A HOUSE THAT REMEMBERS

Give me something never written, never explained. Something dark, thrilling and uniquely my own. That was what I prayed for when I found you. Never in this world or the next will we be together again, or with anyone else, no matter how hard we tried. We will never talk, never part, never forget the other. That was our vow, our curse, our beginning and our end. Over-and-over-and-over again.By the time I realized something was about to go wrong, the blood had already caked itself under my freshly manicured nails and you were no more. The shine from the light pink varnish already dulled by the smearing of dried blood, and the worst thing was, I couldn’t remember a single thing.

I didn’t remember washing my hands. I didn’t remember scrubbing under my fingertips, brushing them raw. By the time I understood what had happened, what I had done, my nails were the least of my worries. But, alas, there I was, drowning in a guilt I didn’t feel. Letting it rearrange the boxes in my mind, washing numbness over me as hot prickly tears fell from my eyes and lined little charcoal rivers in my makeup. The fear of no longer being good enough for you had left my body and now everything looked normal, like nothing had ever gone wrong—and with that, something irreversible took hold of me, refusing to let go. Just as you had, and if you must know, this is not a confession, not in the slightest.

I don’t regret what I did and we will never speak of this again, not after tonight. I never meant to kill you, I only wanted you to stay long enough to listen, to finally hear what I had to say. But you couldn’t. That was a decision you would have to live with. That is the decision that got you killed long before you showed up on my front steps with your rain-soaked jacket and the smell of hours-old curry still peppering your day-suit. This is exactly what most normal, regular, ordinarily boring people fail to understand. They hear the words— murder, death, and killing—and immediately jump to the worst conclusions. They imagine the darkness of night, hours of planning, stifled screams, and blood smeared walls amidst wild, revenge-filled eyes. But it wasn’t like that, I would know. For me, in my experience, it was quiet, careful, and wholly uneventful. Dare I say, dull. I can’t explain how dreadfully unexciting and lackluster the entire thing was. I expected so much more. A fight, resistance, some sort of begging. It felt like changing the channel on a remote. One click, done. Channel gone, onto the next showing.

But that is where things went wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I rehearsed what we would talk about for days. Exactly as it would go, should go. Talking to myself for hours— in the shower, the car on the way to work, over the sautéed mushrooms on my stove top. I felt like we had had this conversation a thousand times before, and maybe we had, in my head. I told myself if I said it just enough times, in just the right voice, you would finally understand. Finally listen. Finally stop. Finally let me go, but you couldn’t. Not when you had given me so much, not when you had taken so much more from me.

**

Your smile was already leaning into your usual smirk. You held tightly to a bottle of your favorite wine, probably the kin to one you had at dinner with your wife. No explanation, no conversation, just expecting to come and go as you always do, always did. Maybe that is where I went wrong. If I had just listened, just let you come in and sit down and babble on about the traffic, work, how tired you were. Your freshly steamed shirt wasn’t unbuttoned, your tie was neat and your jacket tidy.

Everything was off about this moment.

I looked down at the small velveteen box you pushed towards me, so bright, so velveteen, so expensive.

“It’s yours, a gift to remind you how much you are always on my mind, in my heart, tied to my soul…forever. I want to know if you will…”

“Stop.”

The words aren’t even out of my mouth.

“I left…”

I turn to look around my quiet living room. Dozens of vased roses had been delivered to my door within the past several hours, there must have been hundreds. I wasn’t sure if it would be more difficult to get rid of you, or them. In the center of my living room coffee table were several more unopened velveteen boxes. Emerald green in color and wrapped in fuschia bows with black writing. You always had a way with gifts.

No doubt a necklace, or a set of earrings, maybe a pendant of some sort.

I had been through this before with you, big extravagant gifts. You hoping I will stay, hoping I will wait even longer for the inevitable nothing.

“I did it…” you whispered, the small smile only looked reassuring, as though waiting to see if that was the right thing to say. I never even gave you a chance. I remember thinking how easy it would have been to fix everything if you stopped leaving me night, after night. Not forever, just long enough for you to realize you wanted to stay. Maybe, that night you really did—but it was a little too late. It’s unfortunate how time works, irrelevant how you never noticed the little details when they mattered the most.

I refilled the glass in my best crystal. Only fitting for the moment.

“You are staring at me. Seeing through me..."

Your words no longer made sense. Slurring. The effects starting.

“I am only listening,” I whispered back, impatiently waiting for the drink to hit.

It was so sudden, so jarring.

The powder had dissolved so perfectly, so perfectly in fact that I was unsure of where all the blood had come from. How was I to know you would fall. It was just a shame you couldn’t have done it outside, on the steps. A much more likely accident.

I expected you to taste bitterness, to realize the wine you had been drinking all night had turned sour. To stop while you might still have time. But you didn’t, you couldn’t.

The signs were all there, the slow-blinking, heavy eyes. I knew better…

I shouldn’t have invited you in. The box still clutched tight in your hands. You never made it to the couch. Your eyes slid out of focus and rolled back, the air catching in your lungs as I heard the squashy, wet sound of your body hitting the foyer floor.

“See…this was why you shouldn’t drink so much,” I whispered, kneeling over and smoothing out your coat. I pulled the box from your hand. You looked peaceful, finally. Quiet, in all the ways I had wanted, fully present and completely at my disposal.

“Do you understand a little more now?”

You didn’t answer. You didn’t move.

Your chest lay still and soft, like the rest of your body.

“You didn’t want to make the hard choices, you didn’t want to sacrifice or make changes or do better. You focused on all the wrong things and that is what got you here.”

I still didn’t notice the blood, there was so much of it and yet so little. I knew something was very wrong. You were far too malleable, too hollow. Just like your promises, just like you thought I was—and would always be—for you. But now, even when I had you exactly as I wanted, it wasn’t enough. The feelings were not better, or different.

I waited for you to wake up, to talk, to seize or catch your breath, but you never did. I told myself that was for the best, that this was how it would have always happened and soon you would wake up, we would laugh about it and you could finally explain yourself. But that is not what happened. Not at all.

**

Hours passed, the sickly-sweet smell of roses mixed with the blood and my salty tears. The house I was so afraid to be alone in now felt like it was swallowing me whole. I checked your pulse the way I had seen others do, two fingers pressed against your wrist, and then your neck. I felt nothing. I checked mine. I also felt nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I couldn’t panic, that didn’t mean anything—

Maybe we both didn’t have a pulse to feel.

Maybe with all of this going on, there was no movement in our bodies—and the life had drained from us both. I stayed there, silent. I pulled you close. I told you everything you never could. I told you everything I meant to say all those years before. How you held me in a gilded cage as I waited for you to call or text or show up at my door. How you never used the key I gave you, never made me feel like I was as yours, as you were mine. How I pretended to be unbothered, not to care, not to have feelings, or thoughts, or desires. How we had talked about a new life with a small house and kids and a life of our own. How I hated the word someday, or later.

“You don’t get that now, my dear,” I said softly, whispering over his silent body.

I stared down at my left hand, the third finger from the left held the reason you had come by so unannounced, so unprovoked. A thick yellow band with a hefty diamond—round and brilliant. The size, slightly smaller than a dime. It sparkled under the light of the moon mixed with errant street lamps. Glittering like a beacon of what would never be, now that you were dead.

Cold, lifeless and dead.

To make things worse, I felt more alone now than I ever had.

**

The disposal came next, dragging your body across a room the size of a small museum was no easy task. I hadn’t planned for how heavy you would become. I was surprised by how many times I apologized to you, to myself, to my house, and my future.

“It really wasn’t supposed to go this way,” I whispered, half-grunting as I finally made it to the kitchen. “I just needed you to listen, to finally pick me.”

It didn’t take long to rip up my back garden and dig a hole big enough to hold me over for the next few days. Petunias and tulips were thrown across my tiny yard. Terracotta pots the size of a suitcase scattered upturned, and would do great to hide our mess until I got a chance to properly dispose of you. The grass and dirt still muddied from the rain made for a great cover. The air sat heavy with despair and I no longer tasted blood, or wet earth, or you. I no longer felt regret.

Making my way back to the kitchen I almost forgot I had left you on the floor. I walked over the spot where your body had lain just moments before. Not much time had passed, not much, it must have been half an hour, or so—and yet, you were no longer lying lifeless. I stood there, in the doorway between my kitchen and the back yard. My gate slightly ajar, my porch light illuminating to the fence line.

There was no way you left without me seeing you, no way.

I felt my thumb instinctively move, the nail grazing the inside of my ring finger. The ring was still there, still hanging heavy on my hand. You had been to my house—but—but—but— there was no body, no smeared blood in the hall, nothing. The bottle of wine sat opened and fully emptied next to a crystal stemmed glass. The assortment of velveteen boxes still housed the jewelry I had fully expected to disappear. My front door, now closed and locked still showed signs of where you had fallen. The faint outline of rainwater droplets from hours before stippled the tile. Intermingling with your blood.

At first, I let out a laugh. A small, broken, deranged little laugh that even I didn’t recognize.

There was no way you could have left without using a key.

“Very, very funny,” I whispered, half joking to the empty room. A space used to my antics, my long winded, ambling discussions.

“You believe I won’t find you, you died, you were dead, you really think you can leave me now?”

I checked every corner, every square inch of my house from fence to window. Every cabinet, closet, and bed post. But you weren’t waiting to grab me, or fight me, or hide. You were gone.

Gone.

The clock struck twelve.

Each tick-tick-tick-tick-tick rattled my soul.

I let out another laugh, this one smaller, louder, loosely gripped with reality only broken by the sound of four hefty knocks at the front door, just as they had signaling your arrival earlier. The same knocks you use every night around this time.

The knocks weren’t hungry, or frantic, or angry.

They were patient, quiet, unassuming. If I hadn’t known you were dead, I might have opened the door, expecting you to be waiting.

**

The knocks continued, every few minutes as though you knew I might break and open the door.

Eventually.

The knocking hasn't stopped. Not once. Steady, hopeful, familiar. The same four knocks. Pausing only briefly before knocking again. I counted them, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, until I swear I can hear it even when it stops.

I haven’t opened the door.

I haven’t. But not because I can't...but...because you wouldn't believe me if I told you. The blood has been cleaned from my house. The flowers neatly trimmed and fully watered, just as my garden out back has been reassembled. Every curtain, window, and vent have been locked and sealed. Covered. Just like my doors. Not a peep of sunlight can touch me now. It's as though this terrible night happened in someone else's house. The jewel boxes had been burned, their contents adorning my skin as a token of what I know happened, but can never tell. No one would believe me.

I stand in my foyer, staring at my mirrored reflection wondering how it got this bad. Maybe, just maybe if I let you in, you will finally explain… but that is not likely. The last time I opened the door for you, the steps were empty. My hand hovered over the handle, waiting for the knocks to stop. The handle turned so easily, so quickly. The bottle of wine was back, filled to the brim with you standing behind me, so close. Your coat dripping water, each deliberate drop slowly falling off the fabric.

Your tired, smiling face seemed so out of place. Your eyes focused on my features, studying me, coldly, intently and with purpose. You looked drained, as though you were no longer trying to pretend to be normal. No longer pretending to be alive.

"Sorry," you whisper, "traffic was terrible."

Your hands extended out from your coat pocket, a velveteen box, pushed towards me. Movement trickled across your lips, before falling. It was as though you forgot how to thread a convincing enough smile.

"Open it... you always wanted me to stay...now I can..." His words felt thoughtful, a hint of warning and ownership hid in between the short pauses. He wasn't demanding, he was certain.

The box was wet, and cold, spongy in my hands, as though it had been recently buried. Blood and the taste of after-rain was all I could smell as I opened the box.

Inside —

A key.

My key.

The copy I had made for him all those many years ago.

He watched me with that same tired, hollow patience I had afforded him. Like he had been waiting a long time for me to finally notice something, anything.

My hands trembled. I almost wished I could go back to when the blood was still caked under my nails. I wished I could go back to the first four times I had opened the door for you. How each piece of jewelry led to a piece of myself slowly dying inside. I was finally getting everything I wanted, and yet I had nothing.

You hadn't come back to get in, he had never, ever left.