One of Us is Already Dead

Her pinky toes fell off first. They parted easily from her body when she stood up to brush the sand off the backs of her thighs. We’d forgotten to bring beach towels. I stared at the pinky toes left next to my feet and tentatively wiggled my own. To my relief, they felt attached and stuck.

She must’ve felt me staring at her toes because she turned around so quickly I curled my own toes inwards, as if to hide them from whatever disease she had.

She said, I’m gonna wash this sand off in the lake.

I said, I wouldn’t. It’s dirty.

I don’t care.

I nodded and watched her walk down the beach, a bit clumsy at first but she found her stride. We were the only ones there as usual. The lake was wind-blown and choppy. Everything that the lake’s foamy fingers dragged from the thighs of the beach eventually returned to shore. It was a bit smelly, dirty, but it supplied the whole town with drinking and swimming water. The temperature remained nice and warm around the lake, and we liked that about it. Better than the suffocation of being inside.

Once I saw her head dip under the water I snatched up her toes to get a closer look. Black at the abandoning-point, the skin wilted around the bones. The nails, soft like mud. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought this was some elementary kid’s crude attempt at anatomy practice.

When she returned from the lake, wet and gray, I held her toes out in my palms, like offerings. She stood there, shifting her weight from one nine-toed foot to the other, fixing her bathing suit, curling her fingers around the edges of her bottoms. She wrapped her fists around her hair and squeezed the water out all over me. Beads of water slid down over her ribs and down over her hipbones, to her swimsuit bottoms. I almost dropped the toes from being so in love.

What the fuck are those, she said.

Your pinky toes, I said. They fell off when you stood up.

Right, she said. She laughed. Whatever they are, I don’t want them.

I’m not sure it’s funny-

You know, you don’t even need pinky toes. Soon all humans will evolve not to have them.

So you don’t hurt? I asked.

She frowned. I guess obviously not, she said.

Maybe we should tell-

If you tell anyone I won’t ever speak to you again.

-someone about the toes, I said. Not about us, I reassured her.

She shook her head, whatever you’re thinking, keep it to yourself.

I said, well. Well as long as you keep telling me things, I won’t tell.

She said, great. Now come on, I think it’s gonna rain. I’ll braid your hair later, while I still have all my fingers, ha-ha. Seriously, though. Keep those away from me.

It did rain. It rained all the way home as we walked through the dead neighborhood. I put the toes in the wet pocket of my shorts to keep them dry, but I forgot to take them out when I put my shorts in the dryer. When I reached my hands in my pockets a few days after, all I felt were bones. I hid them in my desk drawer. I liked having something of hers. It felt like another secret between us, even if I was only one that I knew.

The first time we kissed was in summer. Heatwaves rampant, like the wrinkles of a forehead. Mirages on every street. The lake smelled. Afterwards, we’d sat on the boardwalk, ankle deep in the waves, my fingers splayed on the deck and hers wrapped politely in her lap. Her hair blowing in the lake-wind, strands getting caught in the wetness of her eyes and the shine of her lips and the sweat on her neck. I brushed her hair behind her ear. She pulled her hands away from her lap to adjust her swimsuit. A nervous tic.

You’re a girl, she said. And I have a boyfriend.

I know you do, I said.

He doesn’t understand me at all. You understand me.

Right.

I’m really confused.

Me too, I said. I wasn’t, but I could agree with anything she said forever.

Kiss me again? She asked. Just don’t tell anyone.

I kissed her again.

She didn’t come out of her room for all of the first Autumn weekend, even when the air finally cooled at night and felt crisp. Those squiggly lines above the hot concrete, like earthworms, had been left behind in August. She didn’t come out of her room and my body ached so I tugged my fingers to make sure they were still stubborn and I called her dad and then I hung up before he could answer.

I laid down in my bed and moved the toe bones between my fingers like a coin trick. I’d washed them with soap, so they were shiny, but there were still specks of lake-mud on them. They reflected the lamplight outside. Bone-light reflecting onto the walls and onto my face. It was sort of blinding. Pretty, still. It reminded me of her.

She did eventually come out of her room to go to this family barbeque she has every second Sunday of the month. She hates it and her mom makes her go. I crawled through the window she kept open for me at night, and always forgot to lock in the morning. I only had about two hours to go through her shit before she came back.

Her room smelled like rotting food. Most of the floor was covered with dirty laundry, and what wasn’t dirty laundry was dismissed flesh hidden in shirt holes and under the cups of bras. I picked up what looked like her ring finger and wished I had brought her pinky toe bones so I could compare them. Where the finger had been attached to the knuckles were strings of skin. There had been a bit of resistance with this one. There was so much on the ground I had to pick and choose. Could people really fall apart this fast? I placed them all in my backpack regardless. She wouldn’t mind. Things forgotten easily under shirts are either found or vacuumed and I was doing a good thing.

I searched under her bed and in her desk drawers for a diary, something that could tell me what was causing this. The lights in her room flickered and cast a horde of shadows on the walls, shadows that judged me as I desecrated her space. They were not as nice as my bone-lights.

To at least exorcise what felt like ghosts in her room, I looked in the bowl of her ceiling light and I found flies. Lots of flies. Writhing around, seizure-like. I turned away, gagging. Found myself staring at the standing mirror in the corner of her room. It’d been turned around.

Once, we’d been playing in her basement. The winter before high school began. She had a nice house, but every room felt like a basement, where everything bad and cry-worthy was shoved in boxes and wrapped in tape and pushed into a corner to make room for an ugly sofa, or something. I think my mom and dad would hate me if they knew me, that was the first secret she told me. That she hated herself, the second. And then every kiss after that combined into the third.

All the sudden, the basement had started to flood. And with the water came dead fish, a ton, a thousand. And in our rush to escape, she’d cut herself on a rusty nail where a picture used to hang. I’d felt it in my arm, too.

We tried to tell her dad about the fish, but he ignored us, he wouldn’t even check. That’s the plumber’s job, he said. That’s the thing with parents: they’re think they are oceans when they are lakes. But it was alright. A million secrets between us would be sure to keep her with me.

When her dad sprayed anti-septic and she cried out, I held her hand, the only time she ever, ever let me.

Her dad patted my head. I’m glad she has a friend like you, he said.

We’ve avoided her basement since.

I escaped to the yogurt aisle to call her boyfriend in the Farmer’s Market while my mom spoke with one of the employees about the seasonality of strawberries. He picked up on the final ring.

I wasn’t expecting you to call, he said.

Don’t expect me to again, I said. Have you spoken to her recently?

Who?

Cut the crap, man. Your girlfriend. Have you spoken to her recently?

Not, not really, he said. She’s been distant.

Has she reached out? I asked.

He paused. Let me check, he said.

I anchored my phone to my shoulder and peaked around the aisle corner. They were still talking, laughing now. I only had a few more minutes before the man would politely excuse himself and my mom would need my opinion on the peaches.

He said, she hasn’t reached out.

Okay, well. Well don’t talk to her. You might make it worse, I said.

Make it worse?

Nothing. I’ve got it covered.

I know you’re in love with her, he said.

The yogurt aisle was suddenly very cold. Colder than mid-September dumpster lake. Don’t call back, I said. I hung up the phone before he could say goodbye. I walked back to the fruit and tapped my mom’s back with the tips of my fingers. I could feel her looking down at me, staring, I couldn’t ever look at her. She shoved a peach in my hands.

How does this look, she said.

Feels sort of squishy.

You know, that boy I was talking to is your age. Pretty cute, if you ask me.

No one asked you. And this peach is rotten.

We left with a carton of strawberries and three baskets of peaches. And an employee phone number.

I stared at my body in the mirror next to my bed and wondered what she was turning into.

I ran my fingers along the flesh of my stomach and pulled the extra fat. Pushed my fingers into my bellybutton to make sure it didn’t go through. Ran the pads of my fingers along my ribs. How many rib bones am I supposed to have? Hip bones were an easy count. Jawbone could be a bit more defined but at least it existed. I pinched my cheeks, my earlobes. And everything felt fine, but my insides felt tight.

In an apocalypse there was only supposed to be a before-the-end and after-the-end. Yet, she’s stuck me and her in this apocalyptic limbo of doom. For her, death that came obviously and slowly. For me, love.

I crushed my eyes with my palms. It was the neighborhood making her this way, it was the town, it was the bad fruit and the blind adults and it was the town, it was the town!

Right?

When I finished all my homework that night, I crawled through her window. She was on the floor with her trashcan next to her, hunched and peeling off the rest of her nails with whatever fingers weren’t rotted off. I’d been planning on asking her to braid my hair, to feel her fingers against the back of my neck, but there didn’t seem to be enough fingers left.

I closed the window gently and sat next to her on the carpet. Her eyes were bloodshot. I put my arm carefully around her shoulder but she shrugged it off. The sweatshirt she wore draped off her body and the hem touched the floor. She picked at the grains of sand from our beach day still embedded in her hair. I tried not to stare. She shoved the trashcan towards me and it almost toppled over. Flies flew out of it, jolted from their feast. I swatted them away and tried not to throw up.

You shouldn’t come here anymore, she told me. She stood up and her ankle snapped.

My ears rang. You don’t want me to come anymore? I asked.

It’s not about that, she said. You still haven’t told anyone, right?

I shook my head. Can I still come over?

No, she said. She laid down in her bed and turned away from me. It’s just not a good idea, she said. And I don’t like being this way in front of you.

I touched her arm and I said to her, please. We both know this place is rotten, it’s just getting to you. It’s your parents, isn’t it?

She turned towards me finally.

I’m worried, I said.

She said, thank god. I thought you were about to say ‘I love you’ again.

I pulled my fingers back. Would you have said it back this time? I asked.

She said, does your mom still give you employee phone numbers from the market?

Yes.

You should use them. Leave me alone.

You don’t have to be mean, I said. Don’t be mean. Are you ashamed of us?

Not of us, she said. She buried her head in her pillow. I have to call my boyfriend, she said. And with her stumpy fingers she started dialing.

I left in there and crawled out her window. When I got home I gathered all the Farmer’s Market receipts with phone numbers scrawled under the total. I burned them in the bathroom, in a fire made with a ring-finger bone and a pinky-finger bone.

A few months ago, I’d managed to convince her to meet me in the handicap stall of the bathroom. I’d reached for her hand, and she’d pulled away. She leaned against the cold cinder-block wall.

Come to the dance with me, I’d said. Stupidly.

People will think we’re freaks.

So? Everyone else is just-

Shut up. I think heard the door open.

You’re acting like everyone else in this town, I whispered.

Is that a bad thing?

We can’t turn into them!

She said, It doesn’t seem so bad. And besides, my parents…

I grabbed her hip and turned her towards me. I kissed her. She’d tasted different. A little like rotten food. Come to the dance with me, I said.

Someone walked into the bathroom. And instead of saying yes, she told me to wait in the stall until she was gone. And instead of following her and shouting her name I counted to one hundred and then went back to class and on the night of the dance, I watched her dance with her boyfriend while confetti fell all around us.

I kept her parts in jars on my desk, in my closet, around my bed. Her Sunday barbeques became my exploration time. I even stuffed lake algae in them to make them glow, and all her parts kept my company, since I rarely saw her while she was awake, besides school hallways. But eventually, she stopped going to the barbeques, and I stole while she slept. I’d blindly run my hands through the trash on her floor, feeling for anything squishy and either really cold or too warm. She slept like the dead through it all.

Something about having her body in my room made me feel nice. Whenever I felt scared about it all I had to do was look in the mirror, at her deconstructed body floating in the dark. All these parts of her, I’d touched. Who cared about just fingers anymore when I had the strip of her stomach I’d caressed for the very first time? An earlobe I’d held between my lips, the earring between my teeth? A chunk of her inner thigh, a piece I tasted of her that no one else had before? Who cares if it hadn’t been attached. Fuck fingers. They’d never held mine back, anyways.

I sat alone in the back of the cafeteria, head tucked under my elbow. I couldn’t eat anything, not even the package food, my stomach felt sick. My eyes fuzzed over from sleepiness. Rot feels warm, and it was painful not to allow myself for it to feel good. She sat all the way in the front. All around the cafeteria were pink and purple posters for the homecoming dance. Everyone was talking about it. God, I feel so sick.

Someone touched my fingers. I peeked from under my elbow. A girl I didn’t recognize stared back at me, smiling. Hey, the girl said. Are you okay?

I couldn’t say anything. Her fingers still touched mine. I nodded.

The food here is disgusting, she said. She’d fully sat down next to me now, her hip against mine. The end of her braid tickled my shoulder. Why don’t you have some of mine?

I asked what she had. She showed me her assortment. I finally took a good look at her.

Are you new? I asked.

She laughed. It’s a nice laugh. Yes, she said. Is it obvious?

Slowly, I took a piece of fruit from her. The apple skin had been peeled off. The white flesh glistened. I took a tentative bite and I almost cried. The bell rang.

What’s your name? she asked.

I told her my name. She told me hers.

Could you show me where my next class is? she asked.

I said yes.

I was dragged back to the Farmer’s Market over the weekend. We walked slowly through the aisles with our squeaky cart. I ran my nails along the fruit. A worm popped out of an apple and I pulled my mom away. She jerked her giant body away from mine.

Did you see that? I asked.

The apples look gorgeous this morning, I know, she said. Oh, look! It’s your friend’s parents.

Two tall figures approached us, so tall to me it seemed like even if I craned my neck all the way upwards, I would only be able to see under their hairy chins and up their hairy nostrils. All the adults were like that. I stared directly into the sweater vests covering their stomachs. They shook my mom’s hand. Their baskets were full of figs riddled with maggots, and they didn’t seem to mind one bit.

Your fruit, I said.

Sorry, she has a habit of pointing out the obvious, my mom said.

Her dad said, oh please, they are beautiful this season, aren’t they? We don’t mind the declaration of beautiful things, do we dear?

Oh no, not really, her dad said.

They continued to talk as I stood between their shopping carts. Their potatoes grew mushrooms and then trunks, right in front of me! The apples were ate down to the core. The figs shriveled and leaked on my shoes. The meat turned brown then black and rot-bugs always prefer meat.

The light flickered. Shadows sputtered all around us. The flies buzzed and beat against the glass and they just kept talking and talking.

How is she doing? my mom asked.

Oh, she’s doing so well, she looks great. She’s really growing up.

Oh yes, she’s growing up to be a nice woman. She’s getting so tall! And yours?

She’ll get there. Say, there’s supposed to be another bad lake flood soon.

Shame.

Shame.

Shame.

Don’t you feel ashamed? my mom asked me.

I jolted out of my daydream. What?

That you haven’t said one thing this entire time, my mom said. It’s rude. They’re gone. Now c’mon, that nice boy over there is staring at you. Hey! Hey, come over here!

That night, she knocked on my window, hard, and then soft. I made myself wait a few minutes before sliding the window up. Her eyes were crusted from sleep and dreams. Cheekbones busted through her skin. Her hands shook gripping the windowpane. She was crying. I glanced a bit behind her to make sure she had good footing.

Are you okay? I asked.

I’m not feeling well, she said.

What’s wrong?

I don’t know, she said.

And I said, you can tell me you miss me. It’s okay.

I can’t really say what’s wrong.

Admit you miss me.

Can I come in?

I stared at her rotting body in my window, hair blowing in a wind I’m sure the lake misses. She’d see the jars in my window if I let her up. She looked like a zombie in denial. You kill a zombie by shooting it in the head. You push me away and now you want me back? Shoot me in the head. Pow. Pow. Headshots for both of us. Please don’t touch me. I love you still, just please don’t touch me.

Is it your boyfriend? I asked.

She smiled faintly. Yes, she said. That’s it.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come in.

She exhaled long and deep. The kind that must hurt. One of us is dying. She crawled back out the window.

I took a walk to the beach alone. I jumped the fence and ran up the boardwalk, the planks wobbling like a snapped ankle and found myself with my arms out, just like her when she’d lost her pinky toes. It’d been a while since I’d come here, without her. She hadn’t visited me since she came to my window and I hadn’t spoken to her and she hadn’t reached out.

The lake horizon blended with the gray of the night. The cold riptide lake pushed and pulled my toes. Soon, dirty late-October ice would still the lake. Oh, was that my heart, over there, separating the lake from the night? Maybe it was just the lighthouse, going around and around.

I took her fingers out of my pocket and held them as I searched for shells, blinded by the glare of moon against water. I mostly felt for pretty shapes with my fingers. And when I found enough shells and rocks her once happier self might appreciate, I placed them all on the lip of the beach. On top of them, I put her fingers. They would be easiest to part with, wrinkled and hideous. But among the shells and lake-things, they looked almost natural, like some sort of anemone.

The tide started to come back in. The waves of the lake grew closer and closer. This was a better end for the fingers than simple decay under laundry, or becoming fly food, or even a jar. My head, my head, and an ache in my legs, and a feeling in my toe. Infection.

Would she grow new, better fingers? They would be even more like strangers to me. Those new fingers never played chess with me. Never pinched the fat of my arm, held my calves as she carried me on her back, shuffled our card games, got paper cuts doing my math homework, never wiped the tears from my face, never braided my hair. Never plucked the stray sand from my clothes. Those new fingers never flinched my mine. Is this about me?

And before the waves could have her dumb fingers, I snatched them up, leaving the lake roaring and wailing in disappointment, chewing hard shells and rocks that its tasted before.

I laid down on the sand, just out of the lake’s reach so it couldn’t have my living parts.

The lake followed me home, and all the while it whispered, shame. Shame shame shame. An awful pinky toe feeling.

I sat in my room and watched the sun go down. I replayed everything in my head. Maybe I just wasn’t kissing her right. Is her bottom lip supposed to go between mine or is my bottom lip supposed to go between hers? Maybe I’m not laughing at the right times. Maybe I’m not leaving the right sort of notes in her locker. Maybe my skin can be better and maybe then she’d touch me more. Maybe I could cut my hair short like her boyfriend’s and she’d like me better. Maybe if I had rougher hands and wider eyes and a better jawbone she’d kiss me first. Maybe if I were a boy. Maybe if I bring her fruit baskets but damn, all the fruit is rotten. Maybe this is just what loving girls is like. It’s sad and it’s hard and no one will ever love me back. If this is kid love, adult love will kill me. Maybe I never should’ve never taken her to the lake. This is all my fault. She might be rotting but I’m the one that’s disgusting.

School was out for break. I waited for the bus outside, trying to keep my shivers under control. If it weren’t so windy, it might’ve actually been a pleasant day. I couldn’t feel my toes.

A tap, on my shoulder. I turned around right into her fogged breath and breathed it right in.

The girl from lunch the other day. Hey, she said, I just wanted to say thanks for showing me around the other day. That was real nice of you.

No problem, I said. Are you waiting for the bus?

No, she said. My moms pick me up.

I stared at her. Your moms?

She looked down at the ground. Yeah, she said. I have two moms. I know it’s weird-

No, it’s not weird! I said. It’s cool. I think that’s cool. I think that’s super cool.

And then all of the sudden I was asking her for a ride home and she was nodding and smiling and then I was in her car between her and her brother eating fruit in the backseat and listening to loud music I’ve never heard before as we drove down the highway, with her moms who held hands over the console.

One hot July night, I’d taken her once un-rotted body to a private section of the beach. The sand was a bit harder here but we were far from people. I took her far up the beach cliff, helping her up the sharp rocks and we sat on the edge, feet dangling far from the water. The empty highway stretched out in front of us. The tips of thin white trees blew back and forth. I took a deep breath. I kissed her. I took a deep breath.

I love you, I said.

She’d laughed and said, you don’t even know me.

I love what I know so far.

Right.

Do you love me?

She’d sighed. I hate to say this, she said. But if you have to ask, you probably already know the answer.

I found it a week after failing to remove her from my room. It was bent at the elbow, the wrist curled, palm open and fingers curled around my windowpane. Luckily it was her left hand. I tried pulling it off but it wouldn’t budge. Atrophied bodies are hard to move. My heart was beating fast and hard at her almost dead body trying to reach me one last time. I stuck my head out the window. There she was, on the ground, holding her shoulder-stub and looking back up at me with those bulging eyes.

I climbed out the window and used the arm like a bedsheet to lower myself to the ground. The grass was cold and soft under my feet.

What are you doing here? I asked. I crossed my arms to stop them from reaching out to her. She was my phantom limb. And now her literal arm was attached to my window. I could feel it inside me. Twitching. Itching and hurting.

The basement flooded. And, listen, I know you were taking my parts, and that’s okay, because look, I don’t need them anymore.

Were there fish?

Don’t be ridiculous. Anyways, look!

She held out her hand. Protruding from it was the start of new un-calloused fingers. Something twisted in my chest. I stared at her. I stared up at her. She was much taller. And she took a step towards me and if she took a deep breath our chests would touch and if I took a deep breath I’d cry and all the sudden, we were at the lake again, and she was wet and gray but still maybe mine. Strands of her hair were stuck in her mouth, like a hook in a fish in a flood.

I sucked in a breath. Oh wow, I said. Look at that.

She looked down at the overgrown grass curling around her feet, at me. She fixed her pajama shirt. And then I saw her remaining new hand reaching down and out for me slowly, obviously. My pinky toes, they ached. I looked at her face, I just wanted to see it once more before I knew I wouldn’t be able to see it again. I pulled away from her, used her dead arm to pull myself up, and closed the window.

I arrived at the winter dance in a suit I’d borrowed from her moms. Blue and pink confetti fell all around us as we entered through a balloon arch. A crowd of kids moved in a dancing mass. The music in the gym was loud and blaring. I shoved my sweaty hands in my too-big pockets.

Do you want to dance? She shouted in my ear.

My eyes scanned the dance floor and I saw her all brand new, with her boyfriend. She must’ve seen me looking at her new-parts because she stared right back at me. And I almost shouted to her, and went to her. I stared at the kids strewn on the bleachers. Maybe we could sit down for a while? I asked.

The girl I came with grabbed my hand out of my pocket. I stared at my hand in hers. No, let’s dance! she said.

We danced. It was crowded and dark and the confetti was in my nose and down my shirt. After a while, I started having fun, but I didn’t forget she was there; it was like dancing next to a memory.

When we left the dance, drove home through the white trees with both our bodies still intact and alive, I thought I heard her crying through the lake-wind, from the sound of her pinky toe bones rubbing together in my pocket, knowing she’d never see them again.

***

Eliza Sullivan (she/they) is a second-year MFAW student at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Their work is born in the absurd and surreal details of mundane spaces, which are of plenty in her home-state of Illinois. Her short fiction has been published in Soundings East Literary Magazine.