Words by: Nash Peña
Graphic by: Shea Peña
Graphic by: Shea Peña
But then I made a mistake because I let him inside. And he stayed, and I wanted him to.
It was good at first. But suddenly, I could hear them. The bodies. I could hear their bones creaking. I could see them peeking through the crack each time he laughed or cried or looked at me for a little too long or avoided eye contact. I could smell the decay in his morning breath and taste the rot on his tongue. I tried to block it out, and I did for a while, watching in confusion at how he wasn’t being tortured by that sound, that stench, that taste. He was indifferent to it, with the only thing his senses focused on being me.
Our lives began to intertwine, and before I knew it, he became something more than a passerby. Each conversation, each embrace, each moment we shared breathed naivety into a life that had been so tainted, so corrupted years prior. The occasional sound of blood drops echoed in moments that this naivety was tested, but the bodies were buried under boxes and bags, and in these moments, he was the focus. Because he stayed.
Then, after months of learning about his life as the skeletons tapped on the doorframe, he said it. He said he loved me, and I watched as the mangled bits crawled out of the closet, waving to me from behind his back. I froze, terrified of the sight but petrified that he’d see them too. The blood started to drip on his shoulder, and I was too stunned to say those three words back. The tears he held in his eyes were just enough to block the gore from his view, and I stared with dry eyes as the flesh returned to the closet.
He didn’t say I love you again after that. And the bodies stayed hidden.
Things started to shift after that moment. As time went on, it got harder and harder to ignore the mess. I began to wince at the faint sound of their fingers scratching whenever he asked me about who I was before he spent his days in my bed, about the job I wanted as a kid and the name of my childhood dog, about the books I’d read before bed and the drugs in my backpack; about the lunches my mom packed me for school and the booze that now replaced my meals; He saw me flinch at each question, and I slowly started to yearn his departure like the others before him. The more he knew about me, the closer he got to the bodies.
And I was exhausted. Because the only thing on my mind was how the scratches were getting louder. The smell was growing. But he wouldn’t get out.
So I’d wait to answer each question and pretended like my memory was fading, making sure my response wouldn’t draw attention to the carcasses that scraped at the wooden cabinet behind him. But after countless moments censoring the stories from my past, every instant searching for a new way to distort the bloody truth, I realized the tracks I spent years covering up were starting to show.
He knew something was wrong, and all the while, the scratches were getting louder. The smell was growing. But he wouldn’t get out.
It got to the point where he asked me what he had done wrong. He said that he had felt our conversations get shorter and my silence get longer, that I was distracted by something he can’t figure out. But all I could do is stare at the maggots creeping out from under the floorboards.
The noise was deafening. The smell was atrocious. And he still wouldn’t get out.
I went silent after he asked me that, rocking back and forth as I felt their joints aching, their shriveled skin sinking into the carpet. I cannot take it anymore. He knew. He must know. The bodies were screaming at this point. But he wouldn’t get out. I either had to tell him or get him out. It was time.
I looked up at him, my face flushed and ears ringing from what resonated beneath the clothing hangers. I prepared to end it. I saw the weight he held under his eyes, and I could tell that he knew this was it.
But suddenly, for just a second, it all vanished. It was just me and him, and by the look he gave me, I realized that, even with the noise, even with the smell, he hadn’t gotten out. He knew the whole time. He heard it, too. And yet he stayed.
Maybe he’ll open the door and wipe the thick layer of dust off their bones. Maybe he’ll call for help and send them to the coroner. Maybe they’ll discover where things went wrong and explain to me why something so dead was still so alive for me. Maybe he is how I lay them to rest.
I was finally ready to turn myself in, all because he had stayed. By then, I had lost my chance, though. He already knew enough. The bodies had consumed my mind for months, yet the whole time, he had been shouting at me, screaming over the bloodbath to get to me and drag me to the getaway car. But every time he reached out his hand it was never met with another.
That one second of just him and I quickly came to an end, and I watched as blood trickled out of the closet, soaking his feet. The noises returned, and I said nothing, too distracted by the grinding of the skulls’ teeth as they realized that this was their one chance. But they weren’t getting out.
You understand why I couldn’t risk it, right? I couldn’t let him see the past I never buried because he would find out that everything holding me back from those three words was right there, crawling, biting, growing in the decay since the day I put it in my closet.
He asked what he should do. We had that one second, a second more silent, more raw than I had ever experienced. That was just a second, though, and I had no idea if I could bring it back.
He got out.
I began wiping the bloody trail that his shoes left on the carpet until my vision turned red. The flesh I had ripped apart ages ago was nothing but decomposing tissue tucked away in spots that only I could find. How could something so deteriorated still be breathing down my neck? I couldn’t understand it.
Looking back now, I think I always knew why. Those bodies raised me. They were the silence at the kitchen table. They were the gifts in my stockings and the arguments I fell asleep to at night. They were the vegetables served at dinner and the empty liquor bottles in the basement. They’ve been passed down from my parents and from the ones that came before them, an heirloom no one could get rid of because we never tried to. I can still see the marrow in my dad’s gray hair, still taste the blood in my mom’s wine, still smell the rot in my brother’s apartment. It all still lingers. The ways I tore apart the bodies long ago showed me the ways in which I survive in my own. But sometimes I forget that life isn’t just something to survive, and that bodies can’t stay hidden forever.
* * *
During those few months, I couldn’t see anything but my own bloodshed, so focused on that scratching that I forgot he once had corpses scattered across his room too. But he was able to learn how to bury them, and not under boxes and bags. He allowed them to sink into his mother’s garden and sprinkled their ashes throughout his hometown. He had given closure to those who rotted in his past.
I hope he buried mine in his mother’s garden.