The county map came framed above the study desk, printed on linen and missing one corner in a neat scalloped bite. The estate agent called it old damage and repeated something the previous owner’s mother used to say: that the marsh parish had been chewed up catawamptiously. Nobody had ever asked what the word meant.
Curiosity sent the new owner driving toward the missing section. The road ended exactly where the bite began. Beyond the ragged tarmac lay a flat gray expanse with the texture of paper pulp, faint fibers running through it and a smell of glue after rain. A signpost pointed toward a village that appeared on no modern map.
Back at the house, the bite had grown.
It had taken the reservoir and part of the railway.
She removed the frame and discovered a nest hollowed into the plaster behind it, lined with paper scraps, coat buttons, hair, and tiny fragments of things that belonged to her. Whatever lived there was not eating the map at random. It was collecting samples.
The next morning the reservoir no longer existed.
Nobody remembered it.
Maps, websites, road signs, photographs, and childhood recollections had adjusted overnight. Only she retained the memory because she owned the bitten map. Whatever the creature consumed ceased to have been part of the county at all.
She began protecting important places with pins. The hospital. The school. Her mother’s grave.
Each pin stopped the bite temporarily.
Then she noticed the pattern.
The creature was eating toward the house because the house itself did not belong.
Old maps showed an orchard on the property. Older ones showed open field. The earliest survey contained only a small black symbol labeled EXCISION SITE.
The wall behind her began ticking.
She turned the map over and found writing on the linen backing in brown ink: REMOVE STRUCTURE BEFORE IT REMEMBERS WHY IT WAS BUILT.
The bite reached her street.
Outside, the houses opposite vanished without sound, leaving uninterrupted pasture where families had lived moments earlier. She seized a pin and drove it through her own roof on the map.
Something behind the plaster shrieked.
For several seconds, the whole county shook.
Then the creature bit around the pin.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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