Things We Lost in the Fire

by Mariana Enriquez

Maybe I wasn’t the princess in her castle; maybe I was a madwoman locked in her tower.

And when they finished relating the movies, they told other stories. I’ll never forget those afternoons. When Adela talked, when she concentrated and her dark eyes burned, the house’s garden began to fill with shadows, and they ran, they waved to us mockingly.

The house felt bigger than it looked from the outside. And it was buzzing, as if live insects were swarming under the paint on the walls.

But I let it go, like I let every petty little thing pass while a white stone grew in my stomach that left very little room for air or food.

In the half darkness, it seemed like the meat was living its death right there, growing in the pantry like mold.

“People say Emanuel came out of the water.” “The night they threw him in?” “No. That’s why I’m here. He came out a couple of weeks ago. He’s only been back a little while.”

Marina felt a shiver. The girl had an addict’s dilated pupils, and in the half-light of the office, her eyes looked completely black, like a carrion insect’s.

The boy came up to her, and when he was beside her she could see how the rest of his defects had developed; the fingers had suckers and were thin like squid tails (or were they legs? She never knew what to call them).

“In his house, the dead man waits dreaming.”

forgetting people you only knew in words is odd; when they existed they were more intense than people in real life, and now they’re more distant than strangers.