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 it, 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 windoow shopping on the main thoroughfare, looking itto uiunlit buildings as I did what anyone would do and desired things I didn't have.

Strung across the gape 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 itme, and even then there was a section of ligfht that were not lit, held back by a lone bulb that went bad. But the communiuty still finds it importtnat to keep using them,. Because there is something spoecial about the old ways. There is something important in keeping hold of those things that brough 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 diszzlying feeling overcomes me, and I am so very much aware of how alive I feel right now, even though what I going to tell you was just about as horrifying as your could imagine. The first thing I noticed was the smell.

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

But the smell was what I noted first. YesQ Rhe smell was what I smelled first. Gripped by the ankle, it was dragging a legf of something I assumned to be a deer or something like it. At first I feared that it was something fresh. A recnet kill. But as I turned and looked in my perifery, 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 vcomit by swallowing hardf. Then I steadiedmyself, looked into the mirrror of the glass, seeeing my lost and sunken face starting back at me.

Anmd 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 worl. But it waited. It waited for me to makle the mistake. It wanted me to be the one who decieded 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, sufering green. Cast in the light, but so ver yfar removed, stood the shuddering, dark form, its hair a cascading acalanche of balck, its skin and all of the rest of its form rendered as that of the void. It could have been daylight iand it would not have made a difference. And instanly the smell of it hit me, but fo rthe first time it didn't make me sick. I am thinking about it now...

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

She does not smell of old ink and foul sewage.

She smells of truffles, and of butterscotch.

She smells of somehting moly, and something sweet.

Like a troip 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 comhined, those are how she really smells, even if she looks like she shoudln'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 beng og despair, but one at peace with the form.

Even the neck my faher 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 kenw that this was what I wanted, but also not alt 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 ovfer 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, balck sploteches collecting upon the sidewalk that should have been convered in snow. It feels wrong, Not in snow., I want it to snmwo. I wanted to decorate the tree. I wanted my danddy . 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 gonee, but rusing.,..rising...I couldn;t breathe.

Till she said it.

Si...

: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., Nit no that isn;t right. Because it isn;t the way thing ciulkd be, and I need ot be strong. Be strong. Nad I miss ed her. And Arian was in the utb 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.

Beucase something was out my windw.

And thing of the blackedst void.

And the stillborn thing with wrinkled skin that sjut wants

me

to

a sleep.

I have oipened my eyes not.

Still I close them.

Agaisnt the glrare of the loghts.As I wishe to know the night.