First, I must find you, am I right? Hide and Seek is still in play.

We must finish the game.

Yes, of course, of course. I know precisely where you are. It doesn’t take away from the fun.

You are in the closet that is not a closet.

You are in the closet that is a mouth.

“I’m coming!” I bellow, not knowing if the words are decipherable. The muscles of this body are stiffening, the organs shriveling; the skin flakes to fine powder, as if the boy had walked through a sandstorm to reach this hallway, this deep throat of mine.

Still, you wait. Huddled in the dark at the end of this tunnel crafted of rotting wood, stripped, sagging floorboards, cracked plaster walls. I’m old, you see. Old and tired. But visitors! They are always welcome, always helpful, yes. Fresh meat hardens my beams, fresh blood fills the swelling veins behind my facade. New souls energize my spirit.

Not to mention, all those delicious feelings.

Lust, fear, anger, regret, despair.

All of it goes into the stew, and I swallow it down, yes, I do! I swallow it down in great big gulps!

And so, as I limp toward you, I am grateful for the sustenance your friends have brought.

But you, my dearest. You are special.

I have something unique in mind for you, turtledove. And I am coming… coming as well as I’m able.

But I am also changing. And that, I think, is just fine. Yes, I think you’ll love me just as I am, won’t you? Even now, I feel the thick roots sprouting from the gums where teeth once snugly sat. As the hard kernels come free, I spit them out like spent candies. The roots fill the gaps quickly, long and sharp, puncturing the fleshy lips and cheeks. I laugh, somewhat hysterically, as the face I wear is cut to ribbons.

The sounds I make must be awful for you. Yes, I sense your confusion. Your growing fear.

But I’m close now.

I’m just outside the door.

“Knock knock,” I say, but there is so little of the mouth left I doubt you hear anything but snapping wood, the last, dying gurgles from the torn flesh of young Brad’s throat.

You push open the door and look into my eyes.

Silently, you study the long splinters of my teeth, the cracked plaster of my skin, the empty windows of my eyes. To your everlasting credit, you don’t scream. When I reach for you, your eyelids flutter like butterfly wings, and you simply droop, like a plucked flower, into my outstretched arms.

Gently, I push you back, back into the closet that is not a closet. The door closes behind me and I rock you in my stiffening arms; I embrace you, pull you in close.

Finally, the last of the flesh falls away, and now there is only me as I truly am. Empty rooms and a damp, stony heart. Hard knobs for elbows, coarse brick in the place of bones, brittle shingles smeared like wind-blown grass across my skull. Inside my mouth is a rotted, sun-bleached plank of a tongue surrounded by twisted wooden daggers instead of teeth. My eyes are nothing more than weathered panes of glass, sided with worn shutters.

Look upon me in my true form, my love. Look at my deranged body that is both a prison and a castle. A fortress, and a tomb.

I kiss you, in my own way, and pull the light from you slowly. When it comes, the windows of my eyes burn with it, pulse with it… SHINE with it! Look at you! So beautiful; basking in the warm yellow of my feverish consumption.

I push you back even further, past the walls which slide away, past the frailties of my body, into the shadows. Together, as one, we fall through the dark, floating forever downward; two twisted leaves plucked by the wind from a dead autumn tree.

I pull you tight as we spin and dance. I pierce every inch of you, and each gasp of your pain thrills me.

And now, in this sacred space, as we continue to tumble and fall through the blessed dark, I bring my mouth to your ear, and I tell you a story.

It’s the story of a haunted house, and it’s the last one you’re ever going to hear.

MURDER BY PROXY

THE ROOM IS SCARLET. A valentine from hell.

As a twenty-year veteran in the most crime-ridden area of the city, I’ve seen things no man or woman should ever lay eyes on. But even I had to wince at the carnage inside apartment 327.

Flesh, as if made of paper, torn to pieces, strewn in clumps and chunks. Strips of skin like giant band-aids. Limbs separated from the torso, tossed willy-nilly around the room. Blood. Buckets of it. Spattering the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Saturating the bed, as if the mattress had been dunked in the world’s biggest can of red paint.

The room smelled like a penny had thrown up on a penny.

I clock the red light blinking in the corner.

Yeah, no shit ALERT. Thanks for the hot tip.

“What’s the name of this A.I.?” I ask the blue suit, who’s doing his best to keep what’s left of his morning bagel inside his guts where it belongs.

“Uh….” He scrolls through notes on his tablet. “That’s a Maytime model. Beximo.”

Overhearing the voice pattern, the blinking red light turns green, goes steady.

Waiting.

I take another step—a small one—into the room. I look down, check my feet aren’t stepping in… well, anything.

“Beximo, this is Los Angeles Police Detective Dixon Merriweather, fourteenth precinct, badge number nine-eight-one-tango-tango-four.” I look at it so it can register my face. I’ve never talked to this particular model so neither my voice nor my ugly mug are in its files. Still, now that we’ve met, I doubt we’ll be besties.

The green light pulses, then steadies once more. The voice, when it comes, is sultry but clear, like a dame at the bar who’s been drinking soda waters with lime all night, playing it for gin.

“Good morning, Detective Merriweather. How can I help?”

“How many cameras in this room?”

Blink-blink-steady.

“There is one security camera in this room, detective.”