The Guest: Short Story

My family and I have dinner together. There isn’t any reason for it. I never could figure out why Sunday is the big day, but it is.

One night, my father looks up at me from behind his forkful of potatoes and gravy and asks, “So, how are we going to figure this out?”

As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing for anyone to figure out. My mother looks at her watch.

“You're keeping that thing in your room, and neither your mother or I appreciate it.”

“There's nothing I can do about it, I told you, she won't leave.”

“Whether it leaves on its own or not, it has to go.”

His face is blown up with too many potatoes. He still has scars on his jaw line from the last time he tried to get rid of her, and stretched cheeks make them burn white on his darkened face.

He and my mother tried to forget the whole thing with a trip south. They said it worked.

My mother's face contorts, the smell from my room upstairs getting to her. When her mouth twists, she looks like a rotten apple. She hides her grimace behind a forkful of overcooked carrots.

I clear my place, listening to my father breathe through his nose.

I go upstairs and open my bedroom door. She says, “Another fight?”

Her voice cuts me, every time she speaks, even a single syllable.

“Always. You know that.”

Her long arms reach out to me, but I hesitate. Seeing me pause, she reaches further, elbows bending much further than mine would.

“It's okay. You know I'll always be here for you.”

As she pulls away, pieces of her skin stay stuck to mine, and I have to peel them off me without her seeing.

I sit down on the bed to be eye level with her. The bottom half of her, the half that was fish, was rotting down to a jelly-covered tailbone, and her pointed teeth were turning black without salt water. I try not to stare but it makes my eyes sting.

I'd asked her a hundred times before if she wanted to go back to the ocean, but she wouldn't. So now she stays in my room, rotting away, telling me she loves me and how much I need her.

Every time she speaks, her voice cuts me. I must be the only girl in the world to have someone like her.

The rot of her bottom half was becoming part of my bedroom carpet. She couldn't go anywhere now anyway, even if she wanted to, even if I wanted her to.