Emily's Seams
Chapter 3: The Empty Room

The small apartment I shared with Jude was old. The walls and the floors were thick with the mucus yellow that overtook the minds of decorators in the seventies. It had a faded green shag carpet, another gift from that era.

I didn’t mind. Everything around me kind of always looked washed out and wasted. I guess at least my home was being honest and upfront about it.

The smell of stale smoke was thick. I knew that even once my aunt died, the smell would never go away. As I threw my keys down on the kitchen counter, I noticed her purse. It was denim and covered in a cheap and tacky assortment of rhinestones. Sitting just inside was a pack of cigarettes.

I grabbed them and twisted them over in my hands. Marlborough.

I could hear the creak of my aunt’s recliner as she awoke from her television coma. I heard her shuffle to the kitchen.

“Well, well. Stealing from me? I knew it.”

Yeah, you caught me. I paid the rent here, bought the food, and took care of most of the other bills. Her pathetic excuse for a pension covered the television, her bingo habit and the cigarettes I was now holding. Yeah, she was getting the short end of the stick.

“Looks like I just might.” I answered as I continued to flip the package over and over in my hands.

She sighed. “Well, it’s probably for the best. Help you drop a few pounds.”

I felt my mouth almost twitch into a smile as she shuffled back to her chair. Osteoporosis was eating away at her stick thin body and every hinge was nearly crippled with arthritis. I know it made every movement agony for her. But by God, at least she was thin.

“Thanks, Jude.” I called after her.

“Don’t sweat it, sweetie.” she answered back. I had been around her long enough to know that she was actually being nice.

I tucked the cigarettes into my bag and went to my room. Jude’s room was at the end of the hall, mine was closer but the empty room was the closest.

I didn’t feel like there was much of anything left in me anymore, but what I had seen that afternoon had jolted me somehow. Even so, I still felt like I was on autopilot. Just maybe waking up a bit.

But that room always made me hurt a little. Somewhere deep. Somewhere I couldn’t reach to scratch out the pain. Most nights I could walk right by it but not tonight.

I pushed open the door. It squeaked more than the other doors of the apartment. It smelled dusty in here but there was also the faint tinge of vanilla. I sat down on the tiny single bed and grabbed the stuffed bear that slept alone on the pillow.

Normal people would cry if they sat on the bed of their dead baby sister. I wasn’t normal anymore though. I didn’t cry. I just looked around her empty room and wondered if she was in some white-walled waiting room for all eternity.

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