Peter Jenkins peeked through the upstairs window at the van outside his house. A garish cartoon bull grinned back and declared, “We charge less!”
Pete turned and called to his wife, “The floor guy’s here!” He received a muffled reply from the bathroom. He repeated his announcement. Another mumbled response. He hesitated and looked again through the gathering condensation on the pane.
An enormous workman in shorts and a t-shirt was hefting a steel toolbox across the frosted lawn towards their front door. The bell rang and there was another noise from the bathroom. Jenkins paused before muttering, “Okay, I’ll deal with it then,” and hurried down the stairs.
He stopped. The workman looked even larger, with only a few inches of wood and a window between them. He swallowed, slid away the chain, and eased open the door.
The behemoth beamed and pumped Peter’s cold hand in his calloused grip. He said, “Billy Bradshaw. Here to lay your flooring, mate.” He nodded over his shoulder at the van and added, “Bull Flooring.” He released Jenkin’s hand. It stayed suspended, and both men glanced down.
“Erm, yes… Thanks for coming so soon. I’m Peter. Peter Jenkins. Please, erm…come in.” He put his hand in his pocket and tried to appear casual.
Billy peered up at the house. “Nice gaff, mate. Give us a mo. I’ll just grab the rest of my stuff.” He plonked the toolbox onto the doormat, narrowly missing Jenkins’ slippered toe, leapt back onto the frozen lawn, and whistled as he strode to his vehicle.
Freezing gusts blasted through the doorway, and Pete gritted his teeth as he watched Bradshaw unload planks. He looked down at his slippers, then over at the workman panting plumes of frosty air. He called, “Do you need a hand?”
The other man waved away the offer, hoisted one board over either shoulder, marched back to the house and shrugged them off onto the step. Peter flinched as one end clunked against the door frame. Bradshaw flashed another grin. “Show us where you want them.”
Jenkins shivered in the icy draft. “It’s maybe best if I get my wife to show you.”
Billy winked. “You the man of the house, then?”
Pete felt his face flush and coughed. He mumbled, “I’ll go find her.” Tripping on the first step, he hurried up the stairs.
Bradshaw shrugged and bounded off to retrieve the other floorboards.
***
A muffled voice was growing louder and coming closer. Sounds were entering his ears, but he couldn’t distinguish the words or their meanings.
The bull was everything.
Then Jenkins felt a shove and heard Myrtle shouting his name, “Stop it, Pete! You’re scaring me!”
Peter blinked and gawped at his wife. He stepped back against the hallway wall and stared at Myrtle’s blanched face. One word slipped from his slack mouth. “What?”
His wife frowned as she handed him a mug. “You went really weird, Pete. Like a fit or something. You kept saying ‘bull’ and looking at the floor.”
Jenkins glanced down, twitched, and dropped the tea. Myrtle screamed as it shattered. “Jesus Pete! What’s wrong with you?!”
He pointed a trembling finger. “Can’t you see it?!”
“See what?”
Peter squatted in the brown puddle. He didn’t feel the hot tea seeping through his socks. “Here! The bull’s head!”
Myrtle squinted at the floorboards, then studied her husband. “There’s nothing there.”
Jenkins widened his eyes. “Look. Here’s the nose ring!” He jabbed his forefinger into the pool, causing a tiny splash. “And here are the horns!” He stabbed the soaked floorboard again. He felt a sharp pain as a porcelain shard nicked his skin. A tiny red drop plopped into the steaming lake.
Myrtle leaned forward, scanned the mess surrounding Peter, and shook her head. She muttered, “I’ll get something to clean this up.”
Jenkins straightened and followed his wife. As he reached the doorway, he peeked over his shoulder.
The bull’s head was still there.
Glaring from beneath the tea.
***
Myrtle stared at her husband and shook her head. “No, Pete. We aren’t changing the flooring, and that’s final.”
Jenkins shifted at the table. He could feel his face flushing and his hands getting sweaty. He gulped wine. “But…”
“No, Peter.” She raised her hand. “It’s taken you long enough to find a flooring person as it is. Put this nonsense out of your head. There’s nothing there.” She sipped from her glass and added, “You shouldn’t drink your wine so fast either.” Myrtle stood and walked over to the oven.
Pete reached for the bottle and realized he was grinding his teeth. He mumbled, “Get a grip,” and restrained himself from quaffing the refill.
Myrtle returned and laid a steaming pie before him.
The aroma penetrated Jenkins’ nostrils and his stomach pitched forward. His vision swirled. He tugged his shirt away from his slicked back, picked up his fork, then put it down again. He gaped at the pastry, dry swallowed, then gasped. “What is it?”
Myrtle frowned. “What do you mean? It’s a pie.”
Pete lurched from his chair and dashed across the new flooring into the toilet. As vomit gushed into the bowl, he heard his wife shout, “Steak and kidney’s your favorite!”
***
Peter Jenkins plodded along the pavement with recent events pinging around his feverish mind. With enormous willpower, he had jammed his eyes closed while crossing the hallway to the front door that morning. He had felt the floorboards churn as the bull’s head tracked his movements, but resisted the urge to look. The last thing he had wanted was another episode while leaving for work.
Pete reached inside his pocket and dialed Bradshaw’s number. A recorded message stated, “Bull Flooring, you’re eleventh in the queue.” Then there was a piercing click followed by loud, jaunty music. Jenkins flinched, held the phone away from his ear, then listened. The Bullseye theme tune was blaring. He gritted his teeth and waited. And waited. The message repeated. “Bull Flooring, you’re eleventh in the queue.” The Bullseye music resumed.
Jenkins frowned. He had only called this number once before and Bradshaw had answered on the first ring. Unbeknownst to Myrtle, Pete had found Bull Flooring on a flyer that had flapped into his face while walking home one night. The prices had undercut Peter’s cheapest, wildest dreams. After months of stalling, resistant to his wife’s pressuring, the upheaval and expense, he had viewed the flyer’s sudden arrival as serendipitous. He had arranged the installation without hesitation.
As Bullseye music rattled around his eardrum, his queue position remained static in eleventh place. Jenkins felt a little queasy.
He hung up, switched on his phone’s mobile data and commenced an online search for ‘Billy Bradshaw’. He scrolled through four Google pages and felt his palms becoming sticky. There was nothing. He tried ‘Bull Flooring’ and trawled through more pages.
The same result.
***
The office had been a whirl of extraneous activity. Pete had exchanged numb pleasantries with colleagues and, trancelike, typed numbers into spreadsheets. As he trudged away from the building, he had only one recollection of his working day—lunchtime.
On autopilot, he had unwrapped the cellophane from his sandwich and taken a bite. His head had spun and, for the second time in under twenty-four hours, Peter Jenkins had bent and vomited into the bin below his desk. He had wiped away tears and pulled apart the bread. A processed beef slice and some salad leaves. His stomach had rumbled when he saw the greenery. Dumping the meat in the waste, he had savored the individual lettuce leaves as he chewed them at his computer and slipped back into a daze.
The bull in the floor continued to dominate his thoughts. He saw its bulbous head, dull nose ring, and glowering eyes. In his mind, it wanted to gorge free of the floorboards, tossing, trampling, and crushing everything in its vengeful rampage. He imagined the beast pinning his helpless body to the ceiling before stomping Myrtle’s skull in the hallway and charging through the front door.
Jenkins blinked and shook his head to toss away the image. He muttered, “Bloody hell,” and jumped as a loud car horn sounded to his right.
Turning, he spotted an irate woman gesticulating from behind a steering wheel. She was mouthing the word, “Arsehole.” Her pudgy hands stomped down on the horn again, and Pete flinched. He glanced down and realized he was standing on the roadside of the curb. Her car was parked, but a short distance away, with an easy maneuver to drive around him.
Jenkins peered at the driver and her vehicle. Her car’s dreary gray color matched her lipstick. She waved her chubby arms. Her jerky movements were reminiscent of a malfunctioning battery-powered teddy bear. Two fat fingers became a V-sign and pumped in his direction.
That was the trigger.
Rage seized control and rippled up Pete’s legs, along his arms, up his back and into his shoulders. His neck pulsed, his nostrils flared, and his muscles clenched. His shiny black shoe jabbed and scraped at the asphalt. His head wrenched from side to side.
Eyes down, he charged.
Peter Jenkins’ body pounded forward and launched itself, headfirst, into the car windscreen. There was a sickening crack as his forehead thudded into the glass. The driver screamed and cowered in her seat as her bloodied assailant glared through the fissures.
And then the fury fled from Pete’s frame as quickly as it had entered. His head swirled, and he tumbled off the bonnet and onto the pavement.
He heard tires screeching and hot air brushed past his cheeks.
Then there was silence, and he was alone.
He lifted a quivering finger to his crushed nose, but was too dazed to feel pain.
He gazed at the gray goo on his hand.
Numb, he licked it clean.
It tasted like blood.
***
Peter Jenkins didn’t bother with the doorbell. His fists pummeled the door.
Myrtle peeked from behind the curtain. The man on the step resembled her husband, but his face looked different. She put down her phone, hurried to slide off the chain, and winced when she saw Pete’s crumpled, bloody nose. A gaping hole had replaced his upper incisor and there was a blood-crusted trench across his forehead. His tie hung askew like the tongue of a throttled dog and blood splattered his shirt. She grabbed his arm and pulled him over the threshold, shrieking, “God, what happened? Did someone attack you? Are you okay?”
Jenkins shrugged off his wife and jammed his eyes shut as he trampled across the flooring. He disappeared into the garden. Myrtle’s heart was thudding. She heard banging and clattering outside. She closed the door and hesitated.
Pete lumbered back into the hallway. His eyes shone with a wild fervor. Air whistled through his devastated nose. In his bloodied knuckles, he clenched a pitchfork. He stepped forward and its rusty teeth scratched the wood.
Myrtle gawped at her husband’s bedraggled state and then at the orange scars on her new floorboards. Confusion snapped into annoyance. She glowered. “Peter Jenkins, I don’t know what’s come over you, but you can stop messing up my floor and pull yourself together!”
He advanced, and the claws gouged deeper into the wood. His bloodshot eyes fixed on his wife. Through gritted teeth, he hissed, “It’s me or the bull.”
Myrtle dug her fists into her hips and shouted, “What the hell are you on about, you bloody madman! You’ve lost it, you have!”
Peter shuffled closer to his wife. More scratches in the floorboards. His eyes never left hers. “Step aside, Myrtle. I’ve got no choice.”
Mrs. Jenkins didn’t budge. She unleashed a bitter laugh. “I’ve heard it all now. You’re gone in the head!”
Something slammed into Myrtle’s soles. She tripped backward into the front door and watched as her slipper spun away across the hallway. She jerked her eyes down and blinked hard.
There was a snapping and crunching noise as the flooring splintered upward. Like an invading army surging up from the foundations. Thud after thud. Something was ramming the hallway from beneath. She screamed.
Peter Jenkins didn’t hesitate. Lunging forward, he hurled himself into the air and plunged the pitchfork deep into the wood. There was a bellow, then the handle wrenched free from his grasp. The tool jerked left and right, but remained in the floorboard.
He gripped the handle once more, stamped his foot onto the raging bull’s tossing head, yanked the pitchfork free, and stabbed downward again. He watched as gray blood oozed from the splinters at his shoes. But still, the wood continued to vibrate and split. A white horn appeared and jabbed through a crack.
Exhausted, Jenkins staggered back as the point thrashed and the hole became bigger. A panicked thought tottered into his mind. “I can’t beat it. It’s getting in.”
And then there was a blur of movement. Myrtle slid past and, on her hands and knees, slammed her upraised pan down onto the bull’s horn. There was a clunk and a roar from beneath. Myrtle Jenkins swung the utensil with such ferocity, it snapped in her hand. She scuttled off into the kitchen and returned with a kitchen knife. She began to thrust at the flooring once more. Blood and splinters sprayed.
Pete seized the pitchfork and, side by side, the married couple jabbed at the bull in the floor. Panting and sweating. Spearing and spiking.
The wood heaved and vibrated, but with receding force. Then there was an almighty bawl. Husband and wife braced for one final onslaught. Pitchfork and kitchen knife raised.
There was a mournful snort, and the floor lay still.
Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins peered at each other. A sweat drop left Myrtle’s flushed brow and fell through the jagged crater in the floorboards.
Pete leaned close to the hole and listened for a moment. When he lifted his head, his smile revealed his lost tooth. He said, “I heard it.”
Myrtle stared at her husband. “And?”
He noticed the blood on his hands was no longer gray, but red.
He grinned and answered. “It was galloping away.”
