Phil had excellent hearing. He could, for example, hear Mrs. Polsgrove’s cat clawing at discarded tuna cans in her recycling bin two streets away. He heard Lisa’s feet tromping off mud and rocks. He recognized the jerky swish and scrape of a carryall being emptied of evidence. Phil heard many distinct sounds the night that Tripp died.
Phil’s sense of smell was just as wickedly sharp.
Lisa’s scent was sugary oranges, acetylsalicylic acid, and terra cotta paint. But not the night Tripp died. The night Tripp died, she smelled of the elements. Fire and loam. Rushing water. A funeral pyre in a graveyard built on a floodplain. A bonfire of bones beneath a broken dam. Water, grave, ash, stone, water, flood, flame—
Death.
Phil’s suspicions suffocated him, the self-inflicted agony of his traitorous inaction. He still slept under the same roof as the succubus, the taker. The friend-killer. He couldn’t run away.
(Could he run away?)
Sometimes—and Phil knew this was the craziest goddamn thing—he wanted to bite Lisa. He fantasized about sinking his teeth into her flesh and chewing, dreamed of cornucopia: her skin shredded to ruby-red ground beef, the rind of her flesh peeled off the fruit of her bones, lips torn and sliding off her mouth in slivers of slow-cooked chuck.
Grief did funny things to you.
_____________
The itch started the night after they found Tripp’s body. Not just an itch, though. Something was trying to eat him from under his skin. Bugs in his scalp. Lice, ticks? No—
Worse.
She did this.
He scratched his skull with bulldozer teeth. He raked his nails on his head hard enough to raise welts and leave oozing furrows. But that only made the itch worse. He resorted to more desperate measures. Phil gnawed his limbs. He bit and bit. He bit so hard that he broke skin and bled.
He tingled red from biting himself. And by the time the tingle spread over his whole body, he was exhausted. So, Phil sprawled across his bed, mouth open and drooling a clarified pink, dumbstruck by the revelation that the distance from happy home to den of misery was shorter than a walk to the mailbox.
Phil tucked his head under the blanket that Tripp bought him for Christmas. He breathed in memory from its fibers. It still smelled like camping in Cherry Springs State Park, where they’d gone stargazing; like the cool, clean grass there, where Tripp sang camp songs to only the two of them. That bittersweet memory soaked Phil’s sleep-starved bones until he felt like warm milk. He breathed slower, and his eyelids grew heavy, and he started to drowse.
Sleep came at him all at once, and soon he was dreaming. No, not just dreaming.
Remembering.
_____________
Mrs. Tina Jakubowski, God bless her, was her son’s mother. She stood by Phil.
“Tripp would’ve wanted him there and I want him there and I’m telling you: he’s coming.”
“It’s inappropriate. You can’t bring him. He’ll be a distraction. He’ll steal attention away from m—” Lisa nearly fumbled. “From Tripp.”
Tina preempted any further debate on the matter. She stood by the back door that let out onto the pinewood deck and down to the driveway, then turned around and yelled, “Phil, come here right now and I mean this minute!”
Phil practically ran to her, of course, because shit, Tina was Tripp’s mom. She grabbed him by the collar, her meaty arms quivering as she pulled him across the planks and down the stairs, jabbed her unpolished pointer finger toward her car, and said, “Get in.” He got in. The funeral was a disaster.
One of the pallbearers—Tripp’s old college buddy, Hooper—looked a little too wobbly to be marching Tripp’s casket to the burial plot. Booze vapors floated off Hooper like he was a distillery fermentation tank. Phil could smell him: toe up.
Phil whined and jerked his head toward Hooper, trying to warn Tina, but by the time Tina noticed Hooper, the drunk idiot was already unzipped. What followed was a chain reaction.
Hooper lost his footing and careened into Tripp’s Uncle Irv, who was jumpy from being on parole, and spun around too quickly to hold fast. The casket keeled overhead of Hooper and Uncle Irv (and their side’s third pallbearer), bending back all three men’s wrists and breaking their grip. The pallbearers on the opposite side suddenly had four-hundred pounds of falling corpse and casket prying away their handholds, too. Everyone held their breath as the glossed wooden lid hit the paved footpath. And broke open.
Tripp popped out of the box headfirst, like a Whac-A-Mole, his face waxy and pancaked with makeup. He was dressed in a mothballed brown suit that once belonged to his father, and didn’t look like Tripp so much as Willy Loman in a ventriloquist production of Death of a Salesman. Mourners gasped like pedestrians watching a Peterbilt run the red light right before it plows into a minivan full of kids.
Phil panicked, which was very bad, because of all the creatures who could control themselves under pressure, he was not one of them. He was barely conscious of dropping to his haunches, and only when he was nose-to-nose with the body did Phil register that he was, in fact, licking Tripp’s face.
He expected to get yanked by the neck, but the mourners were paralyzed in shock, limbs frozen and staring aghast. Phil lapped his tongue and chuffed between licks, tears blurring his vision as a low whine left his throat. He couldn’t stop.
Lick, lick, lick.
Tripp didn’t taste the way Phil thought he would taste—sea salt and tobacco leaves—he tasted like the eraser on a No. 2 pencil. Tripp didn’t taste like life. He didn’t even taste like death. Tripp tasted like office supplies.
Tina finally grabbed Phil by the scruff of his neck, and said, gently but firmly, “Come on, Phil. Get off him. It’s going to be okay. Now get off him, boy.”
_____________
Three nights later, and the moment was right. This was what he’d been waiting for.
Phil quietly left his bed, making sure to step on the rug to avoid the creaking floorboards. He walked through the kitchen and to the front of the house before stopping at the staircase. His stomach hurt. He panted; breath patterned like birthing mothers’ girding for the big push. He ignored his belly and walked upstairs, rounding the banister and cautiously approaching Lisa’s open bedroom door.
Phil cut off his chance to flip-flop: he entered her room.
Lisa was in her sleep mask and snoring, her noise-canceling earbuds blocking earthly sound, sensorily null and sleeping the untroubled sleep of a newborn baby.
Phil wondered if there were evil newborns, or just evil people who slept like newborns.
He wasn’t sure he could do this. No, he had to.
Phil snuck past the white four-post bed, past the white blanket chest at the foot of the bed, past the white TV armoire in the corner. He slinked through the half-closed bathroom door. His belly ached but there was no time for bellyaching. Then, a living fear suddenly electrified his flesh—would he be found out?
He looked back to make sure Lisa was asleep. She was. He picked his spot, felt the cold Carrara tile under his feet. And then, positioned in just the right place, he took a gigantic shit on the pristine marble floor.
The deed done, Phil pinched it off and fled for sanctuary. He sprinted downstairs, through the kitchen, through the TV room, then into his own room, launching himself into bed.
His heart thundered as he lay there, excited and afraid. The fear was good fear—standing up to a bully or rescuing a child from a fire. Phil knew himself to be a true and righteous instrument.
The whole world had changed, it felt like, and he was certain of nothing except that he was too excited to sleep. But certainty, it’s been said, is reserved for death and taxes, and so, naturally, when Phil closed his eyes five minutes later, it was for the night. It was then that the deep swell of slumber buried him under its waves.
_____________
It was a mountain cleaved through the middle, two smooth walls reaching from its cleft to touch the moon. The walls were god-sized vise jaws swallowing Phil in a mouth that was a chasm.
The sky was red but also black; stalactites of bloody soil drooped from a starless expanse toward earth. Ten-thousand leviathan tapeworms depended from the sky, pendulums of pruny flesh, their teeth crowns of thorns on upside-down hanging heads.
Phil raised his arms and saw Tripp’s hands. He looked down and saw Tripp’s belly and genitalia, knees and feet. Why was he naked? Why was he Tripp?
Out of the sky, a sousaphone belched and swelled, a meat-hungry monster in a school-age child’s nightmare. The tapeworms, all of them with mile-long-freight-train bodies as wide as football stadiums, crawled invisible currents above. These titans groped, feasted on kindred flesh; their mace-shaped heads penetrated each other’s bodies. They cannibalized each other until, unexpectedly, what looked like butchery revealed symbiosis. The worms’ bodies conjoined to create something new.
They formed a doghead. It had skyscraper teeth, a skull the size of an American city: this doghead could eat Mount Everest. Its Superdome eyes found Phil’s heart and turned his blood to a river of dread. Phil dropped to Tripp’s knees, lungs filled with hot creosote instead of air to breathe, his eyes gushing, in thrall to this terrible thing. A great beast. A great, god-like beast staring at him; an elephant examining an aphid.
The doghead spoke: “You are Phil of the House of Jakubowski?”
“I-I guess.” It was Tripp’s voice, but it was a child’s voice, too, inside his head.
“I am Cynocephalus.”
“I’m Phil,” he said. It was an apology, not information.
“Yes, I know.”
“Is this a dream?”
“You have defecated in vain,” Cynocephalus said, ignoring Phil’s question.
Phil blinked. The Tripp-mask was hot with tears. He felt his best friend’s fingers wipe his cheeks. “Oh.”
“Your enemy is like the sea, violent, able to swallow all but itself. What happens if one defecates in the sea?”
Phil shook his head slowly. “In the sea…?”
“Nothing. It is the sea.”
Phil nodded. But he wasn’t sure he understood.
I have seen your love for your friend Tripp. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man take another’s life for his friend.’”
Phil was still confused.
“Do you seek vengeance against she who slew Tripp?” Cynocephalus’s voice was latent with dangerous power, like hateful villagers drinking vodka in a storehouse of pitchforks and torches.
“Yes,” Phil said.
“Then heed my words,” the great beast said. “You will know the time when you see the rose and the open window.”
“The rose and the open window?”
“So let it be written. So let it be done.”
“Wait, wait, what’s the rose and the open window? Wait!”
Phil awoke in his bed. He didn’t sweat, but he drooled enough that the saliva could fill a soup thermos.
_____________
Lisa rummaged around under the kitchen sink, pulling out yellow latex gloves, OxiClean and Zep bottles, a garbage bag. She stole the roll off the paper towel holder, then walked upstairs clutching cleaning supplies in her arms.
Phil quietly followed. He walked into the master bedroom and across the ivory carpet until he could see inside the bathroom. Lisa cleaned the shit using a gigantic wad of paper towel—it looked like a wedding petticoat dipped in mud. She picked up the feces in clumps, and when she was done doing that, she scrubbed the tile. And she did it all without complaint.
Was Lisa the sea? Lisa was the sea.
Phil went downstairs and laid on the TV room couch—Lisa had wrapped it in grandma plastic that morning. His thoughts were clacking wooden balls tumbling around a bingo cage. What did it mean, the rose and the open window?
What did it mean?
_____________
An uneasy peace descended on the household. Lisa still made all his meals, though now she made him eat from a sterilized metal bowl. They even walked to the park together first thing in the morning, and again when Lisa came home at night. He wasn’t allowed to walk further than six feet away from her outside of the house.
Phil knew what this was. He’d caught wise, and now she was overcorrecting, playing the domestic, trying to throw him off her scent. He knew better. He knew what Lisa was: a dangerous human.
Maybe she’d smother him in his sleep or sneak up and strangle him while he took a shit, screaming, “This is for the bathroom floor!”
She could—oh my God, she could poison his food. Of course, that’s why she was making his meals, wasn’t it? That’s why she served his food in a steel bowl—because wouldn’t the poison eat through a dinner plate?
Maybe the poison was flooding his body right now, toxic chemicals stripping his intestines and perforating his bowels, turning him into Swiss cheese from the inside out.
What was she waiting for?
_____________
Weeks passed without incident and their life took on a steady rhythm. They had breakfast together each morning and dinner together each night, and they only ever ate in the kitchen and never in front of the TV. Not that it mattered where Lisa sat, since she ate more pills than food. She wore latex gloves when she drank wine every night. Phil ate his meals naked.
One night, as they sat together on the couch watching the nightly news, Lisa reached over and rubbed Phil’s head. He went stiff. He almost pulled away. And then—and then—
And then, after a few minutes, his shoulders relaxed.
And then that’s how it was. If the TV was ever on, her hand was rubbing his head. A new normal.
Lisa introduced him to her sister, Gwen. Gwen smelled like essential oils and marijuana; a smell that made Phil angry at plants. When Gwen slept over, Phil pissed in the potted Ficus in the guest room. It made Gwen’s odor no more or less offensive.
The next few months saw Phil and Lisa grow closer, time passing and changing how they felt about each other. Phil discovered that maybe he liked Lisa, that he maybe even missed her when she was at work.
Lisa might’ve read his mind. She started coming home and telling him, first thing through the door, “I missed you. I missed you, and work was hard,” saying it as maudlin as a soap actress. She let him kiss her on the cheek. She always washed her face after he did, but she waited until he couldn’t see her to do it. Even her tact seemed (in its own way) a form of affection.
What did it mean? What did it all mean?
The night brought its own revelations.
Phil was lying on the couch when Lisa walked in, hair damp from the shower. She wore her bathrobe untied at the front, open wide enough to see her nipples; he could see her flat stomach and the neatened triangle of pubic hair between her legs, too. She looked much thinner naked, almost sickly, in fact—a different person. Her only attire besides the bathrobe was a pair of latex gloves, one gloved hand choking the neck of a Chardonnay bottle as she drank straight from it. The bottle’s bottom went ass-up to feed her rambunctious guzzle. He stared at her through quiet so deep he could hear himself salivate. Lisa didn’t speak, just curled her hand, gesturing come hither. She went back upstairs without looking behind her to see if he was following. She must have known he would follow. He followed.
Phil’s mind played tricks on him. He found himself in the master bedroom without remembering climbing the stairs. Lisa pointed at the four-post king-size and said, “Bed.” He hopped straight up. The air was heavy with the synthetic-flowery smell of laundry detergent, its scent cooked in the linens. She’d bought all new white pillows, even brand-new white throw pillows.
“I’ll be right in,” she said, between swilling wine. She turned into the walk-in closet and entered without switching on the light.
Phil laid on his stomach, eyelids heavy, tacky. The sound of Lisa rustling around the closet mesmerized him, reeling him in toward sleep. Just as he was about to nod off, Lisa came out of the closet, no bathrobe on but still wearing latex gloves, her naked body the same pale white as the bed, the carpet, the furniture. She gulped her last and dropped the bottle on the floor. Chardonnay spilled in a puddle drank up by the white carpet. Or maybe she’d peed there. Phil couldn’t think straight.
The latex gloves came off. “Dirty tonight.”
She got in bed, crawling underneath the sheets. Lisa patted the spot next to her, and Phil moved up, but he stayed above the covers. Her arm curled around him, and her slender fingers found the hair on his belly. She rubbed in spirals.
It could’ve been five minutes, or it could’ve been an hour.
“Phil. Are you still awake?”
He was, but he said nothing.
She spoke so, so quietly. “When Tripp died, I wasn’t sure I wanted you in the house.” She kneaded, pressing deeper, the warmth of her touch blooming into his belly. “I thought you were his. You know, only his. I thought you’d betray me.” Her breath, hot on his neck.
“You’re loyal. I know that now. And you’re mine,” she whispered. “I don’t know if you love me, Phil. But I love you. And I know you know,” Lisa said and then breathed the last words, “what happened to Tripp had to happen.”
Somehow, Phil kept dead quiet, breathing as slow and steady as a coma patient on a respirator. Not even a single muscle twitch revealed his alarm.
What was this? What was happening? Oh God, how quickly he’d betrayed his friend…
“I’m going to open a window,” Lisa said. “It feels warm in here.”
Phil watched her float toward the window beside the white armoire. The moonlight silhouetted her naked body, revealing black curves traced in silver light.
Lisa lifted the window all the way, and wind rushed into a waiting vacuum. The air pressure flung the bedroom door all the way open into the hall, and the hallway lights poured bright yellow into the room, shining a spotlight on Lisa’s backside. Phil saw the yellow light disclose an inky scribble on Lisa’s buttocks. It was a tattoo of a rose.
Lisa turned away from the breeze blowing into the open window, and saw that Phil, teeth bared and growling, was no longer pretending to be asleep.
_____________
Dr. Roisman, the medical examiner, approached Detective “Q” Williams, who was drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette.
“Q.”
“Doc,” the detective said. “What’s the good word?”
“Accidental death, but you knew that. She gets drunk, slips—whoopsie-daisy, she goes out the window—and there it is: acute spinal cord injury and skull fracture. Both kill her, but really she dies getting brained on the garden rock wall.” Dr. Roisman took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I’ll never understand the human inclination to get drunk and stand next to open windows. You got an aspirin?”
Q shook his head. “Sorry, doc,” he said, his cigarette burning down to the filter. “That’s how Lieutenant Figueroa went, remember? A six-pack into the August heat, he decides it’s a good time to reshingle his roof.”
Dr. Roisman nodded. “That’s right. I forgot about that.”
“Just desserts, if you ask me,” Q said.
“Was Figueroa a prick?”
“Not him,” Q said, pointing the cigarette pinched between his fingertips toward Lisa’s body. “The broad.”
Dr. Roisman’s expression was like that of a dyslexic trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Q looked at Roisman in astonishment. “Oh, you don’t know about this? This is the woman whose fiancé was found in Wissahickon Valley Park, off the trailhead on Bells Mill.”
“Forbidden Drive, thereabouts?”
Q nodded. “Found his body burned up and stuffed under a bunch of boulders in the crick.”
“Oh,” Dr. Roisman said looking back at the corpse, then back to the detective. “Didn’t they—”
“Person of interest, not a suspect. Philly PD dropped the ball, from what I heard. Those fucking dolts couldn’t find pubes on a nutsack.”
“Vivid imagery,” Dr. Roisman said. Q shrugged. “What’s happening with the dog?” Roisman asked.
“Huh? Oh, the dog—Phil the dog, the dog Phil. Animal control’s coming. They’ll hold him at the pound, but not too long cause the vic from the crick—his mom’s adopting the pooch. Driving in from Easton as we speak. Whole lot of trouble for a mutt, if you ask me.”
“Maybe she’s the one who bought it. Sunken costs. Can’t imagine it was cheap, a purebred. And it probably has papers. Seen him by the window. Bernese Mountain Dogs are God’s animals. Loyal.”
Q scoffed. “Every mutt’s loyal.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Roisman said. “But some more than others.”
They didn’t know the half of it.
Credit: Alex Grass
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