Day’s Writings

In the house where I grew up, the hallway was longer on Tuesdays. My mother never mentioned it. She would walk its length carrying folded towels, and I would watch her shrink to a fingernail, a hyphen, a rumor, before arriving at the linen closet which was always exactly eleven steps away.

I have been keeping a list:

- The sound a mirror makes when no one is in the room.
- Teeth found in garden soil, milk-white and unfamiliar, fitting no jaw I can draw.
- The second sun, the one that sets in the north and is only visible to dogs and the recently forgiven.
- A door in my chest that opens inward. Behind it: a waiting room. In the waiting room: magazines from a year that hasn't happened. The articles are about me. They are sympathetic.

My sister called last night. She said, "Do you remember the hallway?" and I said yes and she said, "I think it's still growing." She paused. I heard something behind her voice — not silence, but the negative of silence, the shape silence leaves when it steps away from itself.

She said the linen closet now opens onto a field. The towels are still there, neatly folded on the grass. Some mornings there are deer standing among them. The deer are patient. The deer seem to be waiting for someone to explain.

I asked her if she was afraid and she said that wasn't the right word. She said the right word was a word we used to know as children but left in a drawer somewhere, and the drawer is in a dresser, and the dresser is at the end of the hallway, and the hallway —

well.

At the end of the hallway the wallpaper breathes, not in and out, but around, as if it remembers another geometry.

You knock because you were taught to. The door opens because it has already answered. A thin ribbon of warm air snakes out and ties itself to your wrist.

Inside, the rooms are arranged in the order you first forgot them.

A table set for one. Two spoons. Three shadows. The fourth shadow is yours, but it’s facing the wrong way, watching you enter like a host who arrived early.

On the mantle: a row of teeth in a glass bowl, each one labeled with a day of the week. Sunday has a crack like a smile. Monday is missing and the empty space smells of metal and rain.

Someone has sewn a clock into the curtain. Its hands move when you blink. You keep your eyes open until they burn, but the time still rearranges itself in the corners.

A voice from the kitchen, familiar as a childhood lie:
“Take off your shoes. The floor is listening.”

You step forward. The boards flex, almost pleased. Under your feet, small, patient vibrations form syllables you can’t quite hear, like a language spoken through bone.

A mirror leans against the wall, face-down. You lift it and see the back of your head, then the back of your mother’s head, then a corridor of backs receding into fog. Each one turns slightly, just enough to show an ear, as if waiting for the right name.

You try yours.

The house hums. The lights dim to a bruise.

From the ceiling, dust falls in the shape of letters, gathering on your tongue. You swallow them and feel them arrange themselves behind your ribs.

Somewhere, very gently, a lock clicks into place.

Not the door.

Something in you.

The hallway elongates when it thinks you aren't looking. To safely reach the kitchen, you must walk backward and pretend you are mourning a bird.

Do not look at the sink. The drain is choked with hair that matches your own, but the texture is fibrous, like damp insulation. It breathes in slow, soapy rasps.

Open the refrigerator. The milk has curdled into small, white teeth. Pour a glass. You will need the calcium for the molting.

When the doorbell rings, it will sound like a wet cough. Ignore it. The man on the porch does not have a face—only a bruised thumbprint where his features should be. He holds a frayed leash that ends in empty space. Do not open the door. Whatever he is walking is invisible, but it leaves heavy, wet indentations on the welcome mat.

If you feel a second heartbeat at the base of your neck, press the cold glass against the skin. Whisper a date that hasn't happened yet.

The hallway is contracting now. The wallpaper is slick with sweat.

Drink the milk. Chew the teeth. Wait for the ceiling to blink.

In the house where shadows grew teeth overnight, the clock ticked backward with the sound of wet chalk on bone. It had fingers now—long, porcelain ones sprouting from its face, each nail filed to a crescent moon, scraping the hours into the wallpaper.

Mother hummed a lullaby that curdled milk. "Time to sleep," she said, her eyes orbiting like errant planets, never settling. The children nodded, their heads too heavy, necks elongating into question marks. Under the bed, the dust bunnies whispered recipes for invisible pies.

Father returned from work, his briefcase spilling live eels that slithered into the floorboards, giggling. "The boss promoted me to echo," he beamed, his voice folding in on itself like origami regrets.

At midnight, the clock's nails pried open the window. Outside, the streetlamps blinked Morse code confessions: I AM NOT REAL. YOU ARE THE LIGHT. A single raindrop fell upward, carrying the scent of forgotten birthdays.

We ate dinner from plates that screamed when empty. The forks bent toward our veins, polite but insistent. "Just a taste," they murmured.

In the mirror, our reflections applauded slowly, hands dissolving into applause-shaped smoke. The clock laughed—a low, grinding chuckle—and its fingers beckoned.

Come closer. Scratch the edge of now. Feel comprehension unravel like a moth-eaten sock.