1. The day they met, her teeth were white. She had no teeth now, in fact, her husband wasn't sure where her mouth was located. She didn't speak through a voice anymore. The sounds of her shifting walls and the flow of her blood were what lulled the man to sleep at night. A large body made of wood and wallpaper, soft plush organs pumping within the boundaries of the walls. A sweet song, her only way of words. She can no longer wear shoes or play the piano, so he does it for her. He walks the house in heels and plays his renditions of Mary Had A Little Lamb. He loves his wife, how she'd grow rooms made of fresh fat and flesh as they grew old together. He loves his wife.
2. The blood has stopped flowing, and has begun to clog the walls. The man is yet to realize what has happened despite the quiet. It will not take long.
3. I think he knows now, as he has begun to cry. He sits hunched over, his throat releasing low, mournful groans. Does he know? Is he prepared? Would he run? He doesn't, he sits in their stained room as her blood begins to seep through the flowered wall above their bed.
4. On the fourth day the smell comes. It's summer, and pleasantly warm. Maybe pleasant isn't the word. Maybe the word is strong. Maybe that is the word, but the man doesn't say it. He has no words left in him. The strength of the summer clings to his wife with her many rooms and stairs, a sticky heat rising up and layering a stench over her contained mass. His shoes stick to the floor with a squelch. Her viscera has begun to bubble up through the cracks in the floorboards, pink and red and sickening.
5. Her hands used to be freckled.
6. He is in denial, scrubbing her walls until they are raw and peeling. The splatters of blood and yellowing fat bursting from her skin only spread, the sponge grating against the man's only defenses. He is soaked in the juice of her Kidney. He tells her it will be alright, that she just needs a good cleaning, that's all. He is helpless to stop it. Mostly he apologizes. His neglect has littered her halls for much too long, the root of weakness. "I'm sorry," he says through blubbering cries, "is it because I didn't clean last week? I swear I'll be better, I swear. I'll dust and clean everyday, just stop rotting!" His bargaining does nothing to stop what was always meant to be. She was always going to die, and he was always going to scream and plead in an attempt to reverse it. He takes the death as an act of revenge, a direct act of defiance against his love. It does not smell normal anymore.
7. The flies have found her exposed meat, popping from exposed legions in her banister. They lay their eggs and bless her innards with small wet worms. They eat her, though she cannot feel it. They are hungry, starving, ravaging her once living husk as a meal. The hinges of where her limbs would have been have decayed, the muscle becoming loose and tearing off in large pungent chunks. Good food for the flies' infants. They feast on the liquid, the leaking pustules. Some rooms are flooded with it, the black rot that doesn’t slosh mindlessly; it moves with purpose. Her piano is clogged. His shoes are ruined. He is ruined. His arm is stuck elbow deep in a wound in the wall, claimed as food. Instead of her flush living body, it is the sound of the feasting parasites that lull him to sleep.
8. He has drowned in her.
Written in 2023
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