Page 10 of Together We Rot

The motel?

I blink, but I can’t make her words make sense. My dad’s never mentioned Wil or her family since the accusation and the case. There’s no way he would want to buy anything like that.

“I don’t...” I’m not sure what sobers me more: the snarl of the wind or the tightening of my collar beneath her fist. She eases and I gasp for air. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wil.”

“Liar,” she hisses, and her voice is frigid. She’s as volatile and angry as the last time she accused me. But this time I have nothing to fight back with. This time she’s rendered me speechless. “You’re telling me Sheriff Vrees knows and I know and you don’t?”

I shake my head. It’s all I’m capable of.

“And I suppose there’s nothing you want to tell me about my mother? More specifically, where she is?” My mind. That’s what I want to say, but even drunk, I know better. Sophie Greene has taken a permanent residence in my thoughts. She exists in murky shadows, and when she smiles, it’s the same one I saw in church that day. No one new ever came to our service, and yet there she was, taking a seat in the back pew and smiling large as ever despite all the stares.

You know, my father said over dinner when she disappeared, that woman left her newborn daughter before. She ran out on her family and when she came to her senses, she made a whole spectacle of her return. She must’ve missed the attention. Not everyone shares the same family values we do.

I wonder if she’s smiling wherever she is now.

“I told you before”—I fight to keep the words even—“I don’t know where your mom is, Wil, but my family has nothing to do with it, okay? What else do I need to do to prove that? I don’t know how you can even suggest it in the first place. They’re the ones who organized the search, they’re the ones who hung up all the ‘Missing’ flyers, they—”

“Oh, they’re such saints, excuse me. It takes a real saint to abuse your child, doesn’t it?” Even she seems stunned by the words. She gnaws on her lip and I wonder if she’s afraid of anything else toppling out and spoiling in the air between us. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You don’t know anything, Wil.” I twist away from her prying eyes. I can’t believe the words that come out of my mouth next. I guess that’s a common theme between us tonight. “Is abandoning your own daughter any better?”

She holds her glare a while longer before breaking away with a hiss. “Fuck you, Elwood.”

I was right—she lets go of me and I collapse to the frozen pavement. The patio door rattles behind her. I’m not sure how long it takes for me to find my footing. I wobble on my feet, a growing sickness climbing its way up. The world outside is freezing, but my skin burns still from her touch.

I feel sick.

It’s already become far too hot to breathe. I feel like I’m about to purge.

I take the stairs two at a time.

Upstairs, the walls are lined with smiling faces. Grins that grow wider the longer I look at them, eyes that become more pupil than white. My skin feels like it’s going to ooze off my bones like paint.

I need to find the bathroom.

I swing open the doors, one by one. The knobs twist open easily enough as I look for an escape. An empty office with sterile, crisp walls. A storage closet where everything is tucked away neatly in compartmentalized boxes. The third door swings back to reveal the moon. Silver streaming in, casting down on a bare back. Spine curving like the bones in the woods; wounded, guttural cries; bodies bathed in blue.

Harvey and some girl, hooking up on the bed.

The image of them washes away. Just two creatures, arms and legs and limbs. Blood and bone and the flesh sealing over them both. Pounding hearts, the heavy drumbeat of youth. “What the fuck, get out of here!” she screams at me, chucking a pillow toward my chest. I scramble over myself. The door slams shut beneath me, my legs carrying me away. I run fast down the hall. The nausea grows stronger with each passing second. I creak open the last door, audibly sighing at the sight. I’m at the toilet in seconds. The burn of bile rises in my chest, clawing up to my mouth, leaving a bloody mess of my throat. I heave and heave and heave. My eyes sting, already welling with tears. It’s disgusting, all of it. The taste of it, the sound of it, the fact that my hands are gripping a grimy toilet seat for dear life. People have sat on this. They have done more than sit on it. God, god, god. I need to disinfect my hands five times over. I need to bleach them. My mother can’t know about this. My father can’t know about this. No one can—

I throw up again.

Sinner, sinner, sinner.

My nails drag down my tongue, clawing away the layer of filth with equally filthy hands. I need to get the taste out before it roots itself inside me and stays forever. I’ll pray and I’ll pray until it goes away.

I stare into the bowl.

It’s full of snapped twigs and clumps of grass. Pine needles peppered all around, a stark forest of green against the white. In the very center of it all, I see the broken, crumpled body of a moth. Fur as red as dried blood, no longer fresh and vivid and bright. Crescent moons are carved out from its wings, two identical sepia-stained splotches. Eye spots black like marbles, mimicking the hawkish, beady gaze of a predator. It’s a Columbia silk moth.

It buzzes in the middle of the water, not quite dead yet, squirming with the last flickering of life.

The flush of the toilet takes it away.

I stagger back to the wall and wonder what it was that I saw. I’m drunk. That’s it. I’m just hallucinating because I’m drunk and tomorrow it will all be a bad memory.

Stumbling my way toward the faucet, I let the hot water run between the cracks in my fingers.

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