Maudlin House

What becomes of
the organic and the
warped manufacturement
of atrocity?
The chemicals, leached
out and in, each
infinitesimal atom of
doom a little slippery thing
on the skin that’s just jumped
off a cement pipe dam &
instead of wiping off all
“ewww,” it’s a new
permanence, a part of the water
and land and flesh (“oh yes...

“I hid the body, now what?” Her phone pinged.

Jade blinked at the message until it stopped feeling real. She didn’t know what annoyed her more, the fact that her succubus homewrecking best-friend was trying to play a joke on her, or that she even had the nerve to text her at all.

“Hid what body? You mean the dead body of our 30-year friendship!...

The internet has an almost tender way of returning things to you. The video surfaces every few months in some new corner of the internet, stripped of context and compressed into ten neat seconds. Someone reposts it to a subreddit called /influencersnark or one of those TikTok accounts devoted entirely to the forensic analysis of public embarrassment, and from there it begins ...

I pull open the heavy brown fire door, catching the slippery gold handle so the door doesn’t slam. It depends on the day. Sometimes I let it crash against the frame and feel the vibration ripple beneath my sneaker-clad feet like a miniature earthquake.

I slip immediately to the right and take the first white plastic chair against the wall. Direct line of sight to her o...