Good For Gone

Cleaning up

I stayed up the whole night again, waiting for the sounds of my dad getting ready for work and leaving the next morning.

The second the door clicked shut I jumped up and ran to the kitchen. I grabbed trash bags and cleaning supplies and stuffed them into my backpack.

I didn't let myself think about it to much. Sure, there was nothing okay with what I was doing, but I was in too deep. Calling the police seemed a bit out of the question at this point.

The morning air was just a little nippy underneath the humidity as I made that familiar walk.

I felt lucky that the neighbors kept relatively predictable hours. It would be hard to explain my visits to the creepy building.

I got inside and dropped my bag on the recliner, and spun around, scared that the body literally would have gotten up and walked out. But it was exactly where I'd left it.

Actually, it took me a minute to realize, the smell was considerably less bad. The only thing I could pick up was the trash.

The body looked profoundly different than the first time I saw it. Even the pink scar marks had healed over in some places to reveal nice smooth skin, like nothing had ever happened at all.

I'd decided during the night that if I was going to make a habit of this, I wasn't going to be sitting in filth the whole time.

I pulled one of the trash bags out and opened it by flapping it around. There were a few sets of rubber gloves (trust me I was not touching anything in here without a healthy layer of protection).

I adorned them and got to work pulling the large chunks of emulsified garbage apart and shoving them into the bag. It wasn't long before the plastic was straining and I had to tie it off and open another.

I spent a good long while picking up the candy wrappers, old cigarette packs, and all the other stuff that had since become unidentifiable.

My phone, which was poking out of my pocket playing music, chimed with a text alert.

I paused, pulling off one glove before touching the cellphone. It was Callie, one of my best friends, asking what I was doing later that day.

I smiled, she had a full time summer internship working with fruit flies at a lab and almost never had enough free time to actually go out.

Even though I was incredibly tired I told her I would love to. I needed to spend some time with the living.

I laughed at the absurdity of it. What was I doing? This was wrong on so many levels, but I needed to see how this turned out.

I got most of the trash out of the first room and layered it heavily with disinfectant and air freshener.

Satisfied with my work I went to the kitchen, which had a back door. I had to kick it a few times to get it to get it unstuck. When it finally gave way I dropped the full bags just outside.

Getting to work on the second room I began filling up bags quickly. The laundry sink, stove and tub would take a pretty decent scrub to get clean, so I left them alone.

I worked my way around the body, not interested in touching it even if it looked perfectly healed.

There was quite a lot of trash piled under it though, so I crouched next to it and began slowly pulling things out like a game of really morbid game of Jenga.

Most of it slid out with relative ease, until I got to what was wedged under its upper body.

But when I yanked on that the whole body limply slid towards me and I stumbled back with a gasp.

Because the face that looked back at me was smiling.