Apartment 3 “The Green Light”

It is my first Christmas alone. My first Christmas away from my dad. I have tried to stay at the apartment as much as I can, just to make sure that Ariana knows that this move was not just of convenience. I am here, and this is my new home. But there is a part of me that I am never truly able to let go of, a restlessness that is as part of me as any other.

And so I think it wasn't really all that strange that I ended up window shopping on the main thoroughfare, looking into unlit buildings as I did what anyone would do and desired things I didn't have.

Strung across the gap between buildings, set apart from one another by road, were strings of off white Christmas lights, ones more the color of milk than of snow. And those lights, they burn out all the time, and there even was a section of light that was not lit, held back by a lone bulb that went bad. But the community still finds it important to keep using them. Because there is something special about the old ways. There is something important in keeping hold of those things that brought you joy, as they are.

If it was snowing, maybe I would have heard it coming up behind me. Even as I write this, my eyes closed as I let myself think about tthat moment, a dizzying feeling overcomes me, and I am so very much aware of how alive I feel right now, even though what I am going to tell you is just about as horrifying as you could imagine. The first thing I noticed was the smell.

The second was the reflection of a long limbed torso with long black hair coming up and settling itself behind me.

But the smell...Yes. The smell was what I noticed first. Gripped by the ankle, it was dragging a leg of something I assumned to be a deer or something like it. At first I feared that it was something fresh. A recent kill. But as I turned and looked in my periphery, I could see the trail of maggots coming from the nearby alley. Even in the cold, they still were mvoiing, and I resisted the urge to vomit by swallowing hardf. Then I steadiedmyself, looked into the mirrror of the glass, seeeing my lost and sunken face staring back at me.

And I turned around. And I couldn't see its face.

But I knew it was smiling.

I knew why it was here. It came not when I wanted. It showed up when it was supposed to.

Christmas.

I waited for it to say those words, to ask me what I wanted more than anything in the world. But it waited. It waited for me to make the mistake. It wanted me to be the one who decided to say the wrong thing.

So I said I wished, more than anything, that my mom was here.

I blinked, and there was nothing but the towering form. But then I blinked again, and the lights were no longer bright and white, but a dim, suffering green. Cast in the light, but so ver yfar removed, stood the shuddering, dark body, her hair a cascading avalanche of black, her skin and all of the rest of her form rendered as that of the void. It could have been daylight and it would not have made a difference. And instantly the smell of it hit me, but for the first time it didn't make me sick. I am thinking about it now...

And it makes me cry, because for so so long I have been so repulsed by the smell of her, when in fact it was not unpleasant at all.

She does not smell of old ink and foul sewage.

She smells of truffles, and of butterscotch.

She smells of somehting moldy, and something sweet.

Like a trip to a museum, when I was very little, the one where I felt everything for the first time. I smelled it and was eating candy. And those combined, that is how she really smells, even if she looks like she shouldn't.

She stoood there, her breath coming out in long, ragged gasps that caused my throat to constrict and my eyes to burn. I could see it in her form. She was not a being of despair, but one at peace with her body.

Even the neck my father left to her. Like agift. A final farewell before he tried to end her life. And I think for ceertain that he did succeed that day. My mom...she isn't back. This thing is her, but really it isn't.

What I thought my mom was didn't exist.

I couldn't breathe as I looked at her, the greeen lights causing the skin of the Jingle to glow with unnatural color, set apart from her., And I tried to push it down. I know I was maybe.,..was I wrong? I couldn't ...I couldn'''t... Help it I couldn;thelpit. I needed this I wished and she was there I wshed and she was there...

And I Stepped forward. And I fell into the smell of butterscotch and truffles. And I cried because I knew that this was what I wanted, but also not at all. And I could feel mnmy rib ache. I knew the fear I ffelt in her arms as she squeezed me harder than she likely knew.

The rib popped out.

I screamed.

She started to cry. She tried to pop it back in, panic rising over her. She was a thing and yet...she just wanted to hold me, but my form can/t take it.

I Cant' take it.

I needed to …

Oh ggods.

That thing was crying over me, black splotches collecting upon the sidewalk that should have been covered in snow. It feels wrong, Not in snow., I want it to snow. I wanted to decorate the tree. I wanted my daddy . My mom. Bnut this isn;'t it is it? It is so much worse. And my heart. I felt like it was eating me alive. And my skin ached, and her crying kept going soft and ragged as her breathing cut in and out. Broken and gone, but rushing.,..rising...I couldn;t breathe.

Till she said it.

:You..: it hissed...”aren;t a briken being..

You

Help

You are not broken. Because you are not...

Real...She skin is …:

Wogn.

Wrong.”

Amd that was it. That was everything. That was what I haent; been seeing. I haven.t been seeing and we haven;t been seeing., no, that isn;t right. Because it isn;t the way thing could be, and I need to be strong. Be strong. And I missed her. And Ariana was in the tub whe nI got back, She was under the water, but sdid not rise until long after I was in bed.

But I knew I wasn't alone.

Because something was outside my window.

A thing of the blackest void.

And the stillborn thing with wrinkled skin that just wants

me

to

sleep.

I have not opened my eyes.

Still I close them.

Agaisnt the glrare of the lights.As I wish to know the night.