Far From The Madding Crowd

The first thing I noticed was the smell.

Sweet, heavy — sugar before anything else. Not the onion-garlic base of my own kitchen, not stew thickening on the stove, but cake. An iced one, fresh, the air dense with it.

The backward mother ushered me in without turning. She walked backward through her doorway, her braid trailing across her chest like a misplaced rope. The gesture should have looked awkward, but it was fluid, too practiced, like she had never learned forward.

“Don’t be welcome,” she said, smiling. Then, as if correcting herself: “Be welcome, of course.”

Her flat was pristine. Too pristine. Not a single object out of place. Pictures framed on the walls hung upside down, landscapes inverted, trees growing toward the floor. The clocks ticked counterclockwise, their hands dragging time away from itself.

The children sat already at the table. The daughter hummed, words spilling backward from her lips, a nursery rhyme I almost recognized until the syllables slurred and collapsed. The son did not hum. He stared at Daniel, who had followed me reluctantly, his graphite-smudged hands folded tight in his lap.

“Sit, sit,” the backward father said, rising halfway and then lowering himself into his chair again. His shirt was buttoned wrong, buttons climbing from his waist to his throat like a crooked ladder. “Eat with us. We’ve just begun.”

He set down plates — cake first. Thick slices, frosted, already sweating sugar. The daughter clapped. The mother poured coffee into porcelain cups, the steam fogging her glasses.

“It’s good to start at the end,” the backward father explained. “That way nothing is wasted.”

Daniel shifted beside me, not reaching for his fork. The boy across from him leaned forward and whispered, very softly, as if so only Daniel should hear:

“I know what you are.”

Daniel froze, eyes darting down. His knuckles whitened against his knees. I opened my mouth to object — to say he’s just a boy — but Callum’s hand brushed my arm before I could. Except he wasn’t there. Not at the table. Not where I thought he was.

The backward mother cut into her cake, eating with slow, reversed motions: fork pulling away from her mouth, food already bitten sliding back onto the plate in neat pieces. She swallowed, then smiled.

“Dessert first,” she said. “Then meat. Then vegetables. Then soup. Then we’ll say grace. That’s the proper way.”

Daniel whispered, barely audible: “I don’t want to.”

The backward daughter laughed at that — a ringing, delighted laugh, as though she had told a marvelous joke. She slapped the table, nearly toppling her backward-running clock.

The father nodded at me. His smile was strained, almost pitying. “Children should follow. It keeps them… aligned.”

Aligned with what, he didn’t say.

I pushed the plate away. The cake slid an inch, smearing its icing across the immaculate cloth. The backward family watched in silence — all of them smiling now, even the son.

The father said, in that too-polite tone of his:

“Thank you for leaving.”

I hadn’t stood up yet.

The father’s words — “Thank you for leaving” — hung in the air, though my chair had not scraped back.

The backward mother tilted her head, braid swinging across her face, and dabbed her lips delicately with the bottom of a napkin, the unhemmed edge.

“We’ll continue,” she said, as if nothing had passed between us.

The daughter clapped again, her palms missing once, twice, before colliding on the third attempt with a hollow slap. She shoved her fork straight into the icing and smeared it over her plate, humming the same inverted rhyme.

Daniel sat rigid. His slice remained untouched, the fork resting across it like a boundary.

The father carved into his portion. Each bite entered his mouth whole, but when he lowered his fork, the cake lay on the plate again, slightly misshapen, as though it had traveled through him and come back altered.

I forced myself to look away.

The second course arrived on heavy platters: slabs of meat, charred at the edges.

The mother served in silence, backwards steps between the table and the sideboard, plates always in reverse order — mine first, Daniel’s last.

The son chewed. At least I thought he did. His jaw worked, but the meat did not diminish. Minutes passed, and then — with no warning — he leaned forward and expelled the entire strip of beef onto his plate, slick, whole, steaming. He smiled at Daniel while wiping his mouth, as though proud of the trick.

The smell of char filled my throat. I pushed the meat aside.

Vegetables next.

A dish of boiled carrots, grey from overcooking. A bowl of peas, their skins wrinkled, floating in a pale broth. The mother served them with precision, spoon dipping backward, food sliding onto plates with a soft plop.

The daughter plucked peas one by one and laid them carefully on the tablecloth, forming a circle. When the ring was complete, she whispered something — backward syllables, slippery and wet. The peas shivered against one another, as though rearranging.

I could not stop watching her lips, trying to catch a word that ran the right way. None did.

Soup came fourth. Thin, colorless, ladled into bowls that were already soiled from cake and meat.

The smell was faint — like boiled paper.

The father blew into his spoon before lifting it, but instead of sipping, he tipped the liquid back into the bowl. Each motion repeated, as if performance were nourishment. The mother mirrored him exactly, their gestures too synchronized to be coincidence.

Daniel touched nothing. His fingers stayed clenched on his knees. His spoon remained dry.

Last came grace.

They all folded their hands — palms downward, knuckles pressing into the cloth. Heads tilted not down, but up, eyes staring at the ceiling.

The father intoned something low. I couldn’t follow the words — they seemed to begin where sentences should end, falling backward into each other. The mother joined, then the daughter. Their voices meshed, reversing in layered cadences.

Daniel whispered at my side: “Don’t answer.”

The boy across from him leaned in so close his lips nearly touched Daniel’s ear.

“I know what you are,” he said again, louder this time, his breath stirring the fine hairs at Daniel’s temple.

Daniel flinched but did not cry out.

The backward father ended the prayer with a satisfied exhale. He opened his eyes and fixed me with that strained smile.

“Now,” he said, “we are ready to begin.”

“But we’ve finished,” I said.

His smile widened. “Yes. Exactly.”

Daniel’s chair scraped suddenly. Not all the way back — just an inch. Enough to cut the rhythm of the room. The backward family stilled, all four pairs of eyes snapping toward him at once.

He hadn’t spoken, but the sound of wood on tile was loud, reckless.

The boy across from him leaned closer, neck craning at an unnatural angle, his words a hiss:

“Say it. Say what you are.”

Daniel’s lips parted. No sound came. His hands pressed against his knees until his fingertips blanched white.

I reached for him, but Callum’s voice stopped me.

Low, calm, threaded into the room as though he had always been there:

“He’s mine.”

I froze. He was standing in the corner, just inside the doorway — a place I had not seen him enter. His outline was faint against the perfect neatness of the backward flat, as if the walls didn’t want to hold him.

The backward daughter laughed. Too loud, too sharp. She clapped again — missing once, twice, landing the third time with a smack.

“Wrong way! Wrong way!” she sang, words tumbling backward after the first phrase until they tangled into nonsense.

The mother rose from her chair without bending her knees, her braid swinging like a pendulum against her chest. “He shouldn’t be here,” she said, voice flat. “This isn’t a house for two.”

Daniel shuddered. His spoon toppled from the table, struck the tile, spun. The sound echoed too long, as though the flat itself wanted to hold on to it.

The father pressed his palms flat on the tablecloth, fingers splayed wide.

“You can’t split them forever,” he told me. His tone was polite, but his eyes did not blink.

Then, slower, each word deliberate:

“One. Boy.”

Callum stepped forward. His knees did not bend; he seemed to slide more than walk. His hand brushed Daniel’s shoulder. The touch was too light, too rehearsed.

Daniel jerked away.

“No,” he whispered. His voice cracked. “I’m not— I’m not him.”

The backward son’s smile widened. He leaned back at last, satisfied, as if he had won something.

The lantern I’d brought from our flat flickered on the sideboard. Its flame bent sideways, guttered, then flared. For a moment the room seemed to double — walls overlapping walls, ceiling pulling downward like a second skin.

I stood, chair legs shrieking against tile.

“We’re leaving,” I said.

The father inclined his head, gracious. “Thank you for arriving.”

The mother stepped backward, guiding us to the door without turning. Her eyes never left mine, wide and dry, reflecting the lantern’s tremor.

When we crossed the threshold, the backward daughter began to sing again, louder this time, every syllable running backward until it collapsed into silence.

The door clicked shut behind us.

I turned to Callum — to ask where he’d come from, why he’d spoken then and not sooner.

But only Daniel stood in the hall, his chest rising and falling too fast, his graphite-smudged hands trembling at his sides.

Daniel was the only one beside me in the hall.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

The air here smelled wrong — too clean, as if scrubbed of air itself. The corridor light flickered, humming faintly, and in its pulse I thought I saw a second shadow folded within Daniel’s. The taller one.

He wouldn’t look at me. His gaze stayed fixed on the backward family’s door, though it was closed, and no sound came from beyond it.

Then — almost too faint to trust — from behind the wood, the soft scrape of chairs moving. The clink of dishes being unstacked.

A voice, gentle, deliberate:

“Begin again.”

Daniel flinched. His shoulders jerked.

“Let’s go,” I said, gripping his wrist. His skin felt cold, dry, as though he’d been sitting outside in frost.

We started down the corridor. The light blinked out, then in again. For the briefest instant, three sets of footsteps echoed instead of two.

I didn’t look back.

At the turn of the stairwell, something brushed my sleeve — the faintest tug, like fabric caught on air. Daniel glanced up sharply, as though he’d felt it too.

“Did you—” he began, then stopped.

There was no sound now. Only the creak of the stair under our weight, the slow settling of the old building.

Halfway down, I looked toward the lower landing. The lantern’s reflection met me from the window’s glass — one flame, two silhouettes.

Or maybe one and a half.

By the time we reached our own door, Daniel’s hand was slick in mine. I let go, turned the key, pushed it open. The air inside was thicker — warmer, lived in.

The lantern on our table burned steady, untroubled.

I glanced to the left — a habit, nothing more — toward the spot where Callum sometimes sat, cross-legged, near the ledge.

Empty.

Then, as I latched the door, I heard Daniel exhale.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“For what?”

He hesitated, then: “For bringing him home.”