I Am Sorry

 The silence in the house was not empty; it was heavy, pressing against my eardrums like deep-sea pressure. It had been six months since Elena died, and for six months, I had lived in a shrine to her decay.

Her silk robe still hung on the back of the bathroom door, stiff with the dried residue of her final, frantic perspiration. Her hairbrush sat on the vanity, a tangled nest of strands that seemed to grow darker, coarser every day. I couldn't bear it anymore. The guilt was a physical knot in my stomach, but the rot—the literal, pervasive rot—made the air unbreathable.

I started with the closet.

As I pulled a lace blouse from a hanger, the fabric tore, not from age, but with a wet, tearing sound like skin pulling away from muscle. I recoiled, dropping it into the black plastic trash bag. My heart hammered against my ribs. I told myself it was just the humidity. This house was old; it breathed dampness in through the floorboards.

I began to clear the vanity. I scooped handfuls of her makeup, the half-empty perfumes, and the trinkets into the bag. With every item I discarded, the house grew colder. A low, rhythmic thrumming began to vibrate through the floorboards, a sound like a wet lung struggling to inflate.

You don’t want me, the house seemed to whisper through the shifting wallpaper.

"I have to," I sobbed, my hands shaking as I reached for her vanity mirror.

The glass was clouded, etched with grime. As I lifted it, I saw her reflection standing behind me. She was exactly as she had been in the hospital bed—her skin sallow, her eyes sunken into deep, bruised hollows, her jaw slack. She wasn't a ghost; she was a manifestation of the decay I had let fester.

I screamed and dropped the mirror. It shattered into a thousand jagged teeth.

The floor beneath me buckled. The wooden planks groaned, splintering into wet, fibrous shards. I tried to run, but the floor reached up. Thick, pulsating veins of black mold erupted from the gaps, wrapping around my ankles with the strength of iron cables. They were cold—colder than ice—and smelled of stagnant grave water.

I fell, my face pressing into the carpet. The fibers of the rug began to dissolve, turning into a thick, black slurry that tasted of copper and bile. The trash bag I had filled tore open, spilling her clothes out. They didn't lie flat; they began to move, wrapping around my torso like parasitic vines. The silk robe tightened around my throat, the fabric biting into my skin with the force of a garrote.

I clawed at the floor, my fingernails tearing away as I tried to dig into the joists.

"I'm sorry," I wheezed, the black mold filling my mouth, suffocating the apology. "I just wanted to be clean."

Her cold, dead hand pressed against the back of my neck, forcing my face deeper into the floorboards. I realized then that the house hadn't been keeping her things; it had been keeping her. And by trying to discard the evidence of her end, I had merely signaled that I was ready to become part of the decor.

The floorboards closed over the back of my head like a hungry mouth. There was no more light, no more guilt, and no more air. Just the slow, steady vibration of the house, digesting its newest addition.