Victoria Dalpe
SYMBIONT
Elmhurst House sat high atop a green hill overlooking meticulous gardens, a smooth glass-like pond, and beyond that, deep forests. The old building itself was grand and austere, with marble columns, tall black shutters, and many chimneys. Its secluded location made it hard to find, as was the original owner’s intention. Though it was a place of great beauty and architectural advance, it held a cloud of foreboding about it. Like a beautiful bouquet, slowly rotting in a vase of foul water.
Mr. Elton Brock Jr. had a challenging time finding the correct road. He second guessed himself on a few occasions while traveling up the winding path, which swerved serpentine through the verdant mountain range. Eventually though, the trees cleared, pulling back as if a curtain on a stage, and there it was: Elmhurst house, at the top of the mountain.
He parked in front, though he saw no other cars. Or residents for that matter, though the lawns were expansive and he counted at least three sitting areas and a gazebo just in the front of the building alone. Seemed a perfect day to relax and get some fresh air, the weather was a perfect seventy degrees, with a cloudless cerulean sky above.
The only residents he could see were a few swans, gliding like figure skaters round the pond.
He was nearly up the spotless stairs to the towering double doors when one creaked open. A round face with very large blue eyes peered out at him.
“Ah yes hello, my name is Elton Brock, I have an appointment with Ms. Ludvic to tour the premises today. I am a little late, got lost, you guys make it hard to find…”
He trailed off, as the woman had vanished from the door, leaving it open. He pushed the mammoth door open and stepped inside, a little put off by her behavior.
“Of course, my name is Nurse Jeanne, please follow me.” She smiled and it was a lovely and enticing smile. She was petite and curvy, her white nurses dress clinging tightly to her body. He hadn’t seen an outfit like that outside of a Halloween costume. It was strange.
The air was surprisingly cool inside, almost cold, and the grand foyer was quite dark. Heavy drapes were closed on either side of the French doors. The floors were a gleaming marble tile, though his steps were muffled by long Persian carpets that ran the length of the grand hallway. At the end rose a dramatic staircase that split and branched out in either direction.
Along the walls were occasional tables, and on them photographs. Most were of the house itself in different times. A large gold frame held one of The original family, Archibald and Violet Elmhurst, posing with their three children: George and Oliver were twins and a little to the side was dark haired, dark-eyed Portia. Something in her pose held him there, looking at her, gawky as teenagers often are, dressed in a simple white shirt and flowing dark skirt, hair pinned back and left long on her shoulders.
“Elmhurst House has a long and interesting history. Founded by Portia L.Elmhurst as a refuge for the sick and elderly, after her entire adopted family expired. A plague of some sort.” The voice was at his shoulder, the tiny hairs in his ears tickling from closeness. Gasping he turned, and was startled to see a woman at the bottom of the stairs. Easily ten feet away, watching him.
“Mr. Brock? My name is Ms. Ludvic and I am the Director of Elmhurst house. Please follow me.”
She was dressed in a form fitting dress, in navy blue, that accented her shapeliness but also her severity. Neat as a pin, her hair was in a slicked back bun which sat tightly at the nape of her neck. She was attractive in an authoritative way that reminded him of headmistresses and primary school. The kind of woman who would strike your knuckles and then lick the drops of blood from the switch.
Where did that come from? He wondered. Although the space was cool, he sweated. She turned back and looked him up and down, as if she knew his thoughts. The cool expression he wore was strangely familiar, and strangely enticing. He cleared his throat and averted her eyes.
As he stepped into her office he forced himself back into the present. It was a handsome room with ornate fireplace on one side and a gigantic floor to ceiling mirror on the other. Her desk was centered someplace in the middle. Light spilled in from two sets of French doors. She settled behind the grand desk which faced the doors and the garden beyond and gestured to him to sit in one of the leather club chairs opposite.
“Well Mr. Brock, what brings you here today?”
“My father. He’s getting up in years. But, he’s a hard man, particular. He isn’t the type to just sit like a turnip in a typical home. He was powerful, a CEO. He hates losing control. Anyways, his doctor, Dr. Samuels, recommended I talk to you. Said you do things a little differently.”
Ms. Ludvic’s lip trembled, a near-smile. “We provide a unique experience. I will warn you, it’s unorthodox.”
“It’s fancy and remote, I can see that. Doesn’t look or smell like an old folk’s home. But what makes this place so un-orthodox? You got nurses, you got medicine, you got food old-timers can chew with only a few teeth same as all the others…what’s unorthodox?”
Ms. Ludvic’s jaw was tight, and her eyes, nearly black, were hard like a doll’s as they assessed him. Elton got the impression she didn’t like him much, but then again, with her manner she may not like anyone much.
“They get to be in a beautiful place, cared for by the best, fed the best, and when they die. They welcome it. Joyfully even. We make death a beautiful thing, that is what is unorthodox. Death is not a bad word here, it is not a personal failure. It is inevitable and it is pleasurable. No fear, the patients embrace it with open arms. That is what you are paying for.” She stood and walked over to one of the French doors, staring at the rolling fields and the forest beyond. “Can you imagine? A good and honorable death. Who doesn’t want that?”
*
Elton Brock Sr. sat on his hospital bed and looked around the small well-appointed room. flocked wallpaper shone in the morning sun, it looked expensive. The sheer drapes fluttered on the light breeze and he could smell lilacs.
His hospital bed, with all its remotes, felt out of place in such a timeless room. There was an old armoire in the corner and a carved rocking chair by the window. The ticking of a grandmother clock on a shelf beside a cloche of preserved butterflies clinging to a branch. On the walls a few watercolor prints. It was like a bed and breakfast, or a museum. If he were being honest though, he found it all a bit stuffy. Too feminine.
Didn’t matter though really, a nursing home is a nursing home no matter how you doll it up. He still needed to ring a bell when he had to shit. And he needed to be wheeled around, and given medicine, and washed up like a baby. And his son had dumped him here, he and the rest of his ungrateful children and their greedy spouses. Like a bunch of vultures just waiting around for him to die.
It was only his second morning at Elmhurst, and though his son touted it as the very best --and it better be since it cost a laughably high price—he had yet to feel he got his money’s worth. If he was being honest with himself with his arthritis, the stiffness, and the disorienting fog of medications meant there was no peace anywhere. His vision and hearing were in a race to see which would fail first, leaving him struggling to read, watch or listen to much. Left him stuck in his aching body, his idle mind.
“Don’t get old.” He’d told his son, Elton, when he dropped him off. He’d meant it. The door to his room opened and a small woman stepped in. Her face was round and her eyes very large and blue. She pulled in a cart with water and a sponge on top. The water steamed.
With soft cool fingers she undressed him, her manner focused, gentle. Her name was Jeanne, she told him, and she would be his primary nurse. She would take care of his every need, any time. Does he understand what that means? She spoke while bathing him, the water smelling faintly of herbs and incense. His vision swam at the sensation of hands, female hands, ran all over his body. How long had it been since he’d been with a woman? And here he was squirming like a teenager at the movies with a girl.
Her eyes pulled at him, but he avoided them, out of shame and lust. Everywhere the sponge went lit up with sensation. His arthritis, a painful companion going on twenty years, seemed to vanish beneath her touch. He never wanted her to stop.
“Then I won’t,” she whispered, pulling the thought from his head. Soft petal lips kissed his. She undid her nurse’s smock and was nude beneath, her body supple and unmarked by time, pert and pale and shapely. Was this a dream? A beautiful, cruel dream? But her hands felt real, her body had heft as she lowered atop him. And she began to rock, back and forth, her eyes never leaving his. He doubted he could break the stare if he wanted to. He drowned in their blue depths.
*
“I am so sorry for your loss. We all are. He was a good man Mr. Brock.” Ms. Ludvic said as she took back the paperwork she’d had Elton Brock Jr. sign.
Elton snorted, “He wasn’t and you know it, he was a crotchety old bastard, but I still don’t understand. He’d only been here what— a month? One month? I just saw him two weeks ago and he was fine.”
“I understand it can be a shock. No one can ever truly be ready.” Her voice cool, hands piled one atop the other like sleeping doves. Those glittery hard eyes, twin pools of ink.
His emotions were tangled, his father had been a bastard, but he’d still loved him, or at least felt obligated to care for him. He failed him, he was sure of it. Nothing here was on the level. Even Ms. Ludvic was not what she seemed. He avoided looking at her face, avoided the tightness in his trousers tangling with his discomfort at her icy stare. Her familiar face, her wet month.
“Take me to his room.”
“As you wish. We have gathered all his personal effects for you to take.”
Ms. Ludvic lifted the old-fashioned phone and spoke quietly. A moment later the door opened and the same large blue-eyed nurse he met the first visit was behind him. She wore a crisp white dress, and a small paper hat. Again, he caught himself wondering about her getup. He didn’t think nurses had dressed like that for fifty years. Where were the clogs? The pajama pattern scrubs? The indiscreet manner that the fabric pulled made him wonder if she had a bra on underneath.
“You remember Nurse Jeanne? Your father’s private nurse. She will take you.”
“Good, good.” Elton intentionally avoided both women’s oddly heavy stares.
He followed Nurse Jeanne down the long main corridor, again struck by how quiet, how empty the place seemed. No music, no TVs blaring, no medical equipment, no voices, no other footsteps beside theirs. Another beautiful day and no one taking in the weather outside. Brock felt a knot in his stomach, a wrongness. What was this place? The nurse ahead of him was silent, eerily so, beside the swish of her dress. He stared at her backside, shapely, attractive.
Nope. No underwear. What the hell?
As they reached the second floor she took a right and he followed behind, each room’s door was open and every bed was occupied that he could see. But the patients lay, still, silent. One was smiling. A male nurse emerged from one room, buttoning his shirt. He looked up startled at their approach, his face quickly transforming into a pleasant smile. Behind him, the figure in bed had been covered with a sheet.
Dead.
“Are they? Did they?”
The male nurse, oddly handsome with ruddy cheeks and bright eyes, smiled a white toothpaste commercial smile. “She did, I’m afraid. But she was a wonderful woman and lived a very full life. We were lucky to know her, even for a short while. Oh, don’t look upset, sir. It’s the truth of Elmhurst, of all nursing homes really, there is one exit.” He nodded to them both and continued down the hall.
His father’s room still smelled faintly of his father’s cologne. A box was on the bed, in it were his father’s few remaining things. His leather slippers, some family photographs, his favorite books. His reading glasses. How could a man’s life be summed up in such a small box?
“Something happened to him. He was fine, old and frail sure, but he should have had more time.” Jeanne closed the door.
“Should he? To do what exactly, Mr. Brock? You didn’t want him anymore, you sent him away, away from your busy life. You found him useless, irrelevant, a burden. You people are all the same. The old become a joke, a burden, and worst, a reminder of your own mortality. So, you pack them up and send them to me, to die. You only mourn him because you fear death yourself.” Her voice was sharp, angry. “But to us, he was valuable. He still had so much to give. And he did. They all do.”
In the distance, on the other side of the wall, he heard a moan. Then the steady thump of a headboard hitting a wall. With horror Elton recognized the sex sounds. The glass holding butterflies tinkled on the shelf. What kind of place was this?
“We are so hungry, Mr.Brock. Starving. Especially when you don’t want to hurt anyone. You don’t want to be selfish. But Portia had a vision: to create a haven for those who were cast aside, and those who hungered. We could help each other.”
“Portia?” He said, swallowing as she stepped closer, Her lapis eyes shining, fingers going to the buttons of her dress. She had backed him to the wall.
“Ms. Ludvic, of course. The director and founder of Elmhurst house.”
She reached a cool hand to his face, her touch numbing, soothing. He tried to pull away but she was too close. She pressed against him, her mouth going to his. “We help them, to feel alive again, to feel loved again. To know touch and desire. They give us their life, the ultimate sacrifice. It is a wonderful relationship between the unwanted.”
She embraced him and Elton leaned back on the bed, not even sure when he’d crossed the room. Her mouth, her eyes, her hands, her scent, distracted him. He wanted to focus on her words, her confession. She’d killed his father. But all he could do was lay back as she unbuttoned his shirt.
And behind him, through the wall, the staccato thud thud thud of a headboard.