The Mat by Paul Goodwin

The Mat by Paul Goodwin

I bought a large mat to cover a stain on the floor. It was chestnut and cream with a geometric pattern of circles, triangles and leaves. Its effect was striking. It contrasted with the blandness of the furniture and walls and looked sophisticated.

But when I rose in the morning, the mat had moved. It had hills and valleys and corners curled like dogs’ ears. I shuffled over it, pushing the ripples to the edge like a wave. I jumped on the corners. It looked good again.

My pink-haired neighbour came round, bringing her daughter, and they admired the mat. She chuckled as the little girl attempted to hop over the mat without stepping on the leaves. I kidded her that they were electrified, and she squealed with pleasure when I buzzed if her bare foot touched them.

Suddenly, her mother screamed, ‘Get off that mat. Get off it now.’

‘It’s no problem,’ I said. ‘She’s having fun. She can’t harm the mat.’

‘Look at that shape.’ The woman was shaking.

I was mystified.

‘It’s a reversed pentagram,’ she said. ‘You must know what that means.’

‘I’m sorry I don’t,’ I replied, ‘but so what?’

The girl clung to her mother and started to sob. The woman covered the child’s ears and muttered, ‘It’s evil.’

‘Nonsense,’ I sniggered.

The woman pursed her lips and glared. ‘We’re leaving. We’re not staying here.’ She pointed to the mat. ‘Get rid of that thing.’

& & &

They hurried to the door.

‘Hey, you’re forgetting your daughter’s shoes,’ I shouted.

The woman snatched them and glowered. She slammed the door behind her, twisting the knob from the outside several times as if to ensure that nothing could escape. I looked back at the mat and worked out the shape of the pentagram. If I turned the mat around, it would no longer be reversed. I decided to leave things as they were. Otherwise, I’d be endorsing the woman’s silly beliefs. After the girl’s game, the mat looked like a relief map with mountains and foothills. I stretched it hard, found some tape and stuck it to the floor. It looked good again, and I went to work.

 The lady who cleaned for me phoned. ‘There’s sticky tape exposed on your floor. It pulled my shoe off, and I fell,’ she said.

‘Oh hell, that mat must have moved,’ I replied. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Only slightly bruised, but I fell against your shelf and smashed your Wedgwood vase, I’m afraid’.

That night, I dreamt of the mat moving, slow as a slug but unstoppable. Creeping along the corridor with menace, squeezing under doors, searching me out, crawling onto the bed, suffocating me with its chemical smell of new textiles.

I awoke bathed in sweat and got up to check the mat hadn’t shifted. It was still in place, but the edge had curled as if it wanted to roll back into the tube shape it arrived in. ‘Packing up to go, are we?’ I shouted. ‘Deserting me? Well, you’re staying, and you’ll damn well lie down flat, or else’. And I stamped on the curl so hard that my ankle ached all the next day.

I couldn’t work. My ankle was swelling, so I went to the hospital. ‘Nothing serious,’ they said. ‘Give it a week or two, and it should heal.’ On the way out, I bumped into the cleaner and her husband. She gave me a shy smile, but her husband glared.

‘She injured her shoulder in your house. That room’s a death trap,’ he said. ‘She won’t be coming back’. He thumped his finger into my chest. ‘This will cost us a lot, and we could sue. I hope you’re insured.’

Back home, the mat lay flat as a pool table. My stamping had worked. Or if mats have consciousness, I thought,  it had heeded my warning. Once again, I admired its design and wondered how they could engineer a pattern that was so pleasing and precise. I went to the kitchen for a coffee.

I returned looking forward to a lazy night of televised football. I didn’t see the ridge in the mat. In an instant, I was on the floor. The drink scalded my hand, and under my nose, a muddy pond of coffee seeped into the mat’s threads. The coffee stain was worse than the one beneath the mat. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but I  couldn’t get it out. The pattern was ruined. I admitted defeat. ‘You’re going to  the tip tomorrow, I said, ‘and good riddance.’

The next day, I struggled to get the mat into the car. I tried to roll it up, but it fought back and straightened, covering my face and almost pushing me to the ground. I tried using string, but it soon burst out. I crammed it across the back seats, but halfway down the road, it sprung up and blocked my rearview mirror. I found a large boulder under a hedge and heaved it onto the mat to hold it down. 

I felt relieved when I arrived at the tip, but as I leaned over the skip, ready for the drop, the mat uncurled again, showing its pattern to the world. A bearded young man rushed up to me.

 ‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Looks like you’re throwing away a perfectly good mat. How wasteful. Have you no respect for the Earth’s resources?’ 

‘The mat is indelibly stained,’ I said. 

‘Show me where,’ he demanded.

He helped me to stretch out the mat. ‘Coffee?’, he asked.

I nodded.

 ‘White vinegar will make short work of that. Mix it with lukewarm water, leave for half an hour, and then blot it with a paper towel. Please don’t throw your mat away. You have a really handsome piece. Lovely artwork.’

I lingered for a moment. The man was smiling now. It was worth a try, so I returned the mat to the car. It was more pliant this time and I soon had it into a neat roll across the back seats.

Two miles from home, I began to have second thoughts. The cleaner’s husband was on my mind. That damn mat deserved to be got rid of. I considered tossing it into a field as one might release an animal into the wild. I imagined it floating across the grass like a terrestrial manta ray, swooped on by buzzards and chased by foxes. No one would catch me, but I detested fly-tippers, so I carried on home.

The young man was right. The stain soon vanished, and I sat down to admire the design again, thankful that he’d persuaded me to reprieve the mat. Then, without warning,  it began to roll. The movement was almost imperceptible at first. But it got stronger and faster as if there was a hidden elastic energy coiling it over and over. As the movement quickened, a hissing like an untuned radio filled the room. Goose pimples broke out across my neck and shoulders. The air was eerie and cold. At first, I was transfixed. Over half the pattern was now hidden in the roll.

Without a thought, I pounced. I dragged the mat onto the landing and threw it into an empty cupboard built into the wall. I turned the door key and checked twice that the lock was secure.

I haven’t opened that door for two days. But often, I hear movements inside the cupboard. Muffled sounds – soft like fur or fabric brushing against the door. And sometimes at night, I hear a distant knocking down the corridor -slow at first before rising to a rat-a-tat of desperation or rage. Then, silence for a while. You’ve probably got mice or rats, a friend suggested. I presume you’ve heard scuttling and scratching, too?

I’ve never heard either of those sounds. But yes, I tell myself, it’s probably only mice.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Paul Goodwin 2025