Butter
It started with the butter. She left it out, on the counter— overnight! It was such a mess when I saw it in the morning! Runny slop of pale snot on the kitchen counter. It ran over the edge and dribbled down to the floor, like goopy saliva from a dog’s mouth. I wanted to bake brownies with that butter. Have pancakes with that butter. Toast with butter. All that butter, wasted. I wanted to smack her, I really did. I wanted to grab her by the neck, force her face on the kitchen counter and ask her why she left out a whole thing of perfectly good butter when the fridge was right there.
I sent her a text instead.
Buy more butter please. Thanks.
Then there was the hair. Clumps of brown and black and wiry bleached bits just all over everything. She hadn’t swept the apartment in weeks, and it was disgusting—hair on the floor, on the shelves, in my mouth my hands my socks. I brought a date home one night, he thought I had some crazy cat or something. He stayed for fifteen minutes; I plucked hair off of his clothes while we made out. Then he asked for my lint roller and left, saying he was allergic to cats anyway so this would never work. I wanted to rip her hair from her fucking head. Pull until they came away from the scalp. She’d yell in pain and I’d tell her I was only trying to help, was trying to get rid of the hair for good.
Would you mind sweeping please? Thanks.
Then the dishes started to grow. I stopped using the kitchen because there would always be a filthy pile of plates and bowls and knives and spoons and cup in the sink. I ignored it for as long as I could. I made sure not to touch it or disturb it and especially not to clean it. But one day they forgot to give me a fork with my takeout meal so I went to the kitchen to get one and that’s when I saw the growth. I saw mold so thick and dense it had swallowed the pile completely and was taking over the sink. Well, I mean—I’m not cleaning up after anyone else, no fucking way. So I just—I put my gloves on and I gathered it. I gathered her plates and bowls and knives and spoons and cup, dumped them into a trash bag, and threw them out. I wasn’t going to have her crazy fungal growth in the house and risk like, food poisoning or something. I just chucked it and it was basically my way of saying “Get it together, bitch.”
Please do your dishes next time. Thanks.
Flies. Fucking flies everywhere. I’d swat at them and they’d just keep going at it, fly on top of fly, unbothered. They’d been buzzing around her door for a while and I figured it must be gross as hell in there, but then they like tripled overnight and began to take over the whole apartment. The entire flat, infested. I had these fruits, a peach and a plum, that I was going to have for lunch. I left them, on the table, and I went to use the restroom for like one second, and when I came out, the fruits were chewed through, surrounded by flies, juice dripping on the table, flies bathing in that juice, copulating in the juice. I wanted to take the peach and the plum and lug them at her and maybe they’d get stuck to her back and rot there and maggots would form right there on her body and she would reek of ruined fruit.
We need aerosol. Please?
The smell started to get worse too. Her room had always smelled awful, like piss in cans and diseased farts, but for the most part that smell was limited to her room. And like, honestly, you can roll around in pig shit in your room, I don’t give a fuck. As long as I don’t have to deal with it! But then the smell started to stink up the whole place. I lit candles. I sprayed all the fucking sprays. Nothing dissolved the stench of rotting that oozed from her room. I wondered how she was staying in there, or if maybe she was directing all of the odour away from her somehow, so that I ended up dealing with it. I got invited to a party, a fancy art gallery. I wanted to go to this party, sleep with whichever dude had the longest hair and just spend the night in an apartment that smelled better than mine. I bought a dress, a real nice one, and I hung it up because I didn’t want it to crease and then when it was time, I wore it. I did my hair. My make-up. My pits my vag my legs. I wore the dress and I left my apartment looking totally doable, smelling like vomit. Like faecal matter. Like eggs left in the sun. My dress had soaked up the stench. I got tossed out of the cab on the way there. I never made it. I wanted to scream into her mouth. I wanted to shovel waste into her. Watch her chew. Vomit. Make her eat her own vomit. Watch her choke on vomit.
Open the windows in your bedroom, maybe?
I didn’t really care that she wasn’t answering my texts. I think anything she wrote would have just pissed me off more, but then she started ignoring all texts and before you know it I was getting calls from her mother and brother and Jared who I’d met once before, looking for milk in the fridge late one night. I wanted to yell at them, like stop asking me why she’s not answering her phone, ask her. Drag your asses to her room and look at the filth I have to put up with and maybe knock some sense into her but don’t push me about it. I blocked their numbers but Jared sent me five dick pics from another number, which I also blocked.
Answer your fucking phone goddammit.
I’ll admit, I only sent that text after I knew she was dead. I can’t deal with confrontation; it gets too loud and people tend to spit when they’re arguing. It’s why I never went into her room in the first place. I’d finally arranged for a cleaning service to stop by the apartment, I couldn’t deal with it anymore. Two men in blue jumpsuits arrived, smelling cleanly of chemicals. They inspected the rooms, my bedroom was off limits of course, but then they knocked on her door and knocked again and finally kicked the door down and immediately pulled their collars up to their noses.
It has been a rush of police interviews and medical exams since then, but when they let me out—and they will, they can’t keep me here forever—I know that I will have to find a new roommate.
I could unblock Jared.
Or I could move in with you.