As my knife sinks into the apple, I hear my neighbor screaming. His pain vibrates the sheetrock between us. I lean against the counter with a sigh.
He has only been home two weeks and already his wife has dropped ten pounds, forgot to wash her hair, formed bruises under her eyes and hefted a landfill load of worry and sorrow onto her narrow shoulders.
They have a child. A blue-eyed waif of a little girl, who seems to be disappearing into the background of their lives, pushed aside by the ghosts he has brought home with him.
I saw her yesterday. Her eyes have grown round with shock. My heart shattered, splintering right there in the hallway, in front of her silence and her headless doll.
"Where is her head?" I asked.
"I didn't want her to get headaches like daddy," she whispered back.
This morning I saw two people — relatives or friends, maybe — carry a box out of there. They wore tight faces and wide, unsmiling eyes. Haunted, I thought. The ghosts have been busy. Peeking in the box as they passed, I caught a glimpse of a paint ball gun on top of rope and kitchen knives. A black shotgun was clutched in the tall, crumpled man's hand. His knuckles were white.
I send over an apple pie and a note to call me if they need anything. I feel helpless.
The knock comes at three in the morning. A frantic pound pound pound. A wild noise pushed from her throat, a scream forming words, "Call 911". The pale, wide-eyed child in a dirty nightgown is pushed into my leg by her mother, Karen. "Please," she chokes, then turning away, she barrels down the stairs.
I know what has happened, I just don't know how. Tentatively, I step into their apartment with the child clinging to my arm. The place smells like Lysol and old grease. Moonlight is pouring through the open window along with a light mist of rain. A lone white curtain billows from a gust of wind. I see it as a thinly veiled flag of surrender.
Their worn leather couch is turned on its back, pillows stacked neatly in rows across it. Evidently, something the maddening ghosts built. The people carrying out the box didn't realize they were leaving the most deadly arsenal behind. I shake my head and look down at their victim, stroking her pale face. She is staring at her doll.
"Where are her arms?" I ask, a bit shocked her doll is disappearing piece by piece.
"She doesn't need arms anymore," she whispers, dropping the broken doll to the wood floor.
No, I think, as sirens scream below the open window. Wings. She needed wings.
Collapsing onto the floor, I pull her down into my arms and begin to sing quietly to her.
Her tears finally fall and I think about gravity. The ground's pull must be infinitely stronger than human will. It is, after all, the place where we all end up.
Shannon Esposito lives and writes in Venice, Florida. Her obsession with serial killers and weird science worries her husband, so she channels it into her speculative fiction and mysteries. Some of her writing has been published by nice folks like Crimson Highway and The Nautilus Engine. You can visit her at http://murderinparadise.com/.