Bronson Gao

August 1 20XX

Deadra’s Sister’s House

DISREGARD IT ALL

In what way she reminded herself of her sister was to be seen. As I entered the driveway, my tires ground into a week-old newspaper, softened by the rain and solidified as something horrible. This place was a shit-hole. The grass went up to my knees in spots; cardboard boxes and beer cans decorated the patio; cigarette butts sit like seeds in the broken vegetation.

I tried to call earlier today, once in the morning, again around noon, and about half an hour ago. There was no response each time, just, “leave a message at the tone” in a passionless, hazy voice. I did each time, in fact. Obviously, I didn’t give a shit anymore after the third time. I was gonna see it no matter what way.

I enter an adrenalin response as I knock on the front door, knowing that entering this place could be—will be—a multitude of hazards. I wait for a few minutes, listening to large-sounding dogs taunt me from the inside, probably two or three of them.

Eventually, a man answers, his groggy, robust, yet alienating form shown through the storm door. “How can I help ya, stranger?”

“Hi, I’m here about an Angelica Acosta. I was a friend of her sister, Deadra, and wanted to ask about her,” I say. That last part was still rough. I didn’t know what I wanted to learn from her; I didn’t have any questions. Maybe I just expected her to pour calk into all my contextual fractures. Now I’m thinkin’ this place needs it more than I do.

He puts his thumb and forefinger over his brow, looks away. “Yeah, sure. Come in,” he says. He opens the screen. “Dogs don’t bite. Don’t mind ‘em.”

It isn’t really a problem. The downstairs has an open floor plan, and to the right are a couple dilapidated couches, pieces of foam poking up and out like hernias. A husky wrestles some kind of shepherd to the ground, twisting into an end table and smashing a lamp to shards.

“Motherfucker!” the man says. “Shit, man I gotta tend to this. She’s upstairs, room at the end of the hall on the right, can’t miss it.”

“Got it, thanks,” I say. This place is a carcinogen. It’s also very exciting, and for all its disaster, it seems important to look at, even when I know it isn’t. No, this is the end of America: Cops blaring on the TV; pets like pestilence demolishing; the smell of a dirty sink blurring into dog shelter must; particles of air coagulated into haze.

These must be the loudest steps I’ve ever taken. If my foot smashed through one of these wooden boards, I don’t know how much of the scenario would be hilarious, and how much would be desperate. That reminds me how I’ve found myself less moved by her thirty seconds of minimal significance, her Cannibal Holocaust playmate pic, my general implication in what feels like a thing I should’ve never stopped to look at. And that must mean I’m not there yet.

I feel like I’m walking to the execution chamber now. I resolve myself with this comparison, thinking it’d be easier not to come back from this at all. And I know, that what I can’t let myself know I fear is how affected I’ll be after this hour, leaving this place lobotomized or harrowed by domestic apocalypse. Maybe then I’ll have a reason to kill myself.

I knock on the door. “Is Angelica in here? I’m a friend of Deadra’s, and I’m wanting to speak to ya. I called you earlier,” I said.

“Come in…” I hear, faintly. Or maybe that’s just an illusion. I convince myself it doesn’t matter, and twist the handle.

The curtains are drawn, a faint sliver of TV sky washing chrome into the room. Incense is lit, but the smell of bodies, dogs, beer and food has cemented itself into the foundation. Many things have died here. From the clothes wasted on the floor and bed, I can’t see a living thing.

The first part I pick up on is the hair on the pillow: black, jagged and staticky like hers. “I’m sorry, did I interrupt anything? I can—”

“No, you’re fine,” she says, with the same matte intonation as her voicemail. “Close the door, if you could. You can sit anywhere”

“Sure,” I say. I sit in a distressed recliner, wiping it off, checking for wordless stains. “Thanks for having me over. I’m sure you’ve heard about her passing, and I was mainly curious just to see if you didn’t have any more insight into… what inspired what happened.”

“What do you wanna know about?” She rises from her back, twisting in my direction and resting on her elbow. Her upper half is bare, comforter held over her chest. She is a thin woman of darker complexion, gorgeous in this darkness when I can’t make out her eyes, or the smell of her body from anything else.

I think about the question for a stutter. “Well, one of the things she talked about a lot was her father. I never got to meet him, and know pretty much nothing about him, but was curious to know if you wouldn’t be willing to let me know, about him at all.”

Her body edges backwards in an exhale. “Her dad, our dad…” Another pause. “I mean, there’s not really, simpler terms than he… bedded with her.”

I knew that already. “She told me about that, not much, but enough. I guess what I was curious was, what was life like when you were growing up?”

“When I was growing up? I wasn’t living at home anymore when Deadra was born.” I then look at her, and realize how much older this woman is than me, or her. “Deadra’s my stepsister. Dad married her mom after he left mine.”

I wanna ask a question I know I shouldn’t, now that the subject’s come up. But I’ll hold on to that one for now. “Did you ever get to know Deadra’s mom?”

“Yeah, pretty well, in fact. I remember she was always sweet. Good with kids. Soft. Good at cooking...”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“People say she left. I know the truth, though,” she hisses. “She had a drug problem, mainly painkillers, I think. Either way, she probably overdosed, went down the wrong alley, got laced, whatever.”

“How’d you find out about that?”

“There are some things you don’t usually find in a medicine cabinet. She wasn’t sick, either.”

As my eyes adjusted, her face became more and more defined. Statuesque symmetry faded into the wear of time, eyelids torn into chasms. She is skinny, but not the right kind of skinny. The body is made rigid as a fishbone. The anomaly is made when it is cut from a context, and that goes for anything.

“How was it when you were growing up?” I ask. And now my life could be over, I know.

“He used to beat the shit out of me.” The words are just there. They float around like a confession to the bathroom mirror, something you rehearsed in your head habitually to make yourself believe in. But the thoughts aren’t enough to justify your existence. Nah, somebody oughta know how it is for real, how you are. “He never touched me there, if that’s what you wanna know.”

I didn’t wanna know. “Were you and her ever close?”

“No, not really.”

“I see.” The stalling begins. The dogs were barking downstairs the entire time, but now I can actually hear them. I can hear the humidifier breathe the fungus and the bed crumbs. I hear the years of torment that is Angelica Acosta’s locality. I am a tourist to torment.

“Is that all you came here for?” She patronizes me like some impetuous child, pulling her out of probably the only thing of importance, fucking getting away. And that must’ve been your reminder, Deadra. There was nothing left but to get out like everyone else.

“I don’t know.”

“You can stay as long as you like,” she says. And I just sit here, dripping into the abyss.