I slam the dresser drawer closed. Marcus yanks his hand away.
“Shit! You almost caught my fingers.”
“Sorry! I was just…” It hadn’t occurred to me he might take it upon himself to open a drawer. Let alone that drawer—the one on the bottom right. “I have a surprise hidden for you. That’s all.”
He holds up his hands, caught stealing, then backs away, eyeing the drawer. “I was only wondering if I could leave a few things at your place since I’m here all the time, maybe mingle my socks with yours?” He throws me a wink.
“Sounds sexy.” I say this easily and with a smile, as if nothing at all is wrong. What I want is for him to feel comfortable here. We’ve only been together a month but it’s different already. Special. I even gave him his own set of keys last week, complete with a red heart keychain. I touch his arm. “Put your stuff on top for now. I’ll clear out a space.”
“Thanks, babe.” He pulls me toward the bed, toward him. He kisses my chest, moving up my neck until he finds my lips. I run my tongue across his, lost for a moment—he really feels so, so good—until I think about the drawer again.
The problem is… it’s not as simple as cleaning out a single drawer. If he starts using the dresser regularly, he could open the wrong drawer, the one on the bottom right. I’ve never shown anyone what’s inside.
He pulls back from my face. “Something wrong?”
“No, no. I’m good.” I kiss him again, trying to get the moment back. The warmth of his body—that’s all I want. His body. His breath. His smile. Life is good with him. I don’t want to mess this up. Everything will be fine. But will it, really? What if he’d opened the drawer all the way? What if he’d seen?
Then he’d be done. He’d leave.
#
When I’m alone, I go to the dresser, crouch down, and pull the drawer open. It slides easily. The heads look back at me. There are seven of them, each roughly four or five inches long, shrunken down. They have carved, bony features, wiry black hair sewn into leathery skulls, black splotches on sunken parts for eyes, and jagged red lines for lips. Despite their shriveled appearance, they seem to be smiling.
I pick up one of the heads. He’s been here the longest and has a faint odor, like rotten eggs. I set him down, pick up another, hold him to my nose. He smells like dead flowers. I place him in the drawer beside the others. Now I lean in, inhaling them all at once. I’m used to the way they smell even though it isn’t nice. It’s familiar and comforting—like warmth in winter, fireplaces, wood walls, cuddling.
Turning a circle, I scan my bedroom. Maybe I just need to relocate the heads. Maybe there’s a high shelf where they could go. They’d be visible, on display, but wouldn’t be in the way. And I could tell Marcus about them. I wouldn’t have to keep a secret.
Wouldn’t that be healthy?
Swallowing hard, I imagine showing Marcus the heads, explaining about the times I’ve opened the drawer and picked them up when I’ve been alone, held them to my chest, even talked to them. They’ve become a part of me, in a way.
Marcus wouldn’t get it. How could he? He’d think the heads were weird or creepy. Then what would he think of me?
I’d rather not have that conversation. It isn’t necessary.
My life is different than it used to be. I’ve been opening the drawer less and less lately. I’m so happy, so busy. This is the first time I’ve even looked at the heads since Marcus and I started dating. To be honest, they look different than they used to, less appealing.
The thought hits me—
Maybe I don’t need them anymore.
I grab a trash bag and put all seven heads inside, eyes turned down. Before I can change my mind, I tie off the bag, twisting the red handles into a knot. My legs tremble, but I rush down the stairs anyway. After a long, deep breath, I throw the bag into the trash bin. A hollow noise echoes when it hits the side.
I whisper, “Goodbye.”
#
I cut out a sheet of blue contact paper and stick it down in the drawer, covering the oily smudges the heads left behind, then smooth the paper across. A faint odor lingers but it’s barely noticeable; the surface appears crisp and clean. A fresh start. I fold Marcus’s clothes into neat little packages, arrange them in rows in the drawer, tell myself it looks great.
But my hands shake. I left the heads in the trash. They deserved better than that. No, no, no. It doesn’t matter. The heads are basically dolls, stuffed animals, toys. It’s not like they can feel or think or talk.
I rearrange Marcus’s things, move them into a new configuration, move them again, until the drawer is perfectly assembled. I’m making space for what matters. Marcus matters. I push the drawer closed. Feeling optimistic, I clean my entire apartment top to bottom, no stopping, before lighting scented candles to perfume the air.
Marcus comes over at night. I show him his drawer.
He nods, seems happy. “Thanks, babe. You must have relocated the secret stuff.”
“The what?” I blink twice.
He smiles. “Whatever you were hiding.”
“Oh, yes. The surprise. You’ll just have to wait.” I make a mental note to pick out a small gift, something to give him to make good on my fib.
Or I could tell him the truth about the heads.
Maybe I will. I’ll do it right now. I open my mouth, can’t believe the words are coming out. This is really happening. “So, I need to tell you…”
He takes my hand, pulling me into bed. “Tell me what?” His voice is breathy, lips close to my skin. There’s no reason to bring down the mood.
“It’s nothing. We’ll talk after.” I kiss him, hoping he’ll forget.
Under the covers he runs his fingers through my long hair, pressing his lips to my forehead, my cheeks. We stay this way a while, nuzzling against each other until he shifts his weight on top of me, puts his mouth to my ear, tells me he loves me.
It’s the first time.
Warmth rushes through my body. I tell him I love him too. And there’s a moment—this incredible moment—when I forget all the bad stuff that’s always stabbing at me. The breakups. The time I lost my job. The car accident. The screaming fights. The blood when my father died. I run my fingertips up the back of Marcus’s neck, behind his head, hold him closer to my face. Everything feels relaxed and right.
Good things really do happen to me.
After, we shower together, lights off, candles lit. In the warm water, I let go, relaxing in his arms. Water pats down onto my head, neck, and shoulders. He holds me, gently stroking my back. When we’re done, dried off, and wrapped in fluffy towels, he blows me a kiss. Then he goes to the dresser to grab his pajamas, crouching down in the candlelight.
He opens his drawer, reaching inside.
A moment later, he screams.
#
Marcus jerks and flails on his knees, hand caught in the drawer. His rapid movements shake the dresser, send the burning candle crashing to the floor. The glass container breaks, wax spreading like lava.
I rush to his side. “Oh, god. Are you alright?”
He grunts a piggish squeal, not alright, hand stuck. “What the fuck! Get it off me!” He tugs and tugs, trying to pull free.
“What is it?” I say.
He finally yanks his hand out, falling back before shambling toward the bathroom, barely holding himself up. I follow him into the light. He holds his hand up in front of the mirror and shrieks.
Blood drips and spews, covering his wrist, his forearm, dripping onto the sink and floor, spurting from partial fingers. Most of his thumb, index, and middle fingers are gone. He goes to scream again, but words fail him. He mumbles something unintelligible, looking like he’s about to pass out. I catch him, helping him onto the toilet seat before wrapping his hand in a towel, telling him to hold it up high. He must be in shock because he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even cry.
Rushing back to the dresser, I pull the drawer open all the way, holding my breath. At the center, a sticky mess of blood has soaked into his clothes and ruined the contact paper, but the missing finger parts are there. Three broken sausages wait.
I pick up the fleshy remnants and try not to vomit. At their bloody bases, the severed fingers are mangled, shredded, as if bitten off with jagged teeth. By what? I move his soiled clothes around with my free hand and scan the drawer, but don’t see anything suspicious. Nothing that could have caused his injury.
Somewhere behind me, I swear I hear a laugh.
I whip around but there’s no one. Whose voice was that?
Marcus groans from the bathroom.
I rush back to him. “I found the fingers.”
He looks up, eyeing the severed digits in my palm before throwing up on the floor.
On the drive to the emergency room, a Tupperware of fingers and ice sits between us on the console. Marcus is very pale. Blood soaks through the towel that wraps his hand. He mumbles about rodents. Big rats must have gotten into his drawer, must have bitten him. That’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense. He shakes his head furiously, ranting about my apartment. He asks if I’ve seen any droppings, says something’s infested my place.
I drive as fast as I can, grip the steering wheel tighter.
I’ve never seen any rats, but what about the laughter? Did I really hear that or was I freaking out or… I picture the heads lined up, mouths open, filled with razor teeth, smiling, laughing. But they weren’t in the drawer, nor anywhere in the bedroom. They couldn’t have been. I threw them away.
In the hospital, I open the Tupperware, show the doctor the finger pieces we saved. My breath catches. In the fluorescent light, I can see the details more clearly. At the wet, red base of each severed finger, stuck in the pulp, are strands of black hair.
The doctor adjusts his glasses, points to the hair, looks at me. “You know what this is from?” He asks if there was an animal, a rodent, anything we saw. He’ll have to give Marcus a bunch of shots to be sure he doesn’t catch anything.
I stare at the black hair. The heads.
The doctor eyes me expectantly. I look from him to Marcus, then back to him. This is my chance to say something, to come clean.
Shrugging, I say, “We saw nothing.”
#
Marcus is in emergency surgery. So long. Too long. I sit alone and wait, freezing in the hospital waiting room, so cold my body shakes. The heads. They couldn’t have gotten out of the trash can. Impossible. They’re inanimate like dolls. It was an accident. I have rats. Big ones. That’s all. My body trembles. I wish I had a sweater.
I thought about getting rid of the heads once, years ago. I’d been on a long trip with friends, had one of those moments where your mind is clear, you see things differently. I needed to change my life, go to therapy, get out of a bad relationship, start a new career. Purge old, unwanted things. All of that was in reach. When I got home, I opened the drawer to throw away the heads. I was really going to do it. But one of them moved. It blinked a few times, gnashed its teeth at me. I fell back, slammed the drawer closed, told myself I didn’t see anything. But the heads were alive then, weren’t they? They could be alive now. Hours later, I’d opened the drawer again and they were still there, unmoving, looking normal, smiles frozen. They weren’t normal. I should have told someone then, but who would have believed me?
The hospital waiting room is crowded, frantic, too fucking cold. A baby cries. A man stumbles through, wailing. Someone help him, please. Someone help me, too. What if the heads aren’t in the trash when I get home? What if they’re loose and angry? I wrap my hands around my arms, shivering, and watch the clock, wait for the surgeon’s update.
Another hour passes. Maybe two.
Finally, a woman in scrubs, calling my name. I look up, startled, gasping. She’s waiting for me to walk to her, so I do. Now she’s talking. There is some question about whether the replantation will take. Flesh was ragged or missing. His thumb isn’t likely to work well. Nerve damage that was difficult to repair. His fingers will be stubby and strange.
Tears flood my eyes. I don’t care what his fingers look like. He’s my person. He can look like anything. But he’ll be upset, won’t he? Only hours ago, he was running perfect fingers through my long hair. Everything was great. I can’t help imagining his reattached fingers in my hair now, turning green then black, seams caught up in my tangled mane, digits choked at the knuckles, pulled hard, yanked off. Blood everywhere. He’ll know I kept the truth from him. He’ll find out. An instinct. Will he still love me? This is my fault. I should have said something.
#
Marcus stays in the hospital for five days.
I sit with him the whole time in his room, gripping his good hand, telling him everything will be okay, leaving only to run to the store and buy food and toiletries. My apartment isn’t far, but I stay with him and use the shower in his hospital room. He tells me this isn’t necessary, that I can go. He doesn’t need me here. I sense he needs space. But I can’t handle the thought of leaving him. Or being alone.
When Marcus is finally discharged, we decide to stay at his place. He asks to drop by mine first and pick up some stuff he left behind. On the drive, he’s woozy from pain meds, too tired to realize I’m clutching the wheel in a death grip. I’m imagining walking back into my apartment. Imagining what waits. The heads.
He doesn’t say much, just groans and moans. “Hurry, baby, please.”
I park outside, tell him to sit tight. I’ll just be two minutes.
He leans back in the passenger seat, bandaged arm propped high.
I head toward the staircase to my unit. Looking up the steps, I feel a pang of nervousness. I have a rat problem. That’s all it is. Gross but not scary. Rats bit off Marcus’s fingers. I’ve made too big a thing about the heads. I’ve gotten in my own head too much, really.
A neighbor walks past me carrying a bag of trash and waves. What day is it? Thursday. I wave back. The trash gets taken out on Fridays. The bag with the heads would still be in the bin. If they haven’t escaped. I wait for my neighbor to leave, then I rush around the side of the building.
Using my phone as a flashlight, I peer into the trash bin, but can’t see anything. Too many bags have been piled on top. I knock the bin onto its side, pulling a few bags onto the pavement, moving slowly to avoid making a mess. But I’m taking too long. Several minutes have passed. Marcus must be wondering where I am. I pull the rest of the bags out, tearing them open, dumping stuff everywhere, sorting desperately.
Finally, my trash bag falls out. I recognize it by the red handles. There’s a gaping hole in one side, plastic shredded. The bag is empty.
The heads are gone. Missing.
Leaving trash strewn, I walk toward the front of the building. I look up the staircase to my apartment. Each step has seven distinct impressions, greasy trails leading to my door.
The heads. But that’s impossible. The heads can’t move. They certainly can’t go up a flight of stairs. But what if they can? I picture them scooting, using their sharp little mouths to climb.
I should get back in the car with Marcus, I should leave.
But I can’t, can I?
At top of the stairs, the door to my apartment stands ajar, a key in the lock.
A red heart keychain hangs.
Marcus came looking for me. He’s gone inside.
I rush up the steps, push the door open, heart racing.
#
The apartment is dark and quiet. I stand in the doorway. The pungent smell of rotten eggs mixed with old, dead flowers hits my nose, so strong it curdles in my chest, sickening. Bending over, I cough to expel it from my lungs. My fit passes. The living room falls silent.
“Marcus? You in here?”
Nothing.
A groan erupts from the bedroom.
I head for the hallway, reach for the light switch. The overhead fixture illuminates, then winks out. I walk in the dark. Slow steps.
Another noise up ahead.
“Marcus?”
I wait.
“Marcus?” Softer now.
He probably can’t hear me. He’s busy managing his bandaged hand while packing up stuff in the bedroom. That can’t be easy. That’s why he’s not responding.
The door to the bedroom stands open. It’s dark inside.
Wouldn’t he have turned on the light?
Another noise. Gurgling.
Standing in the doorway, my eyes start to adjust. Now I see. He’s resting. I can just make him out—lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling. His black sneakers stick off the end. He must be so tired. I see the curve of his calves and hamstrings. Why isn’t he answering?
Shadows wriggle and writhe near his face.
I turn on the light.
The heads are at his neck, moving. I see their wiry hair from behind. They’ve become engorged, doubled in size. They wriggle furiously, make smacking sounds. Eating. Now they turn toward me, bony faces animated, eyes popping open, jaws wagging. Mouths open and close, showing off jagged rows of reddened teeth. Reddened from blood. From biting. Bits of flesh hang, dripping. More blood around them—around Marcus. A pool stains the sheets.
I rush to his side. Too late.
Everything is wrong—backwards. His body is face down, but his head is twisted, nose and mouth facing up. His eyes stare vacantly. He doesn’t see me, doesn’t blink. His neck is a red gash. A few of the heads lean into the wound, chewing.
I leap onto the bed, swatting them away.
“No!” I grab his face, lifting it up from the gore-stained sheets. I kiss his lips for a moment, for a stupid moment, until the fragile, fleshy tethers keeping his neck attached break. The weight of his body falls away. I stare into his eyes, then drop him to the sheets.
The other heads swarm, feeding at the stump of Marcus’s neck. I scream at them to stop but they don’t listen. They don’t care. They’ve never really cared. And Marcus is gone. Oh my god, he’s gone. We’ve only dated a month, sure, but I already knew. I really did. I was happy for once, with him. We could have been together forever, but they fucked it up like I knew they would, like they fuck up everything. The heads. They come at him, teeth gnashing.
I grab the bedside lamp, turn it on end, yell for them to get away while I hit them off, send them flying. They return anyway, evading the lamp, feeding at the base of Marcus’s head. I seize several at once, yanking them from his body, throwing them to the ground.
They keep coming, broken bits scooting impossibly through the blood and mess, sharp needles of black hair splayed. I throw one against the wall, another toward the window. This stuns them, but only for a moment.
They come.
I close the door so they can’t escape. I swat them with the lamp, destroying my bedroom while trying to bash their bony faces in, imagining beating them into leathery pulps. They slip into shadows, escaping my attack. With each useless smash, each pointless crack, something inside me breaks, forever lost to pieces.
#
They’ve gathered again; they’re with me now where I sit on the floor beside the open drawer, cradling Marcus’s head. Their mouths are open at the raw base of his neck, sucking what’s left of his blood. I ignore them, ignore the agony of the moment until it feels like nothing: the numb pulse of any other day.
Swallowing down the voice in my head—I’ll have to get rid of a body again—I hold Marcus tighter before placing his head in the drawer, nested on a soft bed of his clothes. I should have told him about the heads before. It’s hard to talk about the past, though. Things were going so well. But this is better. A higher calling. Sometimes couples break up, but we won’t.
Together forever.
When the heads finish suckling, they shrivel down to their usual size. I set them in the drawer beside Marcus. He shrivels too, shrinking down to match. Bending over, I kiss his forehead, then kiss the others, tell them all goodnight.
For a moment, the faces scare me. They have beady eyes and sharp mouths like vultures waiting to bite. I remind myself: They’re here for me. Everything, truly, will be fine. I’ll take care of them the way I always have; they’ll do the same for me. Slowly pushing the drawer closed, I catch a smile, a blown kiss, a wink.
END
