ghost.
she clung to his clothes as she fell to her knees, sobbing into his oxfords and polos. all color-coordinated, all neatly hung, all ironed and pressed to perfection, all never to be worn again.
she bawled and grabbed and pulled on every shirt in the world just trying to bring the rack down, trying to tear the earth from its axis. she pulled and pulled and soaked the unbuttoned sleeves with sweat and tears and spit and makeup. her lipstick had smeared so bad that the shirts were starting to look like they were splattered with the afterbirth of a gunshot wound. she fell into a pattern of screaming and sighing and screaming and sighing and screaming and screaming and screaming. her heart pulsed with the weight of eternity and her knuckles were white like the crest of a wave. fingernails ripped into ralph lauren. contempt drowned marc jacobs. her lungs wanted to give up and collapse. her muscle wanted to atrophy and rip and tear. her throat was on fire and her eyes were like burnt flesh. her hair wildly plastered her face and neck like a thousand snakes striving to strangle. everything became too fast and she thrashed and kicked and pulled and screamed nothing that resembled words. she pulled and pulled and pulled and her heart was racing, racing, racing, like the wings of a hummingbird. the clock ticked way too fast. every lifetime was a second as she kept convulsing and spitting and crying uncontrollably. in a flash, everything froze and time did not exist.
there was nothing.
her body gave up, and she fell to her side, bits of blue and plaid cotton stuck underneath her fingernails.
her breathing came to a heartless crawl. there was nothing in the air. nothing to get caught in her lungs. no more crying. no more polos or khakis or oxfords or rolex watches or men’s journal magazines or ping g10 golf clubs or CAO cigars tucked away in a humidor.
the only thing left was lying on the bed. a body with an empty bottle of prescription pills in the left hand and a sealed envelope in the right hand that simply read, “for my love.”
and i had to watch as she made a terrible mess of herself over my body.
without a sound, she tried to raise her body from the depths. she was like a lamb trying to stand on its own for the first time. slowly, she hoisted herself up by clinging tightly to designer clothing. her knees were wobbly and sick, buckling in and almost collapsing on themselves. she looked like a victim in a terrible horror movie – eyes stamped with black rings of running mascara, dried sweat in her bangs, smeared lipstick that made her look like she were bleeding at the mouth. it was pitiful, really. at that moment, i felt slightly sorry for what i had done. not the bad kind of sorry like when you know deep down inside that oh, god, i’ve done something wrong. it was more like the sorry you feel when you are overwhelmed by apathy and simply just do not care.
i
simply
did
not
care.
i had led her to the slaughter. i had stripped her bare of all her dignity and best of intentions and left her like this, a huddled mess of hatred and infinite regret.
regret is a still warm body.
she finally managed to slump into a somewhat stable stance as she leaned against the wall next to the closet, her knees still buckled slightly. her breathing was still heavy, and she stared at my body with a glare of contempt and sorrow. then, it was like the secne hit her all over again. it was like she was seeing me lying on the bed for the first time. her eyes widened and in an immeasurable amount of time, she was at the nightstand with the cordless phone clutched in her grip. she gripped it like a ledge that she was hanging on to for fear of falling. she stared at the key pad like she had never seen numbers before, and slowly she began dialing with a crooked index finger.
nine.
one.
one.
it rang. it rang again. it started to ring a third time when the operator picked up.
she was slow to speak as her lips stuck together. when she parted them, half-dried spit stuck and stretched and her mouth made smacking sounds. i could tell her throat was a desert and her tongue was like rotted wood. her voice was caught somewhere between her ribs. when a sound finally broke, it came out as a whisper, cracked and weathered. she had exited the womb and was learning to speak for the first time. air was hitting her lungs for the first time. she heaved and wretched as her mouth opened like a cave. she clung tightly to the phone as she fell back to her knees, heaving, heaving, heaving, inhaling in large gulps of dust and nothing. on her hands and knees, her back arched up with each exasperated gasp and her voice grew louder. i could hear the operator.
“hello? please, you have to talk to me.” then it was inaudible.
she rolled to her back. her free hand clawed into the carpeting as she expelled one last gasping yelp.
then like before, she grew silent. she slowly brought the receiver up to her ear. she pressed it there with the weight of the world. the sweat sealed it to her ear, and she began to speak in a slow whisper, surprised to hear the sound of her own voice.
“he’s gone.”
“ma’am? what happened?”
“fuck…”
“ma’am, you’ve got to talk to me. i need to know what’s happening.”
nothing registered. this was just a monologue to her.
she covered her mouth with her free hand, still pressing the phone to her ear. she was trembling as she began to cry, shaking her head in disbelief and disgust. her mouth was disfigured like she was trying to hold back every emotion any person had ever felt. short, intermittent, sobs escaped into the receiver.
“why? marcus, marcus, wake up. wake up!”
she threw the receiver down and burst to her feet. she threw herself over me and grabbed my neatly-pressed shirt and started shaking me, screaming for me to wake up.
she shook my body until the bolts rattled on the insides. her body hummed with fatigue. defeated, she slid back into a wreck on the bedroom floor. she picked the receiver back up.
“he’s gone.”
“ma’am, i’m sending help right now. i need you to stay on the line with me and answer some questions, okay?”
none of this registered with jess.
silence.
“is he breathing? can you feel a pulse?”
she was almost catatonic.
“he’s gone…”
she was in a state of shock like she was just now fully realizing that i was, in fact, dead.
the bed was a mess. the satin sheets plateaued in the middle, creating a crimson mountain range surrounded by a sea of pillows. my body laid halfway on the bed in the middle, in the valley of sheets, with my knees bent and hanging from the foot. jess crawled from the floor and laid down next to me, her arms stretching across seas and moving mountains that laid in my wake. she rested her head on my shoulder and laced her left arm over my still chest, her left leg over mine. my body was still warm.
“marcus. christ, marcus.”
i could tell she was half-heartedly waiting for me to just start breathing again, to just come back to life like nothing had ever happened. she bent her arm and placed her open palm over my heart.
nothing.
that stopped beating long before i was dead.
she just lied there with my body. waiting. but i could feel nothing but apathy.
sirens silently cried in the distance.
