& Whatever walked there, walked alone  

anatomy

In the psychology of the modern, civilized human being, it is difficult to overstate the significance of the house. Since as early as the Neolithic era, humankind has defined itself by its buildings. Buildings for worship, buildings for socializing, buildings for protection, even buildings for the commemoration of the dead. But of all the structures that mankind has invented for itself, there is little doubt the the house is that which it relies on most completely for its continued survival.

The house is one of the key elements that separates modern humanity from its more primitive antecedents. No other creatures goes to such lengths to create lasting permanent shelter for itself, nor regards such shelters with such reverence. Other human beings of our modern age foster this tremendous sympathy toward their homes. There are many reasons of course but perhaps it is due in some small part to seeing them as a reflection of ourselves.

The anatomy of the house is such that this analogy is less superficial than first it may seem. To carry it further, if we were to dissect a house as we might a human cadaver, we would find ourselves able to isolate and describe its various appendages and functions in a decidedly anatomical fashion. There are even a fair number of direct comparisons to be drawn between those organs of the house and those of the human body.

For example, let us examine the living room: often the dominant space of the house is ground level, as well as typically the center of activity on a well-populated home, the living room is very much the heart of the house. While a human heart circulates blood to oxygenate the body’s extremities, the living room circulates people, activities, communication. It is the room most likely to be found “beating”, as active and vivacious and its name would imply. The comparison is only strengthened when we consider also that the living room is most commonly the room to contain the fireplace, making it additionally a locus of actual, physical heat.

It is easy to think of the kitchen and dining room as the stomach or digestive system of the house, though this comparison is tenuous. By contrast, the function and analog of the bathroom should be immediately obvious.the hallways and corridors of the house are its veins, providing circulation coursing throughout its brain. A staircase bears more than a passing resemblance, both physically and symbolically, to a spine. The windows of the house serve much the same purpose as eyes, and anyone who has ever rounded a bend on a long drive and suddenly come face to face with a tall, dark manor, will tell you it’s difficult to shake the impression that the house, through its lightless windows, is a creature capable of vision, and intelligence.

The bedroom is perhaps the room that most eludes direct comparison in this fashion. At a stretch, and allowing for a bit of poetic sympathy, it might be said that the bedroom is not unlike the human mind, or those parts which dictate thought, and imagination. In the bedroom, dreams are dreamt, passions are ignited, epiphanies are experienced in cold sweat at early hours. In the bedroom is invariably where people spend the majority of their time, though comparatively little of it whilst conscious.

And yet this analogy is an incomplete one, for obviously the mind is an exceedingly complex thing. If the bedroom represents the thinking, dreaming part of the brain, then it is the basement that represents those lower, unconscious parts. The basement is dark, it is buried, it is a place full of cobwebs where memories are stored. A point of comparison truly; ooften the unnerving uncertainty that comes with considering the deeper aspect of the human psyche, is not unlike gazing down at the swimming blackness pooled at the bottom of the basement stairwell. It is a place we spend our childhoods filling with monsters that will lay for years in patient silence. It is a place that, barring some specific errand, we seldom ever want to go.

Of course this comparison, though appropriate, is a very heavy-handed one. Often the basement is little more than a storage space, littered with the corpses of spiders and woodlice. While poets and psychoanalysts no doubt dread the thought of a dark basement, in truth it is the bedroom, the waking mind, that place of dreams, which is actually most frightening of all.

It is here, in the bedroom, that we are at our most vulnerable. Each night we shut our senses to the world for hours at a time, trusting in the house to keep us safe until next we wake. In this state of extreme vulnerability we spend something like 20% of our lives. Anything might stand beside us, watch us, keep us company until dawn, and we would never perceive it. We can only pray that the house will not let such things carry on as we sleep. In this way, during these hours, the mouth seems less like a mind, and more like a mouth. For it is here that the house is most likely to betray us, it is here that we place ourselves most at the house’s mercy, and spend each night hoping that it will not bite down.

I dream that there are teeth, all over me, not on me but within me like, cysts or bone spurs. They are unscratchable as I have no hands. I look out through the bedroom window and I see a truck approaching. A young man steps out, approaches, and enters through the front door. His body is covered in swollen ticks the size of quarters. He’s waking through the downstairs hallway and laughing. He urinates in the wall, spits on the carpet, he’s moving through the first floor, breaking and upsetting things. He goes to the basement and stands at the top of the stairs. I’m angry at him so I slam the door and he falls down. I can feel his bones snapping. The ticks are bursting, losing all their dark blood everywhere. I can feel him being ground up, dissolved, torn, splitting, shredding. I leave the door closed. I close my halls and try to sleep. The teeth grow on me until there is nothing left of me but bone, gums, and sinew.

What happens to a house when it is left alone? It becomes worn, and aged. Its paint peels, its foundation begins to sink. It goes for too long unlived in. What does it think of? What does it dream? How does it look on those creatures who built it, brought it into existence only to abandon it when its usefulness no longer satisfies them? They grow lonesome. It stares for long hours into the darkness of its own empty halls and sees shadows. And they jump as they think, here, here is someone again I’m not alone. And each time it is wrong, and the hurt starts over. It may haunt itself, inventing ghosts to walk its floors, making friends with its shadow puppets, laughing and whispering to itself at the end of some quiet culdesac. It may grow angry. Its basement may fill with churning acid like an empty stomach, and its gorge may rise as it asks itself through clenched teeth, “what did I do wrong?”. It may grow bitter. It may grow hungry. So hungry and so bitter that its scruples dissolve and its doors unlock themselves. While a house may hunger it cannot starve. And so in fever and anger and loneliness, it may simply lie in wait. Doors open, shades drawn, halls empty. Hungry.

One important distinction that must be drawn is between the words dissection and vivisection, a distinction that would appear to be lost on you. Your purpose was to listen, and yet at every turn you have pried, you have prodded, and you have interfered. I think I’ve been paying attention. Did it not occur to you that as an organism existing within a greater organism, your intrusion would be felt? And still you harassed. And now, like the wayward spider who witlessly stumbles across the sleeper’s tongue, you will be swallowed. Because the truth is this: when a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth.