I opened the door without thinking. Didn’t notice the snowflake dust along the bookshelf, your trinkets, the blue box of baby teeth sprinkled white like the winter landscape outside. Your favorite time of year.
It wasn’t until the guttural whir of the vacuum turned to a monstrous shriek that I snapped out of it. I dropped the vacuum, realizing what I had done.
It had been over a year since I set foot in your bedroom.
The chaotic clutter, jars of animal bones and walnut shells, an open book on your desk, bedsheet strewn to the floor like snake skin. I couldn’t disturb the last day you were here. I couldn’t rustle the flakes of you outlining every surface.
Shoving the vacuum into the hall, I crawled after it, gasping for air when it was safe enough to not breathe you in. Your cinnamon hair coated the brush roll on the vacuum’s bottom. I couldn’t remember the last time I had to cut it away. Such a precious thing, this part of you still here. Cutting it would be barbaric. Instead, I pulled the hairs one by one, watched the brush spin. It squeaked with each revolution, sounding vaguely like the leaky faucet from the children’s hospital bathroom. The sound I couldn’t sleep without after I came home, alone.
Squeak-drip. Squeak-drip. The pile of hair grew as winter’s early darkness arrived. Each revolution had me scraping my teeth on the inside of my bottom lip.
Squeak. Drip. It took too long, the hair too much. My lip raw, tasting metallic. The reddish hair a round lump, a fuzzy tennis ball.
Squ-eak. The day you cried and wailed, too weak to play on the team. The racket heavy like a mallet.
D-r-ip. I bit my lip so hard it bled. Blood pooled under my tongue. Wincing, I left for scissors, spattering blood in the bathroom sink on the way. Returning, my jaw dropped. Blood oozed in the corner of my lips.
The pile of hair was gone.
After rinsing the blood from my mouth, I stepped past the vacuum into your room to open the blinds and windows, half-hoping the breeze would blow the dust from your shelves for me.
This is good. This is how one moves on.
The breeze rustled something on the floor. A strange dust bunny shivering in the corner. Not grey and fluffy, but stringy. Reddish.
Yours.
I gasped. It rolled past me and out the door.
Every corner I turned, it was out of reach, scuttled and scurried behind furniture. Once, it disappeared for an hour, returned larger. I flinched at each sighting.
I managed to catch it in the hall, pinned between the credenza and the wall. Two tennis rackets in hand, I closed in on it like doors to a cage, slowly, heart fluttering, chest tingling.
It didn’t move. I tapped it with the racket. Nothing.
Letting out a puff of air, I closed my eyes a brief moment.
Had I imagined it? Was I going crazy?
When I opened them, it had escaped, crossed the hall. I dove after it, landing in front of the vacuum. It slipped through my fingers like wet noodles.
The vacuum’s brush roll had been picked clean.
At some point, I fell asleep waiting in the dark hallway for it to emerge. I woke gasping for breath, hair smothering my face, stuffing my nose. I tried to scream, but it filled my mouth. I swatted, batted, pulled at it, gagging as strands tickled my esophagus before I flung it across the room. I ran to my bedroom, stuffed a blanket under the door, waited against the bed, watching, shaking.
By dawn, I peeled myself off the floor, neck stiff, body aching. Morning light creeped in through the windows.
I removed the blanket, opened the door. I flinched at a strange sound coming from your room, high-pitched like Styrofoam rubbing together in short bursts. A squeak-like laugh that liquified my ears.
When I entered your room, something clattered to the floor, the small blue box now broken. Your baby teeth clustered together, gleaming, in and out of the light, that horrid sound coming, going. I flipped on the light. It cowered back, teeth clicking in their crooked arrangement.
Your hair. Your teeth.
Is it … you?
I crouched, clutched my knees to chest, re-opening the wound in my mouth with my teeth.
This can’t be. I must be crazy.
And then, the clatter of teeth, a squeezing pain at my foot. The ball of hair gnawed on my toe.
I screamed, shook my foot, but it clamped on. I yanked, it bit harder, grating, grinding, blood oozing. Stretching for the vacuum behind me, I grabbed it, shaking, whimpering, the clenching on my toe agonizing. Removing the hose, I flipped on the power and sucked up the ball of hair and teeth. My toe raw and bleeding, bit to the bone. I stood and limped around to suck up all the dust in your bedroom, clattering your trinkets to the floor.
It was done. Silent. My toe throbbed. Your room destroyed. Cinnamon hair forever gone.
I was alone.
What have I done? I gutted the vacuum with the scissors, and there you were, all the pieces of you, your hair, your teeth.
I cradled you, rinsed the dust away.
You nuzzle my neck at night now, growing exponentially since you eat. I feed you raw, bloody meat. I shoot squirrels with your bb gun, let you attack them like a rabid dog. It’s the only way to satiate you, my skin scarred with erratic bite marks from teeth that don’t line up. But it’s okay. It’s what I can do for you. Someday I won’t be be able to get up, to find you, to stop you from eating me whole. You’ll keep growing and growing. And what will you do without me? Without someone to feed you?
Content warning: Body horror, death or dying
