Dead House

I live with the dead. I have been for quite some time now. I remember the first time I opened up my closet and saw a corpse standing upright, staring back at me. I should have been terrified, I should have given some sort of reaction like screaming or fainting or gasping or puking, followed by running out of the house, calling 911 (to secure the crime scene or put me in a looney bin) and never return to that place again.
Instead I just hung up my sweater and closed the closet door. It was just some dead guy, hanging out in my closet. And I don't say that in a sense that I'm personifying the corpse; it was actually hanging out in my closet, the way youth will hang out at a mall or bus terminal. It was willingly hanging out. The experience was out of the norm, but life kept going the way it was going. I would go to work at this crappy job, come home to my run-down house, eat what little there was in the fridge, watch whatever signal I could get on t.v., then go to bed. The dead popping up more and more in my house made life interesting and palatable.
Anyways, the dead live with me. It started with a dude in a closet. He would always be there, rotting and stinking and staring, and then one day there were two. They didn't get in the way of me hanging up my clothes, so I didn't get in their way of hanging out in my closet. I never got what their deal was, the only thing interesting in that closet is my cold, heavy death in a brown shoebox. And I know they never touched it, because the dust never moved one bit.
The next one I saw was a head and a hand in my fridge. I know, now you're thinking how much of a fucking health hazard that is, but honestly my milk had never been fresher. The severed head would just watch me with that single, yellow eye reach in, grab what there was to grab, then close the fridge.
Then they started appearing in the hallway, which was really just an empty room that relayed the main door, the stairs heading downstairs, the kitchen, living room and the den. I think at first there were three of them, but I'm not sure. One would be standing up, looking right at the living room, and I'd wave to him every morning. He would continue to look at me until I passed him. The other two were just kind of weird, one was facing the wall where there used to be a painting of A.H., while the other sat (because it had no legs) in the corner where the kitchen and den walls met. This went on for a few weeks. More dead would appear. Some standing, some sitting, all of them always staring. Whatever pizazz this added to my life soon dissipated, because they never did anything, but after a month, I went into my fridge, grabbed some juice, poured myself a glass and then went to put it back in, and the milk that I needed next was handed to me by Chillers (that's the name I gave to the hand and head that were in my fridge. I'm assuming they belong to each other.) Now THIS was going to make things a little more lively.
Surely enough, the dead became very helpful. I'd open my closet to be greeted by my sweater held out by rotting hands, the dude (not to be confused with THE Dude, none of them were famous) by the staircase would hand me my keys, the guy next to the door would open it for me, the one with one leg standing next to the t.v. would fix the reception for me without having to ask him... yeah, life was pretty awesome. Living with the dead. I used to hear ghost stories and stuff, and it made me think that death made you bitter.
Well, I don't know much because I'm not dead myself (at least not at this point,) but I don't think being dead means the end of existence. I really think it's just a life-changing experience, no pun intended. Like moving to another country where the customs are totally different, or like going blind or losing your legs, except with more death. I asked them how it was, dying, but they would just look at me with their thousand-yard stares (but they still looked AT me, but I guess death gives that impression on rotting eyes.) I don't think they could ever talk.


One day I came home and found them moving. They were walking all around the house, going up and down the stairs, moving around in each room, going all over the place, all looking like they had something to do even though I never saw them doing anything other then walking around. A couple of them remained stationary, like Chillers, Righty and Lefty (the two in my closet,) Micha (the dude who stood next to my broken bass guitar) and Dave the doorman.
You know, at one point I tried naming them all, but them moving around made it impossible. So those that had names were the ones I could keep track of, and those were mainly the stationary ones. The other ones would never stop walking around. They'd move all day and all night. I never saw them not moving. Their shuffling about put me to sleep though. There was no rhythm to it, but it was all in sync, if that makes any sense. It was like a body working together in harmony. The heart may pump in rhythm, but the cells don't. I think that's what these dead were, and my house was more of a vein then a body. They definitely worked in unison, there was nothing random about the way they moved. Some might think that they moved like insects at this point, but ants and bees tend to work for one individual, one mind. I always had the impression that my roommates were all individuals with their own tasks, they just all had the same big picture in mind. I just wish I also had the big picture in mind, or at least an idea of what was going to happen.
The house was as busy as ever, they seemed to double-time their efforts even if their speed never really picked up. Righty, the first one to ever have been in my house (at least that I know of,) looked at me like he always did, staring at me but past me at the same time. But there was something in his eyes that morning, something other then puss and maggots. I didn't like it. When I opened the fridge, Chillers gave me a look of pity and handed me my milk as if filled with sorrow. I was really starting to get down at all this, down and worried.
Dave frightened me the most. Not because he looked sad that day, not because he held the door open with a sense of finality, not because I think I saw his eyes leaking (I think that's how corpses cry,) but because I think he said goodbye. I would have dismissed it as a trick of the mind if I hadn't felt the entire house hesitate as if gasping for the briefest moment, the kind of moments that happen for so short you wonder if you actually caught it. To imagine that something happened is one thing, but to imagine something a second time that confirms your first suspicion takes a damn weird coincidence (which I don't believe in anymore) and a lack of perception.
I had never been so nervous for an entire day in my life. Every moment spent away from home was tugging at me every moment, like hooks dug into my flesh, my bones, my organs, my fucking mind, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling. Time ticked away like time always does in the worst moment of torture, with such sloth that it feels like each second is a monumental, herculean effort to push forward. Eight grueling hours slugged by, almost burying me in their dense, lethargic movements. Finally, during the last eternal second, I ran out from work, jumped in my car and roared it's old engine to life and broke every speed limit and blew every stop sign I could. My car groaned in protest like an old horse that had too much arthritis. Nothing mattered. Something was happening today. Something big. Something important. Something so horrible that it was going to consume me.



When I came home, my house was empty.



Silent, desolate. Bare, cold. As hollow as I felt. My house that had once been alive with the dead, was now dead with the living. Dead with me. I was so alone. Depression sank in me, replacing all my organs with void. My empty shell of a body was heavy.
I went into my closet past where Righty and Lefty once stood and grabbed my shoebox and pulled out my cold, heavy death.
I stared at it's black eye, and I let it's thunder take me.
At least now, the house was dead with the dead in it.












I know what it's like to deal with a heavy heart and a numb body. To go through life only because it's routine. If you feel like this, you can be like you were before. You can be happy again. People who try can make it. Death won't bring peace, only pain to those around you.