Fiction: I'll See You On the Other Side

By Alex Rost

I’d been in the red house across the street a few weeks before it collapsed, hammered drunk after the bar, snorting shitty coke off the glossy covers of entertainment magazines and listening to a teenaged girl named Grace tell me about her family up north while her thirty odd year old boyfriend lay on the moldy rug, rapping acapella. His name was Jay or John or some shit.

“Yeah, we tried to put it in rice, you know?” said Grace. “How they say rice sucks the water out? But that didn’t do shit. The phone was fucked, just fucked. And she needed a new one so my dad—”

“Wait, who’s this?” I said, popping the tab off a room temperature beer and slurping the foam.

From the floor, Jay rapped – “I grabbed a petition and wrote it up, basically said I’m fed up. But I forgot to sign it and dotted it wrong.”

“Teri,” said Grace. She used a bank card with a photo of sunflowers to break up lines, taking her time to make them perfectly even, looking back and forth between me and the coke while she told her story. “My sister-in-law. My dad just got a new phone and was like, ‘Take my old phone.’ Said it worked fine, tells her where to find it. She goes in the house and like ten minutes later she pokes her head out and calls for my brother, says she needs help with something, then after a few minutes he calls me in.”

She bent forward, her blonde hair brushing the coffee table, and inhaled powder through a rolled up dollar bill.

I felt something rub against my leg, looked down at a fluffy all white cat using my leg to pet itself. I put my beer on the table and reached to give the cat a proper pet, but when my fingers got near enough, the cat grabbed my hand, dug its claws in and bit me.

“Fuck,” I said and swatted at the cat. It took a few steps and sat, licked its paw all nonchalant then looked at me over its shoulder like ‘What’s up motherfucker.’

“Watch out,” said Grace. She rubbed her nose under a wrinkle faced expression of discomfort. “That cat is mean as fuck.”

She slid the magazine with perfectly even lines across the table.

Jay sat up and lifted the dollar bill. “Cat’s a killer,” he said. “A motherfucking murderer. Mouse a day motherfucker.”

Grace giggled, said, “I love a mean cat. He’s my homie.”

I examined the pinpricks on my finger, the dots of blood, and pressed my beer can against the stinging.

“Fucking murderer,” said Jay.

Grace giggled again. “My bestie.”

Jay snorted his line, slid the magazine my way and laid back down.

He rapped – “She take the last bowlpack and leave the house. Come back, she high and quiet as a mouse.”

“There was all sorts of shit on it,” said Grace.

“What?” I said. My phone rattled on the table and I hit the side button to quiet it without looking.

“My dad’s phone. He didn’t reset it, you know? Left all his shit on it.”

“Oh.” I lifted the rolled dollar bill and blasted down my line. It burned like the shit coke it was and I pinched my nose, caressed the pain.

“First thing when Teri turned it on, a message popped up. The phone’s got no service, but it's like the message was just hanging around, you know? Like already in the phone when he turned it off or whatever.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a picture message of a woman who lives down the street, butt ass naked. She’s got her legs spread wide and everything, her pussy right there. I mean, this bitch walks her dog by my parents house like every day, you know? And she’s spread fucking eagle on my dads phone.”

“Shit.” I gulped warm beer, trying to wash the nasty drip from my throat.

“Right?” said Grace.

From the floor, Jay rapped – “If you only had a tip, I know you’d give it to me. I’d do the same if I had you to see.”

“We started digging, you know?” said Grace. “Old pictures, messages. He deleted it all, but the fucker was so dumb, he just left everything in the trash folder. Didn’t really delete it or whatever. All sorts of shit. Fucking dirty pictures, sexts. Fuck.”

The cat came back, tried rubbing against my leg again but I gave it a little kick and it hissed before strutting away.

“It was fourth of July, and my parents had all these people over. I looked out the window, my dad drinking a beer, laughing, smoking a cigar, and I’m like, ‘You motherfucker,’ you know? My mom’s out there and she’s laughing, too. Doesn’t know a goddamn thing. And we can’t tell her with all those people over, so we just keep digging through the phone. There’s all that sex shit and whatever, but then we started seeing pictures of kids.”

“Kids?”

“Yeah, man. Kids. Three of them.”

“He had kiddie porn on his phone?”

“Fuck man, no. Like kids doing kid shit. Like playing basketball and shit.” She pulled a cigarette off the pack on the table, lit it.

“Oh. I thought you were going somewhere else with that.” I had this scab on my leg and my fingers drifted down to pick at it.

From the floor, Jay rapped – “Moved it from the bathtub into a jar. Didn’t have to take that motherfucker far.”

“Nah,” said Grace. “Just some kids. Oldest is like fifteen, youngest like eight or nine. My sister in law, she’s real good with computers, and she finds out the kids live up in Ohio. Ends up my dad’s got this whole other family.”

“Wait, those are his kids?”

Grace nodded. “He was always saying he’s gotta travel for business, but really, he’s up to Ohio and raising fucking kids. And yo, they got a big ass house. Gated fucking community.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, super fucked up.” Grace used the sunflower card to drag more coke from the pile, started breaking up some more perfect lines.

I pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table, lit it. My phone buzzed and I silenced it again.

From the floor, Jay rapped – “A man with a blue hat greeted us with dew drinks and pieces of cloud. We asked if we could stay but he said we weren’t allowed.”

I nudged his foot with my shoe and said “That line was sick, man,” and told him to say it again.

He grinned, repeated it and added – “I’ll see you on the other side, he sighed as he walked away,” while nodding his head to an imaginary beat.

“Nice, man.”

Grace finished building her lines and slid the magazine to me. I thanked her and got those drugs into my body, slid the magazine back to her and said, “So you’ve got brothers and sisters you don’t know about?”

She nodded over the magazine, dollar bill in her nostril.

“You try to talk to them or anything? It’s kinda cool, like a silver lining.”

She sucked in her line, leaned back while rubbing her nose with the palm of her hand.

“Fuck them,” she said. “Fuck all of them. I don’t wanna know them. I wish they were dead. Never been fucking born, yo.”

She pushed the magazine to Jay, who sat up.

“What about your dad? What’d he say?” I said.

“Fuck that narcissist. We’re gonna take all his money. My mom says that’s the only way to hurt him.”

Jay blew his line and his bloodshot eyes widened.

“Yo man,” he said. “You know someone was murdered in this house?”

“Really? When?”

“Like ten years ago. Man stabbed his wife thirty eight fuckin’ times.”

“Where?”

“All over. Stomach, tits, neck.”

“No, I mean where in the house?”

“The bedroom.”

“The room you sleep in?”

“Yeah. Do you believe in ghosts and shit?”

“Not really, do you?”

Grace was nodding her head, like she knew for a fact ghosts were real.

“I don’t know, man. I thought that was all bullshit, but we got some weird ass shit going on around here,” said Jay.

I thought of ghosts in movies – unexplained noises, cupboards opening and closing, dishes breaking.

“Like what?”

“C’mon, lemme show you.” He got up and headed to the back of the house.

“It’s so spooky,” said Grace when we got up to follow.

Jay flicked the bedroom light. Dirty clothes everywhere, trash. An ashtray spilled on top of the clothes and trash, another ashtray brimming, ready to spill. Smells of old sex and mildew.

“This is what I’m talking about,” said Jay. He pointed to a stain halfway up the wall. It looked like grease with a little brown hue to it, about two feet across and a foot or so up and down. “It was here when we moved in but it was worrying Grace so we painted the room.”

Grace was nodding that nod. “I was having these weird dreams, yo. Waking up and staring at it.”

“Couple days after we painted, the stain comes back. I don’t think nothing of it.”

“Maybe some oil or something paint can’t seal,” I said.

“That’s what I was thinking. I sand it down real good and paint over it again. Fuckin’ thing comes back.”

“So weird,” said Grace.

“Three more times I paint the motherfucker. It’ll be gone for a few days, then come right back.”

“Came back after one day last time,” said Grace.

“Yeah, no rhyme or reason. One day, three days, a week – always comes back.”

We stood there watching the stain. I didn’t think much of it, just a stain.

“Figure right there is where he killed her, man,” said Jay.

Grace nodded her head some more, like it was a hard fact that was where the woman died.

I went home before the sun came up, climbed through the window so the screeching door didn't wake my girlfriend upstairs.

I spread out on the couch and pulled a blanket to my chin but couldn’t sleep, picked up my phone and flipped through all the missed calls and texts from my girlfriend. They moved between themes of anger, apologies, and ‘I need yous.’ 

Through the window, I watched the sun rise against the red house across the street and thought of Grace’s dad, all the lives he led, all the lies. Imagined the pressure he must have felt to keep everything in order though the years. The close calls, drawn out periods of panic. I wondered how a man could live an unsatisfied life and leave behind a trail of broken hearts. Like everything, it starts with one decision.

I watched the line of sun creep further up the red house and thought of the murder. 38 stabs. For each wound, a thousand decisions were made.

My phone buzzed – another text. 

It said, “You know I can’t be alone. I need you here.”

I put the phone down and thought of the stains you can’t paint over. Of how all the ghosts I knew were still alive, and the only thing that haunted was awake upstairs.

Alex Rost knows that you can't tell what leaving feels like until you're long gone.