Lily Hoang - Unfinished - stories finished by Lily Hoang

I didn’t think I could stand up for weeks after my ma died.

When my dad went too, I took up all the photos of them and burned them in the backyard. I couldn’t stand up — like an intense case of vertigo — so I crawled, while throwing up, my center of gravity was fucked.

Later, I found the first of the others. Of course, I didn’t think anything of it then.

For a few minutes, I considered letting the fire spread onto the house, but then I doused it. Call me cold-hearted, but if I’d had somewhere else to go, maybe. If I could stand up for more than thirty seconds without toppling, perhaps. But I was an invalid. I felt pathetic.

So I crawled back into my house. It was my house now.

That also must be when I started to have food delivered here. Back when it was just me here. Back before I was providing for so many more.

I like to start the day by taking a walk along the street. There are no other homes. Nothing to look at except dirt. There is no scenery, no flowers or rolling hills. No rivers or trees.

There’s something nice about dirt stretching as far as I can see. This must be something akin to how others feel about oceans. My ocean of dirt. I like to start the day by taking a walk along the street until I see something green. It’s a game. Then, I turn around because I need a shower.

I could sell some of the area around the house and then I guess people would come and they’d build little houses and then I’d have something different to look at, but quite frankly, I’d rather look at dirt than have all those people and their noises.

It’s not that I don’t like people. I do. I like a good conversation. I like to go and get it when I want. But that doesn’t mean I need the conversation to live next door.

Not that I don’t have three perfectly good conversationalists living with me right now.

Yeah, I talk to them sometimes. Of course they don’t answer, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a lively conversation with them anyways. They’re good listeners.

Especially Steve.

It’s not like I’m talking to myself or anything. They’re here. You’ve seen the Polaroids. Besides, how else would all of this stuff be happening?

Do you smell that? Burning.

It still comes now and then.

When I wake up in the morning, before I go on my walk, I can sense they’ve been standing over me at the bed. I’m not sure who or how many, but they seem to really like my bedroom.

Of course, by the time I get my glasses on, they’re gone.

Before though, before I get my glasses on, I ask them if they want to go on a walk with me. They never accept the invitation.

I also know they’re in my room because my glasses are never where I left them the night before. I always leave my glasses in the same place, and they’re never there. I guess now I can say I have no idea where I leave them, because they’re never where they ought to be.

Or maybe I sleepwalk. But that doesn’t account for any of the other strange things that could only be explained if these three men are squatting in my house.

I have to admit: I don’t particularly like the idea of squatting, but at least these men are squatting in a house that has not been abandoned, though I try to make myself as unobtrusive as possible. I wouldn’t want to disrupt their plans for the day.

All I ask is that they don’t burn me down with the house.

Sometimes, they’ll do things to let me know they’re here: turn a picture upside down in its frame, move the bed one inch over, leave hot water sitting in the sink.

No way I can blame that on sleepwalking.

The closest house is just over two hours walking. I timed it with my ma’s watch. It’s the only thing she left to me, and even then, she was wearing it at her funeral.

Imagine: I had to take it off her wrist.

Imagine: the coffin was already closed. We were at the gravesite. I had to open the coffin. Then, I got dizzy and used its side for support. Then, the damned thing almost tipped over. But I got my watch.

It’s fake gold. I’m allergic to fake gold.

After two hours of walking there and two hours walking back, I had to drive myself to the hospital — another forty-five minutes — for them to saw the damned thing off my wrist.

The doctor asked if I’d noticed my wrist and forearm swelling. I said yes. He asked if I’d noticed that my hand wasn’t getting any blood. I said yes. He asked when I stopped feeling any sensation in my arm. I said about thirty minutes into my walk. He asked how long the walk was. I said four hours.

But he never asked me why I didn’t take off the watch.

They’re both buried in the yard now, below the grass below my window. I like that.

My father wouldn’t like to know how there are three people not paying rent, living in his house. Especially men. Especially not ones he can’t do anything with. Not even play cards.

Useless, he’d say. Fucking useless, just like you.

I can hear his voice, his accent, the slight lisp. But he’d hate to sound gay so he’d say it all in a deeper voice.

I imagine my ma died inside herself years before her body did. My ma was rotting from the inside. That happens sometimes. Like in fruit. You can smell it, even if you can’t quite see it. Sometimes, if you feel the fruit in just the right way, you can tell too.

But with my ma, you could smell it. You could see it too.

Just looking at her, you could see it. She just sat propped up in bed. Her hair looked like wax.

For some time, I thought she really liked the TV, but she stared the same whether it was on or not. So I turned it off.

But I never think I was the one who killed her.

Either time.

Thing is: we don’t own a Polaroid camera.

Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever even used one.

I told them after the third picture showed up (the black one, in the distance, surrounded by dirt, the roof of the house barely jutting in on the right corner. If I didn’t squint, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell it was my roof.) that they’d better be gone by the time I got back.

Then, I walked way up the street until it started to get dark.

The fourth picture was on the kitchen table the next morning, next to scrambled eggs and toast. The old one’s teeth, close up. The eggs and toast were cold, but I suppose that was their version of a truce, which I accepted.

Some days, I try to trap them into coming out by putting food on the table. Other days, I buy motion detector recording devices, but I never have the heart to set them up.

Except I know some day in the future, I’ll be bored enough to set it up.

Then, I’ll be pissed because the damned things won’t work. The food will be gone and the camera will catch none of it. So I let the others stay here. But I doubt they’d leave even if I didn’t.

First, the smell.

But not the smell of the shop where the coats were kept. No, the shop smelled of lilacs and talcum powder, of new leather and old money. There’s a different texture — a complexity — to old wealth, the way it coils around in your nasal cavity. The shop smelled of starched shirts and laundered trousers, of gloves and wood-burning fireplaces. The shop smelled of tobacco and hearing aids and carpet so thick it molds around your foot if you stand in one place for more than thirty seconds. My shoes almost got caught in that carpet when I was running out. It was like quicksand.

They didn’t catch me carrying the dead: two fur coats over each shoulder, a hat, an assortment of hairy goods. They didn’t catch me that night. Or the next. Or for the next few years. I wouldn’t allow it. If they caught me, they’d catch me with hands full of the living, of those most needing rescue.