“Vacuuming Unused Rooms” • by R. Gene Turchin

She found me vacuuming the carpet in the main room. 

I didn’t know she was there until she pulled the plug from the wall. The sweeper moaned to a stop. Dust still accumulates and cleaning is a routine that makes things seem normal even though they’re not.

“Where’s Henry?” Liz asked. “And why are you running the sweeper?” Henry was our maintenance man who cleaned up before and after clients, helped me prepare the bodies, and did it all without being seen.

“I had to let him go. We haven’t had a funeral in years.” I’d been dreading this talk. “I’m not sure how much longer we can afford to pay utilities here.” Her face took on that sharp stone look. Pale and brittle. A look of blame. I became the errant child who had shattered the favorite vase.

“He would have worked for free,” she said. I didn’t know how to answer. A man needs to earn a living.

“Those memorial service anniversaries are not enough to sustain us anymore.” I swept my hand up, encompassing the room. “We moved the display boxes to the storage building, because we’ve not sold any since the transmutation.” 

The main floor of the stately old coal-baron home had enough rooms to hold five separate memorials, before the axis of humanity tilted and became something else. In cold January, I had closed off registers in unused rooms to reduce the heating bill.

“It will return to the way it was,” she said. “People will start dying again. I don’t wish for death…”

I shrugged. It wore me down trying to explain the new reality. They dubbed it ‘transmutation,’ where humans became another thing whose cells refused to die. Maybe I expected too much from her.

“Scientists don’t know why it happened or when it will end. If ever. It only affects humans. The animals still die.” I added. My voice was sharper than I intended. Liz only watched game shows and cooking channels. She was not equipped for the disturbing angst of the real world. None of us were prepared, when Death took a holiday.

“Surely people can’t survive the trauma of accidents or war?”

“They do. Bodies ripped apart.” Her eyes widened. The taste of this conversation was rough metal in my mouth. “Trauma centers sew them back together.”

To stay abreast, I’d viewed too many documentaries. Liz had stopped watching and reading news. She wasn’t alone. People sheltered behind denial. I didn’t share the things I’d seen. Saw no need. What good would it do?

“It must be hard for them,” she paused. “To go through life disfigured like that. Surely plastic surgeons can do something?”

“They do, but there is something new about human tissue now since the change. It doesn’t work like it used to. It’s a benevolent cancer. Cells just regenerate.”

She looked down at the carpet, her eyes sad. “I’ve always loved this old place,” she said. “And what we did here. You and me, making it easier. Calm comfort for people suffering loss.” She turned to go.

If the change had occurred six months earlier, our son, Peter, would still be alive. Only ten years old, with the bad kind of cancer. And then the world shifted—people stopped dying. Liz still cried when memories caught her off guard. She softened, as if bones and muscle had melted away. Her eyes focused into another place. Then tears leaked out of her eyes, a quiet pain.

“If we leave,” she said, “it should be far away. A place without memories.”

 

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R. Gene Turchin writes short stories in sci-fi, horror, and toe-dipping into other genres. He has just completed a science fiction novel and is working on a second book with a twisted spin on the Dracula story. He and his wife recently left the old house they’d occupied for 44+ years and moved to a new development near Richmond.

When not writing or playing guitar, he attempts to create comic books. Recent published works can be found in: Strangely Funny IX, 365 Tomorrows, Amazing Stories Magazine, The Monsters Next Door, The Best of Amazing Stories, 2023 and Twenty-Two, Twenty-Eight.

Website: https://rgeneturchin.com/

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