A stream of crimson flowed from your head like a broken tap. I looked down at my hands, where particles of your skin had collected beneath my nails. My palms were shaking. I held them open to the sky like a prayer—except it wasn’t a prayer because I did not fear God. ⎯ I never anticipated just how easy it would be to kill a person, and someone you love at that. It’s strange—isn’t it—that someone can be so alive one moment and vanish the next, as if they never even happened? I could handle the stillness, the rigor mortis, even that cold, vacant expression. But the thought of Gwen leaving on her own volition was like a knife to my chest. As for the matter of noise, I needed it perpetually. Whether it was the chatter of talk radio, a running faucet or heavy metal crackling through blown-out headphones, every waking, wordless moment I smothered with sound. It was in the unsung details—a crescent stain from her last cup of tea, the spray-tan tinged towels, wrinkled pajamas on the hallway floor and above all, that cadaverous silence. These were the things that reminded me she was truly gone. I made temporary arrangements at a cheap motel nearby so I wouldn’t have to think about her so much. One week into the investigation, I no longer recognized myself. The hollows of my face were dark and skeletal, like a postmortem bruise and I couldn’t sleep. The interrogations took place in a dusky concrete chamber. The impermanence of the blank walls, the folding chairs, and the Detective’s starched khaki uniform suggested we were not two ordinary people, but actors in some nightmarish play. At first he laid on the charm, pretending we were long-lost fraternity brothers or something to that effect. But then, his implications started and my composure began to chip away. I noticed a stitch of tension in the small muscles of his lower lids, which made that two-facedness clear. While half of him was in the room with me, the other was off in the clouds, probably fantasizing about the things I might be capable of. With each accusation, the temperature swelled, like someone had switched on an invisible furnace. When the Detective asked if I could hand over my ID for the clerk's office, I agreed and shakily thumbed through my wallet for it. At that moment, a photo of Gwen fluttered out, landing squarely on the steel table between us. I had captured the image—the last one taken of her alive—on an old Polaroid Onestep in the trailer. It shows her standing over the stove, flipping a pancake that’s perfectly golden and round like the sun. Her smile is sunny too, which is how I prefer to remember her: rosy-cheeked, vibrant, innervated. As soon as I touched the crumpled polaroid, an electrified current surged through my body and to the room around me. The tremor was so intense that I held onto the sides of my chair to stay upright. Among the commotion, the picture slipped out of my palm and onto the floor, which is when everything returned to its natural stillness. My eyes met with the Detective’s, and I was surprised to find that his jaw had gone slack. His irises morphed and rotated like pinwheels. With a flat, lifeless tone he told me I was free to go. I glanced at the clock behind him. It was three on the dot, only I was certain that the last time I checked, it had been a quarter to four. This forty-five minute discrepancy, in which time seemed to move backwards, had rewritten the course of the interview so I was freed of any suspicion. Later, I tested other timeworn objects in connection to Gwen—a ceramic figurine of an angel praying, a silver pendant in the shape of a halved heart—and both proved similar effects. It seemed that some remnants of her lifeforce were contained within them and were likely the reason for the Detective’s forgetting. The idea that I could use these powers to destroy any remaining links between myself and my accused crimes was invigorating. As much as I tried, I couldn’t escape my own painful recollections. Every so often, I was pulled back to a certain balmy night under the stars. ⎯ The air vibrated with the cicadas’ summer song. We were drinking Miller Lights on the patio—or maybe I was drinking Miller Lights while you just watched. The Neighbor stopped by and you went over to see him. Etched into the backs of your thighs were the red impressions of the plastic lawn chair. What really got to me was the way you spun an earring between two fingers, or maybe how you kept glancing over, trying to discern whether or not I could hear you. Whatever you did that night, it sent me into a rage. ⎯ Despite my wistful affect, it seemed I was in the clear as far as the investigation was concerned. I hadn’t heard a thing about Gwen from anyone—not her friends or her family. Even the phony Detective went radio-silent. Her name wasn’t popping up on the news anymore and online searches of her name yielded no results. It appeared that she had fallen off the face of the earth entirely. But there was one unexpected complication, that being her spirit starting to materialize in my environment. At first, I wrote it off as standard paranoia, but then, there she was, stepping off the bus outside our old high school. She was shorter than when I saw her last and her hair was much longer. But I would recognize that beloved Brittany Spears backpack anywhere. She had it slung loosely over one shoulder and her blonde curls were sandwiched between furry pink ear muffs. I watched her disappear down the sidewalk with a sprightly bounce to her step, the spitting image of Gwen when we first met. As the seasons changed, I would catch glimpses of her more often; peering at me through shop windows, in the audience of an old Price is Right rerun. I even saw her in the garish floral wallpaper at the dentist’s office. My life had metamorphosed into some fucked-up version of Where’s Waldo, but instead of Waldo being the common denominator, it was my ghostly dead girlfriend. Everywhere I went, I was terrified she would be there, waiting. One Friday afternoon, I left work early on account of a migraine that no amount of tylenol could touch. When I got back to my room, I stumbled into the shower and let the water flow over me as cold as it would go. As I was shaving in the reflection of a little mirror suctioned to the wall, I accidentally struck it with my elbow. It came crashing down, the reverberation stifling like a firecracker or gunshot. I looked down to find the tiles below scattered with glittering fragments. I bent carefully to gather the pieces in one hand. I happened to glance into the biggest shard and gasped. In the tiny reflection of it was Gwen’s face, peering back at me. The resemblance was uncanny—same cerulean orbs for eyes, a lichenous scar branching from the left brow, and that downy, moonwashed skin. I dropped the glass sliver and made a naked dash from the room. For the rest of the day, I refused to go near it. A few hours later, I found myself poring over a newspaper at a diner nearby. The header read, “Where Are You, Gwen? Case of Missing Nevada Woman Reopened.” I scanned over the article several times, shaking my head in disbelief. It mentioned that the FBI was recently recruited in the search for Gwen’s body, and they were looking into multiple leads. I had been so careful to lock each door into the investigation, then throw away the keys, but there it was again in the form of a newspaper headline in wrathful bold letters. Apparently, a person’s memories could not stay buried for long. The Waitress appeared and I nearly jumped out of my seat. In the fifteen minutes it took for her to prepare my food, her appearance had completely changed. Her smile was garishly overdrawn with red lipstick, and her parted lips parted revealed a mouthfull of bestial white teeth—at least fifty crowded into each row. Her eyes were unblinking and bulged from their sockets. “Any pie today?” she said. Her voice was tinny and upbeat. I declined and unwrapped my bundle of silverware, only to discover that each item was crusted with brown remains. She brought over the rest of the dishes. I observed a grayish tint to the scrambled eggs and spots of mold speckling each pancake. Each plate was cold to the touch. Strangest of all was when she poured my coffee and the liquid flowed backwards, from mug to pitcher as if in reverse. “Any pie today? Any pie today? Any pie today?” she chirped. I declined for a second time and she hobbled back towards the kitchen. By that point, I was so disconcerted that I put a twenty on the table and left. But the peculiarities didn’t end there. As soon as I opened the door, I saw that the blazing August heat had disappeared. I was met with a freezing gust of wind and a layer of crystalline snow at my feet. The sheer magnitude of white powder was blinding and extended as far as the eye could see. I ran the whole distance back to the motel, my exposed ankles frostbitten by the time I arrived. My body was exhausted and shivering. I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. ⎯ Tears rolled down your petal-soft cheeks. Your lips were swollen and chasmically split down the middle. Part of me wanted to go back—back to a time when you were perfect, but another, unrecognizable me wanted to make you tremble. I shook you. I begged you to cough up whatever happened between you and The Neighbor. I gave you one chance, Gwen—one last chance to tell me everything. ⎯ When I woke up, the world outside my window was a dark and lifeless void. I tried to stand, but found myself much too feverish and lacking my usual momentum. When I peeled back the damp, twisted bedsheets, I was bewildered to find that both of my legs were missing. Each one had been replaced by a smooth, round nub that extended a few inches past the hipbones before tapering off unnaturally. I felt no pain-in fact I was unexpectedly cool about everything, as if the conventions of what a body should be were now totally irrelevant. More than anything, I needed something to drink, so I lowered myself from the bed and slithered out the door, using my forearms to inch closer to the elevator. Once again, the weather had changed, this time from a blistering snowstorm to something like a rainy spring evening. The whole front of my shirt and trailing legs of my sweatpants were quickly soaked with brackish rainwater. With the remainder of my pocket change, I bought two cans of Coke from the vending machine downstairs, then drank them both in succession. Satisfied, I started back towards my room, this time by army-crawling up the stairs. When I swiped my keycard through the reader, though, I was met with the blinking red indicator. I cursed and wiggled the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. All of a sudden, the door was opened by someone on the other side. It was an elderly man who, besides a pair of boxers and halo of white fuzz around his head, was utterly naked. He appeared less like a grown man and more like a paunchy, oversized toddler. “Well, who the fuck are you?” he bellowed, spit flying on every consonant. He peered down at me—at the bizarre, dismembered creature that had turned up on the landing. From the room behind him came the sound of a woman arguing on the phone. “This is my room. See? 2-2-2!” I held up a small paper envelope where the card was kept. The concierge had scribbled my room number on it in black sharpie. “Dumbass. That’s 1-1-1,” he said. He slammed the door in my face. I scratched my head, then looked at the keycard and frowned. He was right. The numbers clearly read ‘1-1-1.’ How could that be? How could I have confused my room for being on the second floor, and not the first? ⎯ I picked up the hammer from the coffee table and swung, sending a clean strike into your occipital region. You hit the floor, and thus began the silence. I had never seen you so still; never heard you so quiet—a crumpled ragdoll splayed out on the rug. ⎯ The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, and I could sense that another rift in the world’s natural order had been set in motion. My thoughts splintered, and terrifying flashes seized my vision. I saw Gwen’s face, the color draining from it at ten-times speed. I saw the Waitress’s Cheshire grin and men in plastic suits shoveling dirt under the light of a floodlamp. Then pieces of me began to fall away—a shorn left ear, a fleshy lung and two detached radial bones. My mind became a whiplash of paper backdrops, and I saw myself in a hellish inferno, a labyrinth with endless passageways and thrashing in the depths of an underwater cave. I flipped through each tableaux, hoping that one of them might be my reality, but nothing was familiar. Just as I was about to give up, I felt the snag of an ephemeral tripwire, tethered between my soul and the physical realm. Although inexplicably paralyzed on the carpet of my motel room, I became rooted in a holy moment of coherence. There was a faint pst-pst coming from the polaroid of Gwen. It lay beside me, just out of reach. I used the last of my strength to maneuver it between two fingers. Her smile had turned sinister, the corners of her mouth devilishly upturned. The whites of her eyes were webbed with angry red vessels. For the first time in months, I heard her voice ring out. She spoke from beyond the silver halide of the polaroid, its gauzy surface the only separation between us. “You blamed me for everything,” she said. Her tone was different too; deeper and abrasive. “But it was you. It was always you. This is your fault. Look how pathetic you are.” Without warning, she lunged, breaking through the photo’s translucent membrane. Her head and shoulders emerged, followed by a frenzy of jumbled limbs. The frame warped as she maneuvered her body through, then she flopped onto the floor like a fish out of water. She clung onto the collar of my tee-shirt and her voice closed in from above. “Now, it’s me who gets to decide.” With three mighty thrusts, I was catapulted through the margins of the photo. I landed upright, and after gaining my bearings, nauseatingly panned my gaze over the room. I had crash-landed into the kitchen of our old trailer. In my periphery, constellations of cockroaches clung to the walls. The counters were piled with empty beer cans and takeout boxes. The room itself was electrified—breathing and pulsating with a rhythm of its own. Now, it was me holding the cast iron instead of Gwen, and my body refused to set it down. Its handle glowed like molten lava, searing painfully through the skin of my palm. Floating a few paces away was a disembodied picture frame. It was in the very spot I had stood with the camera when I first snapped that photo of Gwen. I could see her clearly through its four corners. We had switched places, and now she was sitting on the floor of the motel room rifling hungrily through my wallet. She pulled out a thick wad of cash and stuffed it into her pants pocket. Then, she walked away, each click-clack of her shoes piercing an everlasting hole in my heart. It was something worse than death—as a matter of fact, it was my worst fear realized. She left the door just ajar; a sliver of the world where I ceased to belong. She did not look back. I’m sorry, Gwen. Everything they say I did to you is true.