She had been scrubbing for hours, the skin on her hands raw and red from pushing the brush back and forth. The stain however, wasn’t going anywhere. Elizabeth had no idea where it had come from, she prided herself on keeping a clean house and was quick to remove anything deemed ‘dirty’. Spillages were cleaned before they could touch the surface they hurtled towards, and spiders actively stayed away from the house – not wanting to end up as eight legs twitching on a tissue. Although she didn’t have many visitors, she maintained that it was always good to be prepared, not wanting to be caught short with an unclean or messy house.

Which is why Elizabeth had been horrified to find the small black penny-sized spot on her red kitchen floor tiles that morning. Upon inspection, she had been surprised to see that edges of its circle were crisp, there were no splatter marks to indicate that it had been dropped or smudges to suggest it had been smeared. The stain was so black it didn’t reflect any light in the kitchen, and when she looked she could see that it wasn’t shiny, it was matte. The stain was peculiar, and very annoying. When she touched it with her finger, no residue came off, and it didn’t smell. If anything, it had a strange absence of smell.

She spent the morning using every cleaning product she owned but the stain wouldn’t budge. Her home remedies were depleted, she had used her supply of vinegar, baking soda and lemons and was forced to move onto strong chemicals that crept up her nose and burned the back of her throat as she scrubbed. When she sat back to wipe sweat off her brow, the spot was still there, looking exactly the same as it had that morning.

Her knees ached and her palms were bruised from pushing, she knew it was time to stop for the day. She stood slowly, ignoring the pain in her back as it cracked, and made herself a mug of mint tea. She settled down in her sitting room and thumbed through the papers passed down by her grandmother and mother, a folder full of tips and tricks for cleaning and life that she had always treasured. Elizabeth hoped that maybe within this folder there would be a page that she had somehow miraculously missed relating to small black stains on kitchen floors, but unfortunately it was full of the pages she had read and reread a hundred times before.

She sighed, it was time for a last resort. She pulled her overnight stain remover out of the cupboard and sprayed the spot liberally, watching as the liquid fizzed and bubbled over the black. She coughed, trying not to inhale the disgusting sulphur smell. Elizabeth reheated leftovers on the stove and ate quickly, trying not to look at the spot, before taking herself up to bed.

The next morning, Elizabeth practically skipped down the stairs in anticipation, desperate to see the results of her overnight cleaner. She imagined the black being cracked, small separate pieces of residue that could be neatly wiped up and forgotten about. However, when she got there she was shocked to find that the spot was now the size of a tennis ball, and that there was no trace of the stain remover that would usually leave a white chalky residue. She was baffled, it didn’t make sense, that stain remover had always worked and yet somehow, the stain had grown overnight.

Elizabeth had read an article years ago about mould and how devastating it could be. An entire family had been killed by rice that was left out at room temperature, spores had gotten into the dish and poisoned the lot of them. She shuddered. Her house had always been so clean, she had worked hard to make sure it was perfect, but what if a spore had flown in through the window and settled on her floor?

She rushed to the bookcase and flipped through any and every book she had that mentioned mould. Her collection of books was vast, and yet she found nothing that looked or sounded like the spot in her kitchen. The strangest thing about the stain was that it didn’t look organic. It looked as if someone had placed it there and walked away. Even though her suspicions of mould couldn’t be confirmed, Elizabeth opened the kitchen window to let some fresh air in, praying that it wasn’t read as an open invitation to other spores in the area.

She took four cans of sugar free baked beans from her cupboard and carefully covered the spot with cling film, placing the tins around the edge to hold it down, noticing that as she did, the clear plastic dipped- almost as if it was being sucked down. Elizabeth put her head against the kitchen floor to look at the stain side on and saw that it was in fact dipping. This was worse than she thought, the mould was eating through her tiles. She finished quarantining the area and left the room, pulling the door firmly shut behind her and going upstairs to shower.

Elizabeth had a fitful sleep that night, she dreamt that she touched the spot, and as she did, blackness crept up her fingers and hand, consuming her arm and spreading like a poison over her collarbones. It dripped down her back agonisingly slowly, great globs of black, cold and squirming, feeding off of her skin, before moving up her neck and trickling towards her face- Elizabeth woke with a start and turned on her bedside lamp, looking at her hands in the pale yellow glow of the room and breathing a sigh of relief when she saw the same wrinkled, liver spotted skin she was used to. Hands that reminded her of her mother’s.

The next morning she was hesitant to go downstairs, her dream had shaken her, but was forced to venture to the kitchen, unable to ignore her hunger. As she entered, she told herself to ignore the spot completely, just eat and leave. She chewed her breakfast quickly and managed to steadfastly ignore the stain. She was pleased with herself, but as she got up to leave the room her eyes moved involuntarily and fixed on the thing she had been avoiding. She gasped.

The cling film and beans had vanished, and the spot was now the size reminiscent of a small well. She felt pulled towards it, it was drawing her in. It had morphed into a hole, a deep black hole in her kitchen floor. Instinctively she grabbed a wooden spoon and grasped it tightly over the edge of the hole, thinking it must be some sort of optical illusion and that the spoon would bounce off the tiles. She leant forward, careful not to let her feet get too close, and released her grip. To her horror, the spoon went tumbling down until it was completely consumed by the darkness. Elizabeth listened for the sound of it hitting the bottom, her arm still poised from the release, but heard nothing. There was no bounce or echo or crash, just a long and eerie silence.

She exhaled a long breath she didn’t know she was holding and lowered her aching arm. Blinking, she saw that the room was much darker than it had been. She was baffled to see the moon through the window, hanging above her. Minutes before it had been late morning, but when she looked at her watch, it was nine o’clock at night. It made no sense. Elizabeth rubbed her temples, and glared at the hole. She decided that to see what was happening once and for all, she had to watch it overnight.

She laid a clean tablecloth on her kitchen table before rolling out her duvet on top for padding- the wood would not be forgiving to her bones. She brewed the strongest cup of coffee she could to ensure that she wouldn’t fall asleep. Carefully hoisting herself up onto the table with the aid of a chair, she clutched her coffee and pillow and covered herself with a blanket, bracing herself for the night ahead.

Drinking coffee at night would usually leave Elizabeth feeling jittery and wide awake- but for some reason, maybe the stress of the last few days, it wasn’t having its usual effect. She fought sleep for as long as she could, but her eyelids felt heavy and eventually she let the wave of sleep she was fighting wash over her.

Elizabeth stirred to the soothing sound of her mother’s voice calling her name. It was the sound of being called back inside for dinner after playing outside in sticky summer heat all day. She could feel the grass under the soles of her feet, the tree branches brushing over her arms as she darted between them to get home. The thin fabric of her dress billowed behind her, lilac in her peripheral vision. Her hair was long and loose, lifting to the wind as she hopped the stile and ran over the short field to her house. She paused at the gate, she could still hear her mother, could smell the beef stew simmering on the stove as it wafted through the window, but something was wrong. Elizabeth ached to follow the sound inside the familiar cottage, to run into her mother’s arms for a long hug and laugh as she was tutted at for getting her dress dirty, but she couldn’t, She knew she couldn’t because her mother had been dead for over thirty years.

Elizabeth opened her eyes properly and found herself not on the kitchen table, but instead standing beside the hole, her toes curled over the edge. Her arms flailed as she caught her balance and stepped backwards at lightning speed away from the hole- although now a more accurate word would be chasm. It was so large there was hardly any space around it, and its sides were touching the bottom of her cabinets. She looked at the clock and saw that it was gone three in the morning.

She needed to get away from it, away from the house, she couldn’t go through the front door, that meant going near the hole and there was a risk of getting stuck, of time passing without her knowing. She ran out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her and moving frantically to the living room. She opened a window and climbed out,- her nightdress catching on a nail by the latch and ripping the soft fabric. Elizabeth didn’t care, all she cared about was getting away from the chasm.

For the first time in decades, she ran. She ran until her legs burned and her lungs felt like they would explode, until her whole body felt numb from the cold morning air rushing past her. She ran so fast she didn’t feel like her legs were her own, that they might take off without the rest of her. Elizabeth didn’t know where she was going, just that she had to keep moving. She was running, and running, and as she ran, Elizabeth began to taste the sweet tang of orange juice on her tongue. She slowed and swallowed thickly, the taste becoming stronger as she did. She looked down and saw that the white nightdress she was wearing was now thin and lilac. Stained with moss and mud and grass from her youth. The skin on her hands was smooth, and her mother was calling her home.

Elizabeth opened her eyes and found herself standing at the edge of the chasm in her kitchen once again, her mother’s sing-song voice echoing from deep in the hole, calling to her. She looked past her wrinkled, liver spotted hands and felt no fear, just the ache to be at home in that cottage. She took a breath and stepped forward into the darkness.

– Tiggy Wheaton