Rebound Girl
By Jeanine Skowronski
Say you’ve been seeing this dead girl ever since your ex left. Say she (the dead girl, not your ex) knocked on your door one night; said she was famished. Say you were — you are, too, so you let her in. Say she keeps coming over, but only after midnight. Slides into your bed, slips a hand onto your chest, licks her lips, says please. Say no, wrap your fingers around her fingers, move your hand and her hand to the bone protruding from her hip. Say no. Say morning, dead girl! except you don’t, because, every night, before morning, the dead girl leaves. Say in the mornings you walk over to the grocers on Sixth and Pine, roam aisle to aisle to aisle, leave without buying a thing, even though your cupboards are bare, your fridge is empty, your drawers gutted; your apartment a coffin, fit for the dead girl, who has two faces, half-smooth, half-rotted, a waxing crescent moon.
Say, one night, this dead girl confesses: says she wants your heart, because she likes its color, a lovely purple, an overripe plum, split down the middle, its edges splayed, like someone tried real hard to rip it in two. Say someone did, cross your arms over your chest, gnarl your fingers like your heart’s new roots. Say you love it — your heart, that is; not the dead girl — you hate it, but you love it, because it’s special; each fleshy thread a certain length, an exact width, each rip a different pattern, each beat a different sound. Say no. Say no. Say leave, dead girl! — except you don’t, because you want someone, anyone, to stay. Say good night. Say good morning, but to your mother, who throws back the drapes, opens all your windows. Tells you to put on a blue shirt. To brush your cowlicks. To buy some toothpaste, the kind that squirts out like a star, the one you liked as a kid; says a bunch of other gobbledygook: Every fish happens for a reason. Time heals the sea. If at first you don’t kiss a frog, try, try again. Say you grunt, so your mother groans: You shouldn’t be alone.
Say you’re not, say you’ve been seeing a dead girl — except you won’t, because you don’t want your mother to invite her (or you) over for dinner. Say, this dead girl, though, say she’s alright, that she tastes like salt and vinegar, but her tongue is slick and warm. Say she has two eyes, one is black, but the other is blue, frost-burnt, the shimmer at the center of a gas-lit flame. Say, sometimes, without meaning to, without thinking to, you get lost in that one blue eye. Return to yourself only when you feel her fingernails, red and razored, pressing into your skin. Say you’re scared, except you aren’t, because the dead girl says there’s no need be: She can’t just take hearts; she can only receive them. Say good to know.
Say you hate this heart, you love it, but you hate it, because it’s heavy, an inverted anchor, a hanging tree. Then say never mind, you don’t want to talk about your heart anymore, so the dead girl doesn’t, starts saying other stuff instead: My name is Mel. Tell me your name. Tell me about your work. Tell me what you’re thinking. Let’s order pizza. Let’s share our damage. Let’s tear open two veins and watch each other bleed. Say I don’t know, I don’t know, nothing. Maybe. Maybe next time. Maybe some time. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow, maybe. Say, tomorrow, finally, you run into your ex at the grocers on Sixth and Pine. Say she’s checking the organic milk cartons’ expiration dates. Say you ram your cart into her cart, so she says hello, says hi, how are you? Says, unprompted, that she’s doing fine, doing well, doing great even.
Say you look in her cart, spot two sirloin steaks, four fat potatoes, a bottle of Malbec, which she drinks; a six-pack of Hoegaarden, which she doesn’t. Say you’re doing great, too. Good, fine, even. Say you’re seeing someone — not with, just seeing. Say maybe it’ll turn into something. Maybe. Say see you later. Say good-bye. Say once you do, the roots of your split heart wind their way up your shoulders and wrap around your throat. Say you choke, you wheeze, you heave yourself home. Say you get in bed, you stay in bed, you stay in bed, until you’re kissing the dead girl. And say while you’re kissing, you open an eye, your right eye, the one that faces that good side of her face, her one blue eye, that frost-burnt flicker of a flame. Say you hate your heart, you hate it because it’s changed you, it outweighs you, each thread a coil, each edge a cut, each sound a stone. Say the dead girl presses her nails, razored and red, into your chest, offers to have your heart, to hold it, to heal it, to bear it. Say yes. Say take it, dead girl. Say please.
THE END
Author Bio: Jeanine Skowronski is a writer based in N.J. Her work has appeared in Tiny Molecules, (mac)ro(mic), Complete Sentence, Crow & Cross Keys, Lunate Fiction, and Fewer than 500. She placed 2nd in Reflex Fiction’s 2021 Winter Flash Fiction competition.