This Thing Between Us

by Gus Moreno

Who cared, now that the worst possible thing I could ever imagine had already happened. What was worse than burying you, living in a world where I couldn’t see you, where I was locked in this basement existence? There was nothing I wanted to know anymore, except whether killing myself would bring me to you.

“You start to question what it was you did to bring all this on,” the cook said, “like maybe it’s all your fault.”

When you died I mourned you, but also the version of myself I was with you. So there were two deaths.

The first couple times people told me you had visited them and told them you found peace, I smiled and said something about how reassuring that was, but inside I was ripping the wallpaper off my skull.

Stunned by your death, unable to believe it, of course they’d construct some fantasy where you were alive and reassuring them, because even in death your obligation to other people wasn’t finished.

A part of me always dreamed of this, never having to work again, moving far away from everyone I knew. In the mountains no one was trying to gauge themselves against me. It was just snow, trees, the mountain sky, and the whipped disks of clouds above the peaks. The town below me, well within view. And full of strangers, which was what I wanted. If I was left alone then there was no one for me to hate.

I’m from Mexico. We’re all a little haunted.”