Ripe
In retrospect, I should have gotten fitted in-person for a pair of rubber boots. Ordering shoes online is always a crapshoot. The ones I had on were too big, they just collected water like a rain barrel and waterlogged my socks.
The texture was horrible. A disgusting sensation.
The foyer’s carpet squelched with every step I took. It didn’t help that I was carrying 120 pounds of dead woman.
“This always happens during the honeymoon phase,” said my friend Dan.
“You won’t want to leave the house. You’ll want to be with her all the time. The modern age enables this. Work from home, order from home, live from home, die from home…” He began to rant about modernity. He always goes there, and I always tune him out. He married a female cop from the sheriff’s department. She came off gay when I met her. Funny.
I‘ve tried to explain my marital problems to Dan before. I had to leave out a few key details. I told him my wife was depressed, in bed all day, not contributing financially. He said wives “tend to do that” and that I make enough money, anyway. Not quite the issue.
The trouble was harder to explain; I’ve only been married to Liana for six months, and she’s killed and replanted herself a good seven times.
I trudged up the staircase in the loose boots. The way I carried her, the soil from her body fell before us, laying a trail like rose petals.
Creaking wood drummed up anxiety in my chest. I am not a large man. I usually make but a negligible amount of noise when I move throughout the house. That’s something she commented on when we first moved in. The word she used was unobtrusive. She liked this about me. She said we had that in common. In a lot of ways, we really were alike.