In the dark room, the man begins his work. Dust floats lazily in the streaks of light, drifting past him as he rises from the suede, emerald green chair. He grabs his tools and quickly assesses today’s company. Charles, male, thirty-two. A “Charlie,” once upon a time, he imagines, before the choices that led him here. He has unusually large calves. A runner, maybe. Someone who could outpace things. Or someone who tried. A thick silver cross rests against his stillness.
“We’ll lose this,” he says to no one. He lifts it over his head and sets it gently in a steel dish. The chain whispers against the metal, fighting for its place in forever.
His next movements are well-practiced: gloves snapped tight, apron looped, overhead light humming to life, tray pulled close. It’s all in his control.
When he finishes, he tugs open the bottom drawer. It groans in protest, and he slams it shut to cut the complaint. The Polaroid is warm in his grip. Back at the table that supports the body, he carefully slides his fingers beneath Charles’ eyelids and pries them open. He would hate for Charlie’s eyes to be closed in his final, eternal proof of existence. His thumb wanders the familiar outdent on top of the camera’s body. A careful press ignites a flash explosion and for one second, Charlie’s hazel eyes return the gaze: bright, empty, impossibly there. Then just empty.
He flips Charlie over before pinning the photo to the wall of companions that colonize the space across from his chair, the sole decor in his otherwise barren, one-story home. To him, though, they have always been far more than furnishings. They come alive in his gaze, overwhelming his loneliness with familial-like company. He would have it no other way. His house is a carefully curated blend of office and family. The front door opens into the workspace, where bodies arrive from the hospital in zipped bags, needing someone to make them look less like what happened and more like who they were. His job is a secret threaded between death and display: an invisible service to make traumatized bodies digestible to the eyes of those who love them. There is a pride in anonymity, in being the hands of an unseen hero. He has made the same small salary for two decades and has never asked for a raise, it’s never been about the money for him. He places Charles next to the blue-eyed, grey-haired, eighty-five-year-old woman, Madeline, from yesterday, who came in twisted from a car crash. Side by side, they look like they could have been friends.
He pulls out his phone.
The body of Charles B. Richardson is cleaned and ready for pick up at your convenience. Send.
The message is eerily similar to the one Charles probably received from his local laundromat mere weeks ago. Weirdly depressing when you think about it. He tries not to. Rewarding himself for a job well done, he sinks into his chair, into the darkened indent perfectly molded to his increasingly saggy body, and looks at the wall where Charlie now hangs with the others. Looking back are stories he’s pieced together from jewelry, and calluses, and the ways their hands fold.
“John, how are your arms today?” he asks the redheaded man in the top row. John’s limbs had arrived stiff, crossed tight from the strangling that took his breath, and then everything else. In the stillness of the room, John answers him graciously. He elaborates on what it felt like, the weight of the man on top of him, the pressure that stole his breath, shut down his lungs, and heart, and kidney, and liver. One by one.
When John’s tragedy becomes heavy, he shifts his attention to Isabella. Her photo is softer. The torn frenulum is visible beneath her lip. She tells him about her concerts and split tips shared with her bandmates. Her voice soured for three decades. Her killer’s hand had been the only thing that ever shushed her singing.
He listens and takes notes he suspects he will never use. He tells himself the act comforts them, though he knows it’s him it soothes.
“At least you died doing what you love,” he says to her, trying not to laugh at the line.
Below her, Mitchell cuts in with one of his corny jokes. The rhythm of the punch line pulls him out of his sympathy and he continues down the row, as he always does, animatedly answering questions they never ask. This is his family. Strange, silent, but his.
When he finally introduces Charles to the rest, he catches himself. There is still more work to do. He pushes himself up to his squeaky sink. The water runs lukewarm over his pruned fingers, the tremor in his hands pulsing beneath the surface. It’s getting worse. He hasn’t told anyone. He doesn’t tell anyone much of anything. He looks at his face in the cracked mirror before turning off the sink and making a mental note to ask the orthopedic surgeon on the wall her professional opinion. He is sure the industry couldn’t have changed much since she was strangled with a rope four years ago.
It is a two-body day so his concern for his hands is forced aside. There is another arrival waiting on his table: female, fifty-eight, method of murder unknown. He lingers on that last word. Unknown. His favorite invitation. Usually, the cause of death is his anchor, the first truth before the Polaroids whisper stories of their families and lovers, their insecurities and mistakes, their favorite songs, and greatest fears. It’s death before life. She is his newest exception. She arrives with no beginning.
She’s fragile. Her face is familiarly wrinkled and weathered. The creases around her eyes and mouth are sad and deep. In his professional opinion, and he is very much a professional, she’s been deceased longer than the twenty-four hours the hospital files are claiming. He’ll ask her about it later.
Then he sees the bruises.
A dark spill of black and blue across her left shoulder. He is drawn to the way the mark consumes the entire area, enveloping the pale backdrop on which it lays. As he works his way down, through the crevices and cracks of her corpse, an almost identical mark reappears. This one rests on her upper thigh. A smaller one wraps itself around her right wrist, the reminisce of a grip that did not let go.
Her hair is a tainted-grey blonde, the kind that used to be golden. He navigates it with the stroke of his brush, finding peace in knowing the hair attached to this trauma will be knot-free. He continues with care until the bristles catch on something solid. A goose-egg-sized swelling protrudes off the back of her head. He closes his eyes and traces it with his fingers, humming under his breath as the narrative forms. Then, “Shit.”
A sharp sting on top of his ring finger interrupts his reverie, jostling his eyes open. He squints to find a shard of glass wedged in his skin, a bead of blood blooming bright on the latex and even brighter as it falls on top of her pale body. He wipes it away fast, like his aliveness might contaminate her death. The thought makes him laugh. The sound echoes from his pursed lips off the metal table.
He forgets to take her photo. For once, he is far too enthralled in her ending to care about her placement on the wall. When he flips her over, he’s careless. Her shoulder hits the table with a dull thud. The noise cracks the still air. “What’s one more bruise?” he whispers, a curl unfolding at the corner of his mouth.
Her back is a map of faded scars and patches of skin that never healed. In the middle of the topography is a spine that juts out, a ridged sword against its waxy cage. His hand follows a particularly conspicuous scratch, infected and darkened at the edges, tracing it from the base of her neck all the way down toward her waist. The scar bends, widens, then disappears into a scatter of freckles.
Sixteen of them. He knows the shape. He’d named them once.
The brush slips from his hand. Ceramic meets tile. Clang.
The entire room sways.
He forces himself to look closer and count. One, two, three. He reaches sixteen and feels his breath quicken when he can’t find another.
He stumbles back into the smell of copper and rot. He tells himself he must be mistaken, that this is impossible. But the air already smells like daisies.
His body moves without his brain, his legs ungovernable as they fall into his chair, the suede sighing beneath him. Across the room, faces watch in silence. He stares back looking for comfort and distraction, but is instead suffocated by the crowd, acutely aware of their glares and judgment, strangled by their condemnation. Their eyes burn into his throat. He can’t breathe.
“Not her,” he chokes out. No one disagrees.
He presses his palms to his eyes. His right hand shakes so hard he feels it in his skull and through his jaw. He inhales and exhales, counting the seconds between, a tactic that the therapist on the wall taught him. It’s useless. Each breath only drags her scent deeper into him until the sweet, dizzying ghost of daisies consumes him.
Suddenly it’s May of senior year and everything still feels like coincidence. The world smells like wet turf and locker room sweat. His plain white t-shirt is dotted with nodes of her perfume, a seemingly effortless, but calculated move to make herself unforgettable. As if she wasn’t already. She thinks she is nonchalant. He thinks it is adorable.
He never washed that shirt. He couldn’t. It still sleeps folded under his bed every night, floral proof that she was once real buried in white cotton.
What ended in May had begun the September before. He isn’t supposed to love her. He isn’t even supposed to know her. He is most aware of that every morning when his rickety Toyota wheezes into a neighborhood of Audis and Volvos, their gleaming grilles sneer at him, each back-up camera worth more than his entire home. In hallways stitched with glittery bracelets and designer shoes, he folds his six-foot frame into something smaller, something forgettable. He hates it there.
But then there is her.
She sits behind him in English and usually a table over from him at lunch. She shamelessly bites into grilled cheese and chocolate chip cookies while her friends pick at bare beds of lettuce. Well-liked, but never cruel. Beautiful and blind to it. There is a humility to her that pulls him in.
It takes months before he hears her say his name.
And when she finally does, it is worth the wait.
The house party is swollen with sloppy couples slamming doors, mumbled lyrics from songs he doesn’t know, and a game of beer pong. The bass roars between spilled drinks and smeared makeup. Carson’s hand stays on his shoulder, steering him through the crowd.
“Talk to her, man. You’ve been staring at her all year.” As his only friend, Carson knows him too well.
“I don’t stare,” he mutters.
“You absolutely do.”
He can’t deny it.
The living room is a tangle of girls passed out on the couch, cheap beer, expensive cologne, and her. She wears a purple tank top and a half-smirk that undoes him entirely. He can’t stop watching her, nor does he want to.
“Don’t chicken out,” Carson says, shoving him directly into her orbit. He tries to look casual, leaning against the counter. She glances up and smiles. Actually smiles at him.
“Hey,” she says. “You’re in my English class, right?”
His brain fizzles. “Yeah. I...”
“You sit by the window.” She’s smiling bigger now. “I always see you doodling.”
Any chance of playing it cool is destroyed by his cheeks’ blooming flush. “I don’t, I mean, sometimes, I guess. You notice that?” He scrambles to get the right words out.
“I notice things.” Her eyes meet his confidently as she takes a sip from her cup. “You’re good at it. Drawing people.” She laughs.
That laugh. He wants to bottle it. Keep it. Drown in it.
Carson materializes beside him. “Beer pong. You guys in?”
He wants to say no, but she’s already nodding. They end up as partners. She’s competitive in a way that surprises him, leaning over the table, firing off snide remarks. When she sinks her first shot, she impulsively jumps up into his arms, a victory hug that sets him entirely on fire.
They lose horribly.
Escorted outside to take their punishment shot, they drain the vodka and collapse onto the bench. The fall chill nips at her exposed shoulders. She shivers and edges closer. Not to him, exactly, more to the warmth from the fire pit, but their knees brush anyway.
Her perfume lingers between them, crisp but light, freshly cut stems and mild honey.
His whole world tilts toward her. She is there. Right there. His hands don’t know what to do.
“I should probably go back in,” she says, but she doesn’t move. Instead, she turns to look at him. The porch light catches her eager eyes. And before he can think, before he can stop himself, he leans in. Half a second of perfection: warm breath, the taste of vanilla lip gloss, the universe shrinking to nothing but her.
Then she jerks back. Hard.
“What are you...” Her voice cracks as she pulls away like he burned her. Like the same electricity that lit him up from the inside had shocked her instead. She is gone before the cold can finish settling into his bones.
He stays there, heart pounding, the ghost of her vanilla still stuck to his mouth, her scent in the flames that witnessed their almost-embrace.
He regrets that kiss for months. Maybe forever. She never forgives him; he never asks her to. It takes her half a year to speak to him again. By then, she belongs to someone else.
Ethan’s black Mercedes becomes a fixture in the senior parking lot. He watches her climb in, watches her disappear behind tinted windows, telling himself he never stood a chance. Everyone approves. They look good together. Disgustingly good.
The first time Samantha speaks to him again is not magic. It’s ten on a damp Wednesday morning. The library smells like wet denim and old paper. He is hunched over The Great Gatsby, speed-reading in an attempt to cram three chapters before the third-period bell rings.
A prickle climbs up his neck. He feels someone watching and looks up.
Samantha stands a few feet away, rain still dripping from the end of her blonde hair, clutching her copy of the book to her chest like a shield. Her eyes sweep his face.
“Hey,” she says, her voice tentative and nothing like the one warm, effortless sound he remembers. “Do you have an extra pencil?”
His heart thumps too loud, and he hopes she can’t hear it. He hands her the pencil he’s been using. It’s his only one, so he doesn’t even pretend to reach for another. She notices the sacrifice. Her eyes flick to his empty notebook page, then back to him.
“Oh, thanks,” she says, the words tumbling out as if rehearsed. Then she spins back to her seat, shoulders curved inward and pencil clenched tight. It’s only a favor and a borrowed pencil, but to him it feels like hope.
And it lasts him until that Saturday in May, when the grass is damp with its first spring dew and she finds him again, miraculously, impossibly.
“Take a photo of us,” Lottie, her best friend, commands more than asks, shoving her expensive camera into his hands before he can protest. He steps back to fit the entire group in the photo beneath the “Congratulations Class of 2003” sign hanging crookedly in Carson’s backyard.
“Tilt the camera up,” Lottie barks. “Seriously dude it’s like you’ve never taken a photo. Move your finger.” He fights the urge to roll his eyes or snap the camera in half.
Above the lens, Samantha’s eyes catch his, a silent exchange, quick, sharp, and unreadable. Then someone announces the start of a drinking game, and the group scatters. She remains.
“Sorry about them,” she says, stepping close enough that he catches her perfume. It is familiar in a way he has been trying not to think about since September. She plucks the camera from his hands. “And thanks, Stephen.”
His name in her mouth feels like a match struck. His ears perk and something sharp flickers across his face. He shouldn’t care, but he does anyway. Hearing his name in her mouth makes him feel more real than he’s felt in years. It’s as if the two syllables passing through her air breathe him into being.
“Sam! Get over here,” a voice yells out.
She turns. He panics and blurts, “Yeah, no problem!” louder than intended. She glances back.
“Oh, English,” she says suddenly. “How’d you end up doing? Dr. Brown gave me my first A-minus. My parents were pissed.” She barely pauses for his answer before a call from the group steals her attention away. She waves a tiny apology as she’s swept into habit. She is absorbed into the noise as she becomes the center of the crowd. He wouldn’t have admitted his grade anyway, the C he earned from spending class perfecting his doodles in case she glanced over and watching the curve of her profile instead of the PowerPoint. He told himself it was worth it. That he learned more from studying her than from the PhD at the front of the classroom.
When the games subside, she finds him again and offers him a drink. He says sure. They stand beneath the string lights, sipping beer and joking about their final paper on Where the Crawdads Sing. She blurts out, “Me and Ethan broke up,” immediately chasing it with, “Sorry, I don’t know why I am telling you that.”
Someone shouts her name again. A blush creeps up on her cheeks; she laughs it off like it doesn’t matter, but her eyes linger on him even as Lottie drags her away for another round of pictures.
She slips into the rhythm of their peers, orbiting social gravity the way she always has. But her gaze keeps returning to him.
By the time the party empties out, Samantha is the last one left with him and Carson. She sits on the rocks beside him, scrolling her phone to check the status of her ride. Her breath smells like alcohol and chocolate cake. She is drunk. He is sober enough to know it.
She mumbles something about resenting him from last year, something else about thinking still about their kiss. A lot. He doesn't know if this is good or bad, can it be both? Before he can untangle it, headlights sweep across them. She leans over and places a wet, sloppy peck on his cheek.
“Take care of yourself, Stephen.” The words accompany the residue of cake now resting on his skin.
Ten minutes pass before she texts him and asks him to meet again the next night.
He borrows his brother’s car. His palms sweat on the steering wheel the entire drive. The lights are off as he pulls into the tennis courts near her house. He sees her immediately. She is pacing, hands jammed into her sweatshirt pockets, face red from running down the street to meet him.
Her ponytail slips loose as she slides into the passenger seat and lets a breathless laugh trip out.
“Hi,” she says, too fast.
She is nervous too.
She rubs her hands together as if trying to warm them. Her knee bounces up, down, up, down.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she says.
He nods, then immediately shakes his head because nodding feels like the wrong response.
“If you want me to just drive you home...”
“No,” she says before he can finish. “No. I just... I don’t know.”
That ends the first attempt at conversation. Silence settles in. She pulls her legs up slightly, tucking one under the other, trying to subside the shaking.
He pretends to adjust the air vents that his brother warned him no longer work.
She pulls her sleeves over her hands and looks at him. “I keep thinking about you.” Unlike her hands, her voice is steady. “A lot. And...” She swallows. “I don’t know. I am scared of what it means.”
He doesn’t say anything. She watches him intently as if she expects him to fix this, to be braver than he is. But he doesn’t reach for her. He doesn’t lean in or settle her worries. He just stares back at her in the same terrified and honest way she looks at him.
She shifts closer, slow enough that she can still change her mind. She doesn’t, though. Her fingers hover by his arm, not quite touching, but there.
When she leans in, it is barely a movement, more like a question.
He answers by staying perfectly still.
She exhales and leans closer. Their foreheads touch first. It’s the most intimate thing he’s ever felt.
Then she closes the distance.
Her kiss is careful, intentional. It isn’t impulsive or fueled by alcohol. It’s a choice and this time it is hers to make.
He lets the world tilt toward her all over again.
When she pulls back, she laughs again, but it’s softer this time.
“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay.”
He doesn’t yet trust his voice so he smiles and stays turned to her.
“I want to see you again tomorrow,” she says, as if surprising herself by saying it out loud.
He doesn’t even pretend to think about it.
They meet again the next night and the one after that too. They trade everything but forgiveness behind the ice cream shop, in parking lots, at the edges of worlds where neither of them belong. Her voice loses its sophistication when she is with him, and her eyes make him feel alive.
Maybe it is rebellion. Maybe it’s selfishness, raw and aching, the kind that comes from finally, finally, doing what she wants. Maybe it is something else entirely.
Four months. That’s all they get. Sixty days stolen from a future that was never theirs.
Most nights they stay in his Toyota, her head on his chest swaying gently to songs they pretend are written for them. They whisper promises neither of them truly believe but speak anyway because the alternative is silence. He learns her in fragments: the squeal that escapes when he presses his hand to her stomach, the way rainbow sprinkles cling to her chin, the freckles along her back, sixteen of them, shaped like a scattering of islands. Half-asleep, mouth against her skin, he names them the Samantha Islands. He kisses his way down the slope of her shoulders, the bend of her wrists, the tops of her thighs, and the small of her back where his lips always linger. Where the islands form a landing only he has ever chartered.
Some nights she is soft and open, tracing circles on his arm and chest while filling the car with banter. Other nights, she is distracted, glancing over her shoulder when headlights pass, pulling her hair forward to cover her face when familiar license plates appear.
One night, she invites him over when her family is away, a rare window of freedom in the booked calendar of her life. Cuddled in her bed, wrapped in expensive detergent, he asks her about every part of her childhood bedroom. He shakes the hand of her childhood stuffed animal, Fluffy, and hears stories of the stickers adorning her wall. She starts the story of the pink whale sticker.
“I was eight and in the Cape Cod aquarium and...”
“Samantha?!” A voice booms as her body tenses against his.
“Holy shit they must have come home early.” Panic transforms her. She is up, yanking her jeans. “The window,” she whispers urgently, following the scripts from her favorite rom-coms before reality kicks in and she realizes that the four-story drop and manicured hedge maze surrounding the pool and tennis court below them would not make for an easy landing. “Shit. My dad will kill me. He’ll actually, Stephen go hide right now.” She grabs him out of the bed.
“Honey, are you there? We’re home.” Closer now. Heels clicking on marble.
She shoves him inside her closet, which is bigger than his bedroom, into a nook behind the shelf of shoes where she stacks her journals. He folds himself, his heart hammering. Darkness swallows him.
Her door opens. “Oh sweetie, you’re in bed already?” Her mother’s voice is sweetened with concern. “I thought you would have the girls over or something. It’s Friday!”
“Yeah.” A tiny whimper escapes her throat before she forces a smile into her voice. “I wasn't feeling up to it, I guess.”
“Everything okay?” He imagines her mother’s hand pressing against Samantha’s head. “You don’t feel warm.”
“Yeah, fine, Mom. Just tired.”
“Well, get some rest, it’s a big weekend, remember we have Mr. Gray’s fundraiser tomorrow.” He cringes at the sound of their family name. She told him she had plans with Lottie tomorrow. His jaw tightens as the lie clicks into place.
“Do I have to go to that?”
“Yes, sweetie, of course you do.” Her mother’s tone shifts. “I actually spoke to Ethan’s parents tonight, he really misses you.” The words hit him like bullets through the closet door.
He hears Samantha swallow. “Okay Mom, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I’m just happy you found a nice boy like Ethan. And I’d hate to see you throw that away.”
“Yeah whatever, I really don’t feel well. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Sure, honey. Love you,” her mother says softly, kissing her daughter before leaving.
The door clicks and footsteps fade.
In the silence that follows, tucked behind rows of shoes, wedged between old journals and the truths she never says out loud, something settles in him.
When she finally pulls him out from the closet, her smile is stiff. Her hands are cold against his as she asks if he heard anything.
“No,” he lies.
She nods, relieved, but her eyes drift toward the door, toward a life he has no place in.
On their last night together, they lie in the grass at the park near her house. His hand finds hers. They are muted by darkness and a distant highway as his fingers weave through hers and she guides it to her chest, pressing his palm over her heartbeat. It pounds fast, desperate, and alive. For him. She is alive, so alive. He closes his eyes and imagines that being his is what keeps her that way. Then she squeezes his hand. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. A code and confession. The eight letters and three words he had waited his entire life to hear, translated through touch because speaking aloud would make them too real: I love you.
He squeezes back: I love you too. She kisses him. Her cheeks are wet; they taste of salt. The truth hangs fragilely between them. They stay like that, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air. Later, he’ll remember this moment as the one where he should have held tighter, before it all slipped away, but for now, he lets himself believe in forever.
She leaves for college the next day. They promise each other things they can’t grasp: FaceTimes and forever. He sends her gifts he can’t afford and writes her letters when missing her becomes a physical ache. Eventually, a phone call goes unanswered and one becomes two. The slow silence of being erased. He texts her sometimes, late at night when his willpower dissolves. His messages remain undelivered. The truth calcifies with time: she was never really his. He’s known it all along. He was borrowing her from a life already written.
Eight years slip by and he’s working the kitchen at Johnnies’, where he smells like fryer oil and exhaustion. He flips eggs and wipes sweat, reluctantly falling into routine. Through the window, he sees her. Her. And him. He freezes, spatula in hand. She’s thinner now. Her hair is shorter and styled in a way that doesn’t look like her. Ethan is in a suit. They are arguing, voices sharp and harsh. Their fight is silenced by a shove; she stumbles backwards into the black Mercedes. Half in the passenger seat, one leg still out the door, she sees him. For one second, they lock eyes, and her face does something he can’t name. Within seconds that feel like hours, Ethan slams her in the car and his taillights dissolve into the end of the street. He just stands there, consumed by the smell of burnt potatoes and withering daisies.
His manager finds him twenty minutes later, staring at nothing. He quits that day.
He goes home and writes her a letter.
Then another and another. He continues to write to her. He never addresses them, instead trapping the ink-stained papers under his bed. He hears once from Carson that she married Ethan. Of course she did. He tells himself he is happy for her and some nights he even believes it.
He builds his own family: one that never leaves, never breaks, never bruises. They stay exactly how he wants them, still, silent, his. Perfect in their permanence. Perfect in his possession. He tells them stories of his past. They let him talk, never listening, never interrupting.
With that thought, he exhales and opens his eyes to all of them. His people. His creations. His congregation of the carefully preserved.
He peels himself away and walks toward her, toward the mark he knows too well. In the chemical hush of his workplace, he stands over the body he knows best. His eyes are stolen by her left ring finger, where a diamond carves its claim, glowing under the light. He hates knowing that under that ring is a hand that once squeezed those three words into the deepest parts of him. To look at it, the bruises yellowing at her wrists, the fingerprints sprouting purple, the truth written in contusions, is to admit he’d been wrong. He grabs her right hand instead, squeezing tight, as if pressure could slow decay. He squeezes harder, urging her bones to crumble in his grasp, urging time to obey him for once.
But reality returns in a brutal breath. He forces himself into routine, habit, and devotion. He finishes the work the way a man confesses, with trembling precision. Each stroke becomes an apology and each wipe of gauze is a prayer. To her. To himself. To the version of them that got stuck in time, forever unfinished. It is an act of dedication rather than one of possession, the most tender job he’s ever done.
When his duties are complete, he lifts his Polaroid. His finger hovers over the button for a lifetime. And in that suspended moment between life and death, the flash goes off. He watches the photo develop, her face emerging from the white square. Her eyes are closed.
He watches the image develop in agonizing time. He carries her photo to the wall, but his hand stalls in mid-air. It feels wrong, somehow, seeing her with all them. She doesn’t belong. There is a wrongness and a truth he can finally hear.
“Do any of you...” he asks. His voice barely carries. “Belong?” The room answers with nothing but a faint hiss from the vent.
Something inside him snaps and then steadies with frightening clarity.
He pulls Charles’ freshly pasted photo off the wall; his calves were made to run, after all. Then Madeline and her polite eyes, and the orthopedic surgeon. The therapist. All of them, each carefully curated specimen piling in his hands. Their taped corners tear away from the wall. Unable to silence their screams, he feeds them to the fire that long kept them warm. The images curl and blacken until the faces give up their shape. The smoke detector screams a shrill warning, but he doesn't move. He doesn’t flinch. He just stands there, holding one photo as the rest disappear.
He stands alone with the single photograph trembling between his fingers. The wall stares back, stripped bare, nothing but patches of tape and scratches where gazes used to follow. He looks at the photo one last time. Then lets it fall. It curls and blackens like the others, her face dissolving into the flames.
Six months later, the wall is almost clean. Only two furnishings remain: a yellowed newspaper clipping, pinned slightly off-center.
MILLIONAIRE, ETHAN GRAY, FOUND IN VEHICLE DEAD IN LOCAL PARKING LOT. NO SUSPECTS.
And beneath it, a single Polaroid.
Months have passed and nobody has figured out who did it.
Stephen smiles every time he looks at it with something quieter than pride. The headline hovers above the photographs, each one making his pulse thrum with a strange kind of recognition: the crossed and tensed limbs, muscles locked in their final resistance; the torn frenulum; the clean white shirt knotted around Ethan’s neck.
The journalist chronicles how the Mercedes-Benz hood emblem was ripped from the grille and driven into Ethan’s chest. Not fatal, the article speculates. It was the cloth, twisted just enough, pulled just right, that likely came first.
The article gets most of it right, except, of course, the most crucial and obvious detail: the smell buried in that white cloth. Something like daisies and revenge.
Beneath the clipping sits the Polaroid. Not of Samantha dead, but a photo Carson gave to him that he’d found in a pile of worn-down relics from a different lifetime. A photo of her laughing at that party, purple strap sliding off her shoulder, half-smirk, head thrown back. Living. It’s the version of her he tried to save.
He doesn't work with bodies anymore. The tremor in his hands got too bad, he tells the few people from the hospital who ask. It’s easier than explaining the truth: that he can no longer pretend life can be preserved in death, or that his solitude can be cured by a wall of frozen eyes and closed lips. He can no longer confuse possession with love. Not when he knows exactly what his lessons have informed, how easy it is to cross the line from caretaker to creator.
He leaves the emerald chair mostly empty now. Sometimes he still rests in it to talk.
Not to the dead. To her. To the version of himself who didn’t hold tight enough. And to the version who never learned how to let go.
The room smells faintly of fire and formaldehyde, but something softer lingers beneath, daisies, maybe, beating through the vents.
He closes his eyes and if he breathes in deep enough, he hears her laugh from the photo.
Alive and close.
He doesn’t open his eyes. Some things are easier to believe in the dark.
It isn’t quite living.
But it’s not death either.
It’s something in between, and for now, that’s a start.