Until Her Darkness Goes Excerpt

     I pulled into the hospital parking lot. The doors of the morgue were gray and windowless. Fluorescent bulbs were blinking in and out, making my eyes want to sink behind my cheekbones. They felt sorry for me and let me in. To see him. To see what I had done to him. I deserved this. They said it was mandatory, the autopsy. Unnatural death. A man in a paper gown pulled him out of the freezer and unzipped the body bag; opened the torn envelope that was my last legacy. They had fixed his neck. Twisted it back into place. In my skull I heard the crick crack. Please God, let it be me. He was white and purple, blotched, broken, naked. Small, so small. Just a tiny fragment taken of the stainless steel table. The huge Y of staples across his sternum chased his ribcage. His tiny fingers were curled slightly, dirt under his nails. His dry, shrunken eyes were open just to slits. I absorbed everything all at once. I ate it all as it ate me. Like acid. I touched him. I pushed my hands towards him, wishing he could feel it. Hoping I wouldn't, but I did. He was still. No nuzzle against my hand. No sleepy sigh. No Rory. Cold, stiff, gone. Oh, God.

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     Somehow I had to breathe. Somehow I had to blink. At home, I stayed downstairs. I couldn't climb the stairs. I hadn't touched anything and screamed at Tameron when he tried. I couldn't move past the first floor. I couldn't go through the hall. See the unlocked baby gate. The goddamn baby gate. The cave in the back of his skull and the sick tilt of his neck. The blood on the cherry wood floor. All that was left of him were those smears. Soon, it would be the flowers, the satin inside the coffin. My mother was arranging it. Burial plot. Memorial service. The photograph that was just right to blow up and display. Things that shouldn't be but were. She had called me five times in two hours. This was the sixth call. She wasted no time because it had stopped. Dead. Frozen like December. December third. Today was the sixth. In two more days, he would go to the ground, folded up in a wooden box. Wrapped in filth forever.