Who Art in Heaven – A Short Story

Author's Note: ‘Who Art In Heaven’ is a piece of fiction, but the concept is something entirely real to me, and to many others. OCD is not just liking things to be clean, and if you didn’t know that already, hopefully you will by the end of this story.

Photo by Ayşenur on Unsplash

Casey Mattocks doesn’t remember the last time that her hands were clean, but she remembers the first time she told someone that they were dirty.

For the second night in a row, she had woken up to the sound of a distant, house-shaking thud, but this time hadn’t been able to fall back asleep. After tossing and turning, half-smothering herself in her vigorous cocooning, she had given up and gone wandering, scrambling down the two flights of stairs to the basement level that held her father’s study.

She knocks, but there’s no answer.

Scowling, it had taken her a painful few seconds en pointe to move her wisp of a figure up to the keyhole, the gullet of which she knows gapes wide enough for her to peer through. She presses herself against the door, skin stretching to cover the slats and the grooves, the edge of the door jamb digging into one shoulder.

Inside the study, ringed by the blackened edges of the lock, she can see only the portion directly ahead of her. One side of the desk, half a rug, and the brown leather desk chair. Earlier that day, she had curled herself up in it and spun round and round until the world spun with her.

Sucking in a breath through her teeth, her gaze snags on her father’s slippers. The toes of them barely poke out from behind the desk, pleated blue with wooly, cream-coloured insides. Casey stares down at them, willing some movement back or forth, a twitch of motion as her father shifts his feet. Living people could shift their feet and dead people could not, and thus, if she saw them move, she would know that her father’s still alive.

Licking her lips, she recalls the thud she had heard from upstairs. Cacophonous, like a gunshot. Deafening, like thunder. The sound of something falling, someone falling. Her mouth tastes of bile, and she knocks again on the door.

Inside, the shoes do not move.

“Dad?”

Her hands cling to the oversized doorhandle, ornately carved but set in cheap brass.

She can feel a layer of the metal coming off on her fingers. When she lets go, she holds them up to her nose and smells blood.

“Dad!”

Casey blinks and thinks once, for a split second, about going back to bed. But, she reasons, it’s better to be safe than sorry. What kind of daughter would she be, who turned away from her own father, dying on the floor of his study? Curling in on herself, instinctive, she readies herself to run at the door.

She barrels ahead, body colliding with the wood, but not budging it an inch. The hinges rattle like her bones, molars clacking together in time with the door clicking. Her shoulders drop into a heaving pant, and she tries again. And again. Bruising feels a distant, barely-there problem, drops of blue-green pain that wash down her shoulders but don’t soak through her skin. Still, her technique isn’t working, so she begins to fiddle with the lock.

Licking her lips, Casey tries driving the handle back and forth, staring at what little she can make out of the shifting mechanism inside. She had read up on lockpicking once, in case she ever needed it, but the ideas of pushing down the right pin and following the internal sequence are hazy, superfluous. Chewing on her lip, she tries to stick a finger into the crack between door and frame, inching her nail closer to the shot-through bar of metal, as if she might be able to push it back.

She shoves too hard, some of her nail ripping away from its bed, and starts to bleed. The edge of her skin turns hot, pulsing, and she shoves it into her mouth in an attempt to soothe the ragged pain. A little noise escapes her. Half a sob.

The edge of a memory: Karate Kid and the smell of sweat-soaked leather. She had been ill – nausea – and had been sitting in front of the TV with her brother for two days without moving. The crane kick had looked so strong and fast. That boy had looked lethal…

She pulls herself back onto her left foot, gathering all of her weight onto the ball, the down-curved stretch of muscle still touching the floor. As coordinated as she can muster, while shaking like a leaf, she shoves herself forwards, the momentum carrying her close, and switches feet. Her heel connects, jamming right into the crevice of the lock.

Casey yowls, mouth open as a pair of tears streaks the bottoms of her undereyes, and the door doesn’t move.

She pants, one-two, and runs away, down the corridor, her stomach starting to burn.

Barely reaching the toilet, her body convulses, throat burning as more tears drip into the puddle of vomit at the centre of the basin. The back of her hand wipes away the spittle around her mouth.

When she blinks, a blurry image starts to come into focus. Her father, soft-stomached and bright-eyed, stood up from his desk chair too fast. The world spinning around him, tilting, tilting, tilting until he can’t hold his own weight anymore. A dress shirt with a silly tie rustle and shifts before he comes undone, off-kilter.

He clutches at the space over his heart, nails digging into the fabric of the top pocket.

A face appears in the window, something glinting just out of reach.

The coffee on the desk steams, swirling. A thread of green seems to wrap itself around the centre.

A dying man. Her dead father.

Casey vomits again, scratching at the skin over her biceps. She forces her eyes open, ignoring the way that they start to ache from not blinking. Her hands twitch; she tries not to look at them.

They’re dirty. Crusts of blood and soil, an itching that she doesn’t dare scratch, and a barely there tingling seem to set her nerves ablaze. She holds them out in front of her, careful not to touch. Careful not to get the stains on any of the teal bathroom tiles around her.

Casey stands up and hovers her hands over the sink, nudging the tap with the very end of her pinky. From the limescale stained end, a jet of water sprays, near-scalding, as she scrubs all the way up to her elbows. The shadows from the buzzing electric bulb over her head cast flickers over the basin, as if the silhouettes are disappearing down the drain. Casey licks her teeth.

The tingling lessens, goes back to a faraway sensation. Her fingers still feel wrong when she touches the door handle, but she swallows the nausea back. She throws one more look over her shoulder. There’s no dirt in the sink, or marks on her hands where it had been.

Standing in the hallway, feet sinking into her mother’s pride and joy - a purple plush carpet in the shape of a snail shell - she realises that the keys to the backdoor are still in the lock. Her body moves like an automaton, and moments later she finds herself standing under the window to her father’s office. The curtains are drawn, and there’s no shadow visible on the flower-print.

One of the windows at the top is open. It’s the kind that swings up and outwards, not sideways, the fulcrum sending the end towards the sky. Barely wide enough to fit a person, and difficult to enter with no purchase on the windowsill.

She squeezes herself into the glass and red brickwork, some of the white-painted ledge starting to rot where it's been exposed to the wind. Bare feet find one side of the frame, toes jamming into the cement, as she braces her forearm on the other side.

Sucking in a breath, she expands, body hovering in the air as the wind swirls dizzyingly around her.

In the space of a second, she realises that she has to make a grab for the ledge, and lunges, throwing herself up in the air. For a moment, she’s weightless, small-knuckled hands clutching at the gap in the window. As she finds grip, she pulls herself higher, kicking off against the brick as the corners scrape along her soles.

Casey blinks, and she’s resting precariously in the open window, body positioned in perfect symmetry with the ledge. Sideways on and swaying ever so slightly.

She peers inside the room, down towards where her father should be.

Casey squints.

They are just shoes. Empty, pilotless shoes.

Sweat starts to pour down her face, cheeks puffing out in an attempt to control her breathing. Slow and unsteady, she tries to shift herself to one side so that she can slide back down.

Then, she is overbalancing, body cracking over the sill and legs losing their footing.

She turns, rolling off her perch and into the room, everything twirling once as she falls fast enough to pick up speed. A crash. She hits the ground; body crumpled under the flowery curtains. Bruises lick up the inside of her thighs, and her shoulder screams so hard she sobs.

Curling in on herself, Casey knots herself up into the foetal position. She doesn’t even hear the door open.

“Casey?”

She can’t even raise her head, tiny body resorting to stuttering cries, then howling sobs that rips themselves straight from her mouth. A pair of hands turn her over, dragging her to her feet until she can stand on her wobbling knees. She wraps her arms around herself as she stares into her father’s furrowed brow.

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought something had happened to you,” She sniffles.

Her father works his jaw, stubble shifting over his skin.

“Why would you think that?”

Casey looks down at him. Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. She coughs into her elbow, hacking and slow, before shrugging. Tears bead in her eyes as her father pushes some of the tangled, loose hair off her face. She says nothing. There is nothing.

“Alright, well, let’s get you back to bed, yeah?”

Casey nods, then shakes her head. Her hand shoots out, snagging on the sleeve of his shirt.

“Can we check on Mum?” She asks, bile slicking her throat, hands burning, dirty, “I’m worried about her.”

Her father looks down at her, lips in a twist. Casey picks at the ends of her nails, blinking away soil. Eyes following her motion, her father leans closer, scrutinising for whatever it is she’s trying to pry out of herself. Eventually, he gives up. There’s a sigh, and it hangs in the air.

“Okay, but in the morning, we need to talk about this. Seriously talk.”

“Can I wash my hands? Before we go and see Mum?”

Her father takes a step closer, holding out a hand. Without thinking, Casey holds hers out, palms up. Her eyes trace the rings of mud and the thin trail of blood mixing through and beginning to settle in the grooves of her lifeline. Stomach revolting, she inclines her head, nodding down at them so that her father understands.

He stares, motionless.

“But they’re clean.”

Casey blinks, slowly, ignoring him. He looks a little pale, and she’s worried that he’s starting to get ill.