white double stitching. The crest of her family rested just above the pocket of her heart—two small yellow patterned snakes working their way up a knife, and at the knife’s tip was an open hand, pierced through its middle.

Her hair was mostly covered by a short brimmed hat, but what flowed down curled blackness around her ears and stuck to her forehead in two distinct ringlets. Her eyes were dark, her eyebrows full, her lashes sparse. Her nose bent just left and up and was spotted with six or seven freckles. Her lips had a natural cold color to them, as if she’d been out in the night far too long, like a plum, and just as round.

“Hello. May I come in?”

The man of the house gestured for her to enter. “Where’s your father?” he asked.

“My father is, I’m afraid, quite ill, but his services are eternal, in one form or,” she tapped her chest, “another.”

The man looked to his wife and his children and back to the woman. “Thank you so much for coming. On such short notice, so late and all of that.” His words knocked together, overcome with a nervousness.

“A pleasure.” She smiled and waited.

“Ah, yes,” said the man of the house. “The problem. It’s our kitchen. It’s our oven, to be exact. The old thing has been, in a cruel and obsessive way, speaking—almost, as if, possessed.”

She nodded.

“Right this way.” The man absentmindedly pointed with the gun and his wife let out a nervous chuckle.

“Careful with that damn thing. By God,” his wife said. “By God.”

The man blushed.

“Please don’t fret. Don’t worry. I’m familiar with the make and model of your oven and there’s nothing peculiar going on here. Nothing even slightly out of the ordinary.” She bent over the open oven door and reached in and rattled what she could.

The man asked if he could help. She looked up from her work and shook her head. “No, no. Just make yourself at home,” she joked. “I’ll be done soon.”

With that the family of four all sat at the kitchen table and she, in one fluid motion, disappeared into the oven. The family didn’t seem to notice.

She found herself floating through space. Stark nude—exposed to the starlight. She could see her body and she could see her face. She felt weak in the vast darkness. Her knees knocked about and her joints cracked. Moons and belts of ice flowed past her. What was I looking for? she wondered. The small hairs on her body felt heavy and grew and their roots diverged under her skin. Blonde forests sprouted up on her inner thighs and just above the pits of her elbows. Gazelles and long pink-legged birds crawled over her breasts and toward a small lake where her belly button had been. There was a moment of intense carnage above her left hip as two lionesses caught up to an infant gazelle. The infant stood no chance and only kicked its legs a few times in defiance—a struck artery on its neck and the dirt of her stomach was black with blood. She felt the gazelle’s death and tried to scream, but her mouth was an ocean and her stomach was molten rocks. Ah, she thought. There’s the problem.

She shaped her new body into a small mound of earth and compressed it in her hands until it was perfectly round. When she emerged from the oven she was still naked.

The mother covered her children’s eyes and the father’s eyes darted left and right. She was covered in a fine silvery sweat and the curls of her hair had been amplified in the heat of the oven. She smiled.

“I found the issue,” she said and held out the small clod of dirt. It had solidified in places and had grown a purple moss in others. “I should’ve known. I suppose I did know. But I had to see for myself. This particular model has a furnace room near the back and if left alone will produce small realties. Miniature earths. Take a closer look.”

The man shook his head as if waking up from a dream and leaned away from her. His wife uncovered the children’s eyes and they all examined the small earth in the maintenance woman’s hand.

“How much do we owe you?” the man asked.

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. As my father always says, what’s a maintenance man without a thing to maintain?”

“Will you at least take my robe?” he asked.

She nodded and the man disrobed. Acutely embarrassed of his gut and his heart bespeckled underwear. He handed it over.

Before leaving she put the now completely solid mass in the youngest child’s hand.

“Keep it safe,” she said.

“I promise,” he said.

“It’s beautiful,” his sister said.

“Thank you so much for your help,” his mother said.

The man of the house walked her out and they said their goodbyes in the still quiet of the morning. It was raining, but they didn’t seem to care.

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Michael Farfel’s work can be found with Juked, X-R-A-Y Lit, Bone Parade and in his upcoming novel with Montag Press.