My Digital Footprint’s Junk Journal

The adults had scurried upstairs for the beginning of the service while we were left with the food. Around that time I had made the cunning realization that the slippery seats of the leather couch could easily be slid from their place. 

I looked my youngest cousin in the eye with a mischievous smile as I pushed against the back of the couch, holding the bottom on the cushion and falling to the floor with a thump. He laughed in the way only little kids that age can, body seized in laughter that strangely almost looked like crying. Like what he felt was too big for his body. When he laughed, so did the others which gave me the idea of a lifetime. 

I picked up the leather cushion that was nearly the size of me and walked it over to the carpeted stairs. They wrapped up and around to the top floor, to the adults, but I only needed the bottom flight. I ascended with my cousins gathered around at the bottom, watching intently. I placed the seat down, teetering off the edge of that top step. One foot pinning the cushion to the platform while the other hovered over the unbalanced half –and leaned forward. 

I rode the seat down the stairs like a skateboarder taking on a halfpipe. I know now that I was lucky not to have fallen backwards and cracked my skull. Though, at that time, success seemed the only possible outcome. My cousins looked at me like I was a saint, my brother like I was a god. I kicked the cushion towards them and it slid easily over the carpet. We could have played on those stairs for hours but then, as always, the adults came and the fun was over. 

After the service, only my mother remained upstairs with the body. Immobilized by the wine and potatoes and grief. With no adults left to pester and my brother fast asleep on one of the chairs, I searched for new entertainment.

Stumbling upon a steeper set of carpeted stairs, blocked off by an ancient looking door with a heavy bronze handle. So I had a second idea. 

I positioned myself on that same leather seat, crisscross applesauce, and began to scoot forward. Flying down the steps in a blink, smile as wide as it could get as I tumbled off the cushion onto the soft carpet. At the bottom of the stairwell, however, was the other half of the home. The half that was used when two families needed the same service at the same time. 

I had literally crashed into another family’s funeral. The looks on their faces–. That instant hush that fell over the room. 

That same oppressive hush looms over me now as I breach the threshold of the apartment. The smell, as I meander down the hall, is weighty and pungent like wet rust. 

The barrier of the wall flays away as I round the corner. Miasma stifles the fringes of my vision as I approach him. Splayed out on the couch, like a mouse on a silver tray. The dragon boy. He was not just mauled, he was vivisected. Chunks at his throat and midsection are missing, exposing delicate oozing sinew beneath. A strand of his mussed hair sways in the breeze of the open window. It is the only movement he makes. 

Before I realize it I am kneeling before his elevated corpse on the couch. The morbid familiarity of the position is not lost on me. Even with the overwhelming pungency, I could smell the rotting wood and cut flowers of Stolinski’s. I take his curled claw into my hands. The skin is warm. Not a living warm. It does not radiate. It's like placing a hand over a leather seat shortly after it has been vacated. The warmth is fleeting. 

A wet and heavy squelching from Jen and Carrie’s room erodes the hush of the dragon boy’s impromptu wake. I drop his cooling hand and he offers no resistance.

Glass crunches beneath my boot as I encroach upon the disturbance.

Carrie’s framed photo lies shattered on the cheap linoleum.

The door to the bedroom is wide open. 

Alecja is on her knees at the center of the room. She is attending to some task, blocked from my view, her back to me as she makes a deep strangled gasp at my approach. Akin to that first breath taken above water after a prolonged dive. Her movement is sluggish and clumsy as she twists at the waist. She is holding, in stained hands, what appears to be a bundle of soaked cloth. 

Until the illusion shifts. 

Whatever pitiful attempt my mind makes at shielding me from the sight fractures upon further scrutiny. She lofts the bundle which transfigures as she lifts it to her parted lips. It falls apart in her grasp spilling from her fingers with a syrupy slosh onto the floor. 

Her head is bowed. Unfocused eyes glowering up at me through the chunky damp streaks of matted hair, clinging to her neck. Ashen flesh pulled sharply over her usually round features. Like something had to stretch her out to fit beneath her skin. A strangled gurgle forces blood to run from her mouth in two grotesque fountains at its corners, thinned by dribbles of thick saliva. 

Molten fear flows through me like poison in the bloodstream. Thoughts sizzle within my head, burning to ash before they can fully form. 

The only wood wet enough to resist the flame; that is not Alecja.

My chest contracts to keep the panic from spilling out of me onto the floor with the other bundles of meat. The thing that is not Alecja jerks forward, bloodslick hands slipping out from under her as her body crashes to the ground with the reckless speed of her movements. Though she does not slow. 

Blood smears as she claws at the linoleum, creating a macabre fingerpainting in her wake. The thing shrieks, only inches from being on top of me. She reaches out with a shuddering hand. There is no thought behind my actions, only white hot fear. 

My heel bashes into her face. Even through the thick sole of my boots I can feel the pop of her nose breaking under the impact. Her head is thrown back by the force. Blood spouts from her nose catching in her open mouth. The overflow spurts from her maw in flecks of spittle as she releases a bestial wail.

With that, I run. 

The familiar layout of the apartment sprawls out before me as a thick walled maze. Boots clunking as I bound to the door in three long strides. It’s handle rattles against the wall with the force I use to rip it open. It would have knocked my cane to the ground had it been where it should. 

I'm practically out. The safety of the hallway beckons, but I hesitate. My wavery hand grips the door frame. The kitchen phone remains docked at the edge of the counter between the carcass and Not-Alecja. Adrenaline restrains the mind. Thoughts pour like honey through cheesecloth. 

The couch shifts. The boy moves. He does not sit up, using his arms to pull himself upright like one would expect. Instead he snakes from the couch to the floor. The motion is lifeless, like a book falling off the desk despite remaining undisturbed. Then he rises. Before his ascent is complete the hole in his side expands. Meat spills out of him like an overturned chili pot.

Saliva fills out the dry space in my mouth as I shiver. Intestines twisting like the taught body of a worm in a curious child's hands. The door slams closed behind me and I lunge back as if the unit were about to explode.

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Hey, you made it! Not so bad for a first draft!

Now go check out some of my others works and let me know if you'd like to see more of my writing scraps! (Or more of this story specifically)