Inheritance

I inherited everything from my grandfather, as my mother would remind me. His easygoing nature, his curly black hair, his thick build, his pot belly, his profound laziness, his terrible sense of hygiene, his lack of ambition. She rarely intended her comparison to be kind. Rather, any time I failed to meet her expectations, Grandad was invoked to guilt me.

Up until I was 18, Mom and I had visited him around holidays and such.  Maybe she had hoped I would change my act if I had occasional reminders of how Grandad lived.  She never appeared to have any personal desire to see him.  Each morning before our visits, she would be especially grouchy, complaining how she would have to put up with his filth.

When we would visit, I was instructed to never touch anything or leave her side.  She would bring a blanket to spread on his living room couch, and she and I would sit on that. She had a bottle of hand sanitizer in her purse in case we came into contact with anything else. We would talk to Grandad for an hour before she would escort me out. She’d throw away the blanket in the gas station down the road afterward.

I thought Grandad was a nice enough guy. He’d ask about school and buy me things I liked.  I never got to keep these presents – they’d get trashed with the blanket – but he thought enough of me to do that.  His love felt different from the kind I got from Mom.  Hers was the love that only appeared when I didn’t appreciate it.

It’s not like I didn’t understand my mother’s disdain for my grandfather.  He smelled of moth balls and stuffy rooms, and his stained shirts could never cover his gut.  His beard grew in patches and held bits of food.  He always had these long, wiry hairs poking from his nostrils, and they wiggled any time he breathed or spoke.  Even back as a kid, I knew he was gross, but he cared about Mom and me.

I stopped visiting him after I moved away from home, but I would call him every once and a while. Over the years, I told him about dropping out of college, struggling to find a girlfriend, and working odd jobs. He’d always reassure me things would be good eventually, and that helped, especially when I was feeling anxious. He’d ask about Mom, too. Once I had left home, she visited him maybe once every two years.

When he died, it was only fitting that I inherited everything.  He left Mom a buck.  

Her rage came out as criticism. She told me not to live off of his money, to make a life for myself.  She warned me of moving into his house, of taking his belongings. She said I would truly end up like him, reclusive, lazy, and useless. It was the most she had said to me in a few years.

I ignored her and moved in. It was a nice house. Filthy but nice. Grandad wasn’t one to take care himself. Apart from the living room, which he kept clean for Mom and me, every room was a mess of trash and bugs. The bathrooms had more mildew than porcelain, and the kitchen was a garbage dump of crusted plates and utensils. Mom had hired someone to clean his bedroom, mainly because his death wasn’t a tidy one.

I decided to replace him and not much else. My old apartment wasn’t much better than his place, and my grandfather seemed to get on just fine in the filth. He had made his wealth in stocks, which Mom says was the only way he bagged my grandmother.  That wealth was now mine.

I ended up inheriting his lifestyle, too. I messed on my laptop, played games, ate delivery, did little else. Sometimes, I entertained the thought of cleaning.  In a way, I felt connected to him. Only the roaches occasionally bothered me.

When the black hairs came wriggling out of my nose, I wasn’t surprised. Disappointed but not surprised.  It was only logical I’d inherit them. It was also the only thing I didn’t want.

That first month, I would pluck one hair a day. Anymore was too painful. Pulling them out would shoot pain through my nose, make me tear up, make me sneeze. My nose would swell up, too, making me terribly congested the next day. What you’d expect from thick hair, I figured.

Plucking hair was one habit I managed to keep, but I never made progress.  The hair seemed to keep up with me, growing longer and thicker. It was hard to breathe sometimes, even when I wasn’t plucking.

I don’t get desperate all that much, but those hairs made me desperate. I’d been nursing a cold at the time, and I was sick of being stuffed up. I was determined to push through the pain and get it all.  Staring down my reflection that day, I shoved my tweezers deep into a nostril, grabbed a clump of hairs, and yanked.

The tweezers seemed to catch before ripping out the hair.  I can only describe the next sensation as something like a prickly neti pot.  Something tore through the entirety of my nasal cavity and came surging out of my nose.  As I fully outstretched my arm, the sensation continued tunneling inside my head.

When the object did clear, blood flooded from my nostrils.  My skull felt hollowed out, leaving me woozy.  I held one hand to the bridge of my nose, blinking through the blinding pain.  Looking in the mirror, I discovered I no longer had any nose hairs.

Looking at the tweezer, it made sense. Covered in snot, a centipede-like creature thrashed in the tweezer’s grip. Short, wiry legs squirmed all along its thin body, which had to have been two feet in length. Little barbs prickled its back, and it folded along itself, as if trying to reach for the tweezers.

My heart raced, and my breath hitched, coming in shallow, quick bursts. Signs of a panic attack. I could feel blood stream down my throat as I struggled to focus on steadying my breathing.

The thing swung back and forth at the end of my outstretched arm, flinging mucus across the bathroom. It came close to grabbing my t-shirt, and I shook it.  I wanted to throw up. I wanted to pass out. I couldn’t. Not with this thing here.

I stumbled to the toilet and threw the tweezers and creature into the bowl.  I could see it hit the water and flail about on the surface before I slammed the lid down and lurched onto the seat. The world spun as I gasped for air. I jerked the toilet handle, breaking it off as I did so.

Through the pounding in my ears, I could hear the toilet flush. I clutched myself, rocking back and forth as I listened to the water run. Droplets of sweat and blood dripped onto my boxers. I was still hyperventilating, and I couldn’t stop it.

I tipped forward off the toilet and pressed against the opposite wall as the pressure built in my head. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing and I didn’t want to faint.  My peripheries grew fuzzy, and I could only hear the toilet water running. 

A black stream seemed to overflow from the toilet, and something slapped against the tile floor.  I groaned and tried to push myself closer against the wall. An itch spiraled up my arm, and my vision went blank.

Only a few seconds could have passed before my consciousness returned. My body trembled, and my head still felt heavy, my temples pulsing.  A puddle of water had collected underneath the toilet and trailed to my legs. 

I lifted my fingers to my nose and felt the tickle of hair against the tips.  I wasn’t bleeding anymore, but I felt a familiar congestion in my skull.  Drenched in sweat, I slumped to the tile and disappeared into my thoughts.

It’s been a few months since then.  I haven’t bothered with the tweezers.  It still tenses when I go to the bathroom. 

Back then, I had made an appointment with the doctor, but my nose started bleeding after the call and didn’t stop until I had called back and canceled.  I’ve had to keep my phone silenced ever since.  It doesn’t like the sound of the screen unlocking.  I don’t even intend to answer my mother if she calls, which hasn’t been a worry since I moved in. 

I’ve since learned it doesn’t know how to read, and it seems okay with the sound of typing.  For now, just writing this down has helped.  It helps me remember that I have time, if I can learn anything from Grandad. 

The cockroaches haven’t been around since the tweezer incident, which explains why I feel less congested at night.  My mouth tastes bitter every morning, but I can ignore that.  The headaches have been harder to ignore.

I have a great respect for my grandfather, for his kindness and care.  I now appreciate the time I had with him more, for our talks.  He focused only on me during them, no matter how much his nose hairs wriggled. I imagine it wasn’t easy for him, considering it probably didn’t like company.

These days I wonder if I actually inherited my personality from him.  Maybe he was stronger and braver than my mother made him out to be.  I at least know he wasn’t selfish in killing himself, mainly because I don’t think he did.  Mom reported his death a suicide by shotgun, and nobody investigated it.

My grandfather never owned any firearms.  Even if he had, I don’t imagine any gun could blow off the front chunk of his head and that’s it.  I can’t imagine the headache he had that day.