Lily Hoang - Unfinished - stories finished by Lily Hoang

And so she was worried about going to work.

But that was nothing.

Some time along the third month, long before she ought to have been showing, she awoke one morning, left her husband George snoring in bed, went to shower, and stopped to check her face for any stress spots or creases.

She didn’t see herself.

No. Really. I didn’t say she couldn’t recognize herself. I’ll repeat it: She didn’t see herself. “Gooseberry crepes!” she shrieked. Sarah’d already begun the pathetic attempt to reform her vocabulary away from curse words. After all, no one likes hearing that shit from the mouths of day care kids.

Not that she intended her kid to be a day care kid.

She knew what happened to kids like that.

“Sarah?” he said. His face twisted.

George turned away from her and looked down the hall. He ran out towards the kitchen, stepped in one direction, then he changed course. Then, he changed course again. The shower was on. The coffee (two pots: decaf Guatemalan Antigua for her, Ethiopian Yergacheffe for him) was already brewed. That’s not unusual though. They have that on a timer. “Sarah?” he repeated, softer this time. Then louder, “Sarah.” More definitely, “Sarah.”

“I’m here.” She cried so easily these days, and her voice was drowning — like two kids screaming at each other underwater, attempting to convey a secret message that contains vowels and no consonants.

George came back to the bathroom door. The bath faucet was on but the shower hadn’t been activated yet.

“Here.”

“Where!?”

George couldn’t see a thing — just a bathroom — although in truth the only thing he should have seen was a bathroom. He looked comical, his head whipping back and forth. This is the kind of thing that happens in movies and television.

He swatted his hands in front of him.

Nothing.

Sarah — in the shock of being suddenly invisible — hadn’t bothered to check if she still had a body. Given the gravity of the situation, she can hardly be blamed. It isn’t every day that people’s bodies evaporate like this.

And it wasn’t until George was batting at air that the possibility suddenly occurred to Sarah: maybe she didn’t exist at all any more.

George’s hand went through the space where she ought to have been.

Then, her own non-existent hand went through the space where she ought to have been.

“Fruit cocktail!” she screamed.

“Sarah! Sarah! Where are you?”

“Fucking fruit fucking cock fucking tail!”

George spun circles following her voice, which had regained its strength, no doubt.

But George saw nothing. He felt nothing.

George never learned what happened to his wife. Sure, he called the cops. He filed a Missing Persons report, but nothing ever came of it. From time to time, he imagines hearing Sarah move around the house, talking to him. Some mornings, he wakes up with his own semen all over himself, but he has no idea how it’s happened.

Today, George has a partner, not a wife. He’s learned his lesson all right, and he and Susie are going to adopt a baby from China. Of course, she’d wanted to have her own children, but George insisted that having babies is not a safe endeavor. Although Susie tried to reason with him, there’s no logic like experience.

I told them goodnight and good morning, but when I came home again, they were still here.

For some reason, I am always surprised to find them here, in my kitchen, sitting around my table, usually drinking coffee. One of them, I’m not sure which, I’m never sure which, made a small hole at the bottom of each coffee cup — it’s not small feat to drill a hole the size of a needle point through ceramic — and so they all try to drink their coffee before it has a chance to drain.

Thing is: I’ve never seen any of them directly. I only know they’re here because there are three small puddles of brownish liquid on my table. There are three coffee mugs with small holes at their bottoms clustered in my sink. None of the chairs are pushed in, and I always push in my chairs. My table is always clean. I never leave dirty dishes in my sink.

This is something like the three little bears, only they are the ones who are eating, sleeping, and hiding. The first Polaroid I found was of the black one on the third step to the landing. It was a riddle to me then, as I hadn’t really noticed anything amiss. In the Polaroid, the black one was shining his shoes with my socks. I have very distinctive socks.

I know they were mine. I know they’re here. I have proof.

First, they are slobs. They leave a mess behind them wherever they go. I am clean. I am immaculate. I spend my days cleaning up after them. In preparation for apocalypse, I also used to have a lot of canned soup, but no matter how much I buy, they deplete my excess.

Contrary to logic, it is quite possible to measure one’s existence in objects disappeared.

Or by objects gained. See: think about the escalation when it’s not just you, but three others. I find myself at the grocery store, considering what fresh fruits and vegetables they might like to eat. Even though I cannot tell size by the Polaroids, I estimate and furnish them with sweaters and hats when the weather changes. Or swim trunks, so that at least someone can use the lake I built in my back yard.

I think the oldest one’s name is Joseph, but yeah, there’s no way to know for sure. I call him Joseph when I come home. He doesn’t answer. I could call him Peter or Susan, James or Stella.

No one touches the Cream of Pea, though; they must consider those mine.

But really, who likes Cream of Pea? I notice myself trying to make them into good people when it’s quite evident that they’re not.

I’m one half-centimeter of shampoo older than I was a week ago.

See: they don’t use my shampoo. I think they clean themselves like cats.

I wonder if they monitor my movement, if they take notes.

How else would they know when to come out?

Come to think of it, I wonder if they’ve seen each other either. I’ve never found a photo of the group together.

You’d think at some point, one would say to the other, Hey, take one of the two of us.

Unless, of course, they’ve never seen each other.

But then, why do they choose to sit in different chairs in the kitchen?

Logically speaking, if there are four chairs around the table, what are the chances that three random people arriving at three random times (given that those times are never coinciding) would never pick the same chair? How would they know?

I almost saw one of them six months back, although it’s impossible to say which one. See: it’s colder up here on the upper floor than the lower, which is weird, considering how heat rises, but once, while I was sleeping six months back, I saw one of them breathing, or at least I saw a visible steam of breath exhaled into cold air. Thing is that it was really that cold. It’s colder up here, but not cold enough to account for the breath I saw.

It may have something to do with the layout of the a/c tubing, which I had nothing to do with.

When I was younger, my old man never let us turn on the a/c. Wastes too much, he’d say. Now that he’s dead, I prefer a good, cool room. I enjoy it. So I sleep upstairs, which is where I saw the breath, but when I got up to find the source of the almost translucent exhale, whoever made it was long gone. I know it was one of them though. Unless there are more than three.

Unless they’ve multiplied, which isn’t an impossibility.

Other proof of their existence: dirty laundry crammed under my bed of sizes not my own; a thumbprint in the butter, which I bought exclusively for their use; cum stains on various items of furniture. I would never do these things. I am not that kind of man. Well, I would never touch butter for long enough for an indentation to occur.