The House Altogether

1—--

He held his elbow as the door slammed shut. They had

stepped across the forest line. Fists also slammed against it.

She was screaming at her betrayer. But then she found an old knife,

it had also been betrayed. She ran back into the impossibly old house.

Room to room, more mistrust. The doorknob was ever-twisting.

_____

He got up from the ground so lightly and looked left and right.

They walked towards it, then faster. Then it opened. Then

the forest again. But in the middle of the conversation, she stabbed him.

She dragged him between the wind and then he was away. His ankles were crushed.

The trees were so unnerving. She stood in the doorframe, with her back against it.

_____

It was readily understood. She still stood in the door. More fists slammed.

Calmly, she faced the betrayal. Against it, before they were not.

She walked out at gunpoint, he was still alive. She pulled herself

out of the room, out with the knife. Out and dragged

the house altogether. She pricked him some more and pulled the blood out.

2—--

They had lived in a beautiful place to laugh. Eyes always glimmered in

the house, with its reclaimed windows embedded in the firelight. But the body

had dissolved into the walls. It would have if it was hers. And he was forced

to stare at those walls together with her, to watch her burn.

She spoke about odd things. She was the kindling.

_____

Words had become indecipherable, and her hands looked different. She had dropped

the language. She forgot about him when she did not know

how to read. The solemn, fat blade had been chosen by it.

Those pages transcended linguistics. Instead, he was dragged beneath

the dark forces at work due to her negligence.

_____

She would tell him inseparable stories, too.

About her childhood and he would laugh at it, it was

held to her. Early childhood trauma. The blurry one. The Bygone.

Animal cruelty. She would see blood and yell at other unseen entities

on her hands, too. In that room, she continued.

_____

All of this was just to figure out why the Bygone was born and why

it was going on. There had been laughter, and people were enslaved by it.

Nails dragged across the wall. People were made docile by fear. Only

unexpected allegiances escaped being dominated by it. The obedience

cage had become a genetic trait.

_____

She had looked down on her friends when blood had sept up through their

hands. The lantern dropped to the floorboards. She was knocked unconscious

and things went black. He picked up her things. Her necklace

was lit again. She could remember finer times. Now she could

see the pages, but then she was dead, too.

3—--

Distorted faces that were not his own perverted a tradition. The dog

posed empty threats, but it was still interrogated. It had witnessed it all.

Distorted faces nonetheless. The fear had chased him through a cloudy

unavoidable. Hair flipped and teeth gnashed in the landscape; a world of mist

banging on the walls, a world without depth.

_____

She ran away into the light pasts. Voids of pain outside

of the windows. She read the inseparable torment. She melded with the ageless

solemn pages, they were chaos. Early childhood trauma.

her secret. A world where the Bygone put its hand on her.

She could be herself, despite her thighs. It wanted them.

_____

Apparent time had passed and the distorted faces cornered him into

the cage. It grew dim, clouds spread into the cage and locked it

like tendrils over the ground. He awoke and she comforted him.

Another knife at his throat, at him. She looked into his

eyes but he was looking at the time.

_____

They scanned the negative of him. She swung the fat

room together, and closed it. The walls were like blades toward him. He swung

and vibrated. Glass shattered, ghastly faces looked at her from the floor. He had

been projected. Beyond the ugliness, she was better now, he promised incredulously.

She could understand the advice. But again, she had said a tough nothing.

_____

The radio was blaring as he crossed the ceiling. She ran her fingers

over the bridge, through the dirt, through his hair. He ran his

into the mountains. He ran them through his other

cage and he found more fingers. Perspiration and a tense phone.

He opened it. The neglect had called in the middle of the night.

4—--

Lost in the dark costs, it did not blink. Its

mind was guided but it did not look away. It enjoyed

validation. Memories of red now looked like a

sky with silent companions. Traveling with a ghost painting. Still

with a shared purpose, but unblinking. The Bygone recalled horribly.

_____

Both were within reach as they laid on either side.

A needle pushed through his floor. The vehicle backed over a

sweater. The door opened out into the driveway and

then closed behind them. They crept slowly away from the

vehicle. The house was gone again. She approached it.

_____

He frantically pressed the jammed play button. The

shut down. He was haunted by the television, it vibrated with white noise.

The Bygone was everyone else, distrustful people addressing the

haunting of him. His audience, he pleaded with them.

He lashed out and smashed whatever sarcastically. He did not win.

_____

Without statement, the Bygone held its way about itself. She leaned

into the fat blade, with its hilt into his ear. The onlookers

of bone. Something viral came, but remained stoic. Something tedious just

from within it. It spread to keep her hands busy,

through the air as a way to keep her mind off.

5—--

He was not listening to the customers. They offered him any favors or sympathy.

More blood, it made him something. It oozed onto the chair.

Sweat and nausea from the vehicle, by the sight

of it, so wet, like a lake at night. A congealed

leveraging. She kept pulling on the door at lovers lane.

_____

She shook, but maintained her skepticism. Maybe it was just

her composure. The bedroom door slowly eased them to work together. She

opened it and grasped his arm. She helped him, not the other.

With a lantern to light the way around, but she was proud of

the way she would go with him. Standing by with him.

_____

It closed behind him. Blood looked away before looking at him

and trickled down his face, but in the eyes. There he was

just happy to feel something tense between them, something

to see her. Exasperated by lurking just out of view.

In the backroom, sitting on boxes. Distracted, no one could see.

_____

It was not a shared motive. Her own speech had hushed her. It had

looked like a painting of played music, and it spoke more

like a ghost. Even more generally incomprehensible than before. It explained

the store, where she worked, and that the Bygone was far from there.

There was a reluctance to talk, greater than she could have imagined.

_____

He veered as he was overcome by the elephant in the corner.

The Bygone was there. He crawled around the room, but it could

see through the wreckage, it could see them. Unmasked laughter, but

also snow, fires in the distance. It was still so dark.

He opened the door and looked out across the lake, until-

6—--

There was a fine mist. Everyone breathed deep. She looked down at them

and then not at all. There was a tattoo above his pelvis.

The begotten Bygone lived on and asked him about his past.

Through everyone was him. She reminded him of their

drive off into the night. The past. There was something menacing.

_____

The radio spat something specifically distorted and flashlights brightened their faces. That

noise from the speakers. He pushed the drive home to be more lighthearted.

Pressing down harder on the gas, but the house suddenly looked

like the peddle of the vehicle. Mouth, otherworldly if you looked at,

agape and short of breath. There it was, closely enough.

_____

Covered with blood, she searched the fat blade as backup and looked at the

ceiling for answers. She watched him like clockwork. The

ticking stopped. It was so that the floorboards were dry, and so

quiet. Noises lunged from everywhere. They descended. He descended, she

heard the clock growl and everywhere moaned. Or maybe not. Groans from the distant.

_____

It was specifically cubist. The Bygone had something near-futuristic about it.

It enclosed the entirety of her. A presence that was just

squelching puns as it enveloped things not supposed to exist yet.

Her entity. Onlookers smiled with it but one man knew the

sense of accomplishment. The truth; The Bygone was taking.

_____

So he ran away. Coward. He was out of sight behind more, but

then came back. Fat blade In hand and more closed doors. She saw

her own hand, it murdered an animal and watched him go out of life

right in front of her. But he had returned her sight.

Awkward silence, the fat blade was wet. He handed her the solemn.

7—--

Flashes of the truth were doubted over. No one believed him about

the hallucination. Her clothing was a mirror that distorted the angle

of the back of her body. The sound of the room, but he saw the

picture on the television zoomed and made him feel at home regardless.

It all disintegrated into something that he found very attractive about her.

_____

It was by the fog as they of the troubling world

drove out into the industrial park. She was good at being there.

He told the child about what she did. Faster and

there was no afterlife. Then faster, sharper, pinpoint. The headlights

on the child were unaffected by the stifled vehicle.

8—--

The room was low on vitamins, but she was not sure how.

She held up the fruit before she had yet to find him. But

the power of suggestion carried him through the mirror, and it was then that

he wanted her. But something about those insidious onlookers. She tapped his forehead

to see what was happening, a nefarious encounter before he watched her leave.

_____

The window looked at the night. Everything was filtered through

that night sky. He tried to reach through her vague hue.

He cut off his own face, and his son was awake, too. She had

difficulty nodding. With curt agreements she checked all of the closets

in the hospital hallway. Then she locked them all.

_____

The odd customers had spread. Everyone again in a different room.

It was strange, and they knew it. The Bygone explained to her that she would

never understand, even though their union was destiny. And

she would never admit it, but that infinite, preternatural love was something awful.

She wanted people to understand. But the Bygone did not let them.

_____

Friends shook their heads but there were no more pages. He remained below.

She knew they were right. She remained above. She knew

that thing downstairs did not know how to read to them like

their mothers. She hid behind time, but was easily distracted by

the man with one hand, and by what remained below it.

9—--

His eyes were like the metal of doors, but to no avail. The

fat blade glinted with the Bygone, which was already in

the moonlight. He mimed it from within the house. She bled on out

across him and next to his own on the kitchen floor. They

both turned and stared out. His neck was slashed while watching.

_____

But that was a kind of deep painting. The ghost,

rooted in desperation, had a scent, again. Things suddenly felt unreal

and predators lingered. She leaned, her vision was actually blurry.

She looked over the counter and went. The world was just

back to reading. Her solemn house was a smeared place. She awoke.

_____

The Bygone showed itself. She was tougher and came above. Not him, something

other than her friends. But something else was pulling at her hair,

the sound of her mother singing, twisting her, making her scream.

It was too much to resist until he came back.

Mother was incredulous, she had rescued herself. She watched him.

_____

She sang to the rafters, just over the television. A dirty face

and the blinding lights. He was at a dead-end industry, so he

snuck out through an exit job. Honest work, but aimless.

While at the back he was out of place in the

room. Filthy, red circles surrounded the office environment, but that was allowed.

10—--

The pages of the television were so unseen by the entities around the room.

It was engaging that she forgot, she was confused. So it

ate, always forgetting to take its slap at her. The Bygone twisted

the next bite. It would gag her as a way

to remind her. She looked at it as things went blurry.

_____

The locked cellar door was a fight from the sidelines. She

rubbed her hands together and began to sing, it helped.

It could not be, not then. He fought her mother, or so

she thought. Then the scream was dead. She cried, ignorant to

what was hers. That face with the gunfire. He hugged her.

_____

The wood floor was erotic, a strategic advantage. The

double vision was a time lapse of crime scene photographs. They were fanned

out over the intimacy. She performed across the desk, unwilling to

stage it. It was awkward, but it confronted them. Pills were dropped and

the crowd loved her confidence. In the haste, everything scattered across.

_____

She had slept like a light bulb. They had taken him away and

he was dying, on and off. They had taken her away from him.

The poor ambiance was allowed when she went to work again. Detained,

the Bygone was trying to get in. Then the Bygone was speaking incomprehensibly

and it woke her. They took her, it was nonsense to herself and others.

11—--

She rubbed her hands together, focused, squeezed her arm. She looked into

the numbers that were running through her eyes. The house shook her

head, she could figure that the walls were crumbling. They tumbled

out. The scream was to the ground, it avoided destruction. They were

loud to ignore, so she ran, yelling to each other about nothing.

_____

She could find out what the real unfinished business was. Over-explaining while it

happened, she took off her dire times. She was reading again as

her sweater was settling in. She had learned from the solemn pages. But she

recognized her father’s things spread about as the house fell apart,

all about the room. She was stabbed In the back.

_____

Seeing the blood had made her back away. He was nearly

quivering, but it did not take defeat. She kept reading, breathless.

She longed to feel herself stiffen. Her eyes closed. She whispered

up and put on a show, so she could have the

straight face and the last word. She stopped reading.