The steps were slippery from the recent rain. As close to ice as we tend to get, but still the wind is not deemed a friend. Whipping around me to usher me inside more quickly like an impatient parent.

“Yes, yes I get it. Thank you, much appreciated.”

And as if it could hear me, I am reminded that Doc’s are not particularly slip resistant as my foot hydroplaned on the top step.

“Fucking neat, bro. Thanks. Did you see that balance though, girl? Your mom is indestructible.” Looking for my keys in my, seemingly, endless pack. Anxiety spiking through my fingers while they fiddle and fumble.

“I think I made this too organized. I don’t remember which stupid pocket I put them in…there! Okay yes, thank you Lily. I see the door, m’am. I am aware that it should be open by now. You can lodge a complaint in the suggestion box, promptly. Located, conveniently, up your own furry butt. Stop jumping!”

The door finally opens and Lily scuttles to her bed, next to her food bowl, sitting as still as she can manage. Gently, if not still annoyingly, pushing air out of her nose in a huff of impatience.

“Can I put this stuff down, first, please? I had to lug your chicken around which feels way heavier than it should, I might add.”

I had forgotten about the chicken, until then. Somehow accepting the weight of it across my pack, but not the implications of what I was thinking: “Was this chicken alive, alive? Before the Lily incident, obviously. But before, like, alive? Is it edible? Will I die if I eat it? Or at least become diseased, or more diseased? What happens when I cut it open? Will the bones crack in a familiar way? When I press a cleaver into its chest cavity will it snap in the two I’m accustomed to? Or will it bubble before me in a scaled mess, multiplying itself endlessly in a malleable marrow-goo, proving a mirage?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Being in the house is not difficult in the way that current life is difficult. It is difficult in the way that I never feel quite at home. It feels more like a holding place that once looked like a home, empty, but with its old trappings. Books that once floated on the walls with shelves have since fallen away from their anchors. The 13-foot ceilings provided perfect displays, but eventually the crumbling couldn’t hold the weight of a print. Countless pieces of art that I’ve had to burn. My friend’s art. Their life’s work in flames like a funeral pyre. Mourning not only the people that made it, but the actualization of them. A last feature of warming care carried away in embers. Having to move everything left towards the center of the rooms and stabilize what I could, where I could. The dampness of the city became a vehicle for faster decay, faster decomposition on a building that was already falling down well before the city did. Always, ever, sinking. Dizzying.

“I feel bad, girl…”

I can see Lily from the corner of my eye as my knees buckle under the pressure of memory. I can feel the loss leaking from my pores in aches and pains, snot and tears that singe my cheeks without warmth. My breathing quickens in my brain’s panic, the assault of ammonia on my nose, the chill lifting from the floor as if to levitate my body. I can feel every single bone. I can feel each crack in my skin. I can feel every scale moving like tectonic plates rearranging at their whimsy. I don’t feel right. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel my body as my own.

A voice cuts through the haze:

“Is there a reason you’re on the floor, or are you trying to hear the neighbors fighting?”

“I wouldn’t do that?!”

“Mmmhmm. So?”

“So what?”

“What are they fighting about?”

The lightest sound from Lily’s tip-toeing nails on the floor comes into view. She gives me a lick.

“Yup, gotta get up, huh girl?” I say as I drag what feels like a dislocated limb towards my face. Hauling my arm one after the other until I can press into the ice block that is the kitchen floor. Coughing up what feels like mud in my lungs in order to choke down the memory of you. Coming to a seated position I can feel the panic dissipate, though the anxiety remains steadfast.

Lily sits idly next to me as I cross my sore legs. I turn my neck towards her, the vertebrae of it responding with slight crackles and pops in-between.

“Feel like chicken?”

Lily lets out another huff of impatient air through her nose.