Daniel Fraser looks directly at the camera in a black-and-white photo. Behind him is a body of water and the silhouettes of a building and a tree. — Daniel Fraser

Assistant Editor Andy Sia: In Daniel Fraser “Honey?” the domestic milieu and domestic familiarity are called into question. The mise-en-scène consisting of baubles and tinsel and lights casts a beautiful glow, and gestures at the ephemerality of its world, subject to the larger forces of loss and change. The house itself becomes uneasily animate, changing with its inhabitants and, indeed, changing its inhabitants. Yes, I love this story, and am haunted and changed still within its walls after my first encounter.

Listen to Fraser read the story:

Honey?

“Honey?” she asks, from somewhere close behind.

“Yeah?” I say, half turning. There’s light spilling from the nearby bedroom.

“Remember that purse I had? The one with the blue flowers. I think I left it with all the decorations.”

“Under the stairs?” She doesn’t answer, which I take to mean yes. I go down to the staircase cupboard by the front door and look in the paper bag. It’s full of baubles and tangled lights. I can’t find the thing she’s looking for. But I don’t know really, I’m bad at looking. I’ve never been very thorough.

I go back up, and the room that was light is dark. She’s not in it. One of the bathroom taps is running, making its shhhhh.

“I couldn’t find it,” I say to the bathroom door. I presume her silence to mean Look again. I turn the handle. The door isn’t closed like I thought. The room’s empty. I turn off the tap, blow the scented candle. Sandalwood and vanilla. She must have forgotten. It’s a fright not finding her, but I calm quickly. Really, it’s nothing. These thoughts come when things are out of place. I’m sure I can hear her shuffling.

“Do you want to come and look?” I ask. Nothing. Are we not talking? I rack my brain, but I can’t think of anything I might have done.

I look at the stairs going up from the landing. There’s an attic here that wasn’t before. When we started, there were only the rafters and the roof. My parents’ house had an attic when I was little, growing up far away from here. My parents didn’t live to see ours, built in memory of theirs.

I go back downstairs. The decoration bag looks emptier now. I flick on the kettle, watch steam murmur. Tinsel is strung across the cupboards. The tree is up in the living room, covered in reds and golds, a corn angel at the tip. She’s been busy. It will be Christmas soon. I see no one has put the presents under the tree yet: another job for me to do. They must still be hidden around the house. All those things to find: it makes my chest feel tight. I check the bag for the purse again. The purse isn’t there. I hear creaking on the floor upstairs. Everything creaks here. We don’t have carpets. When we moved in, she said it could be noisy without carpets. She was right, like always. This place turns everyone to ghosts. You can hear people wherever they are; even birds and squirrels leave their echoes. Sometimes that’s a comfort. When the boys lived here, we would label the sounds, the creaks, try to decipher where they were. Each room had its own voice, a way it reacted to human feet or rearranging. Now they’re gone. I check the bag one more time.

“The purse isn’t there!” I shout up the staircase, loudly, so she’ll hear.

Daniel Fraser is a writer from Yorkshire, living in West Cork. He is the author of Lung Iron (ignitionpress, 2020) His work can be found in: Hobart, LA Review of Books, London Magazine, Poetry Ireland, Poetry London, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere.