BROWN(ROT)BROWN
by Jennifer Lorne
Content Warning: Implied Murder
The shroud of mourning suits you, Mr. MacFarlane. The purple-black bags hanging heavy under your eyes compliment the cool undertone of your complexion, and despite choking on tears and snot, your unforeseen handsomeness is making it hard to do my job. You’re my first client since Daddy left for Boca this past week, and I’ve been having to play both funeral director and mortician. Neither God nor Daddy could’ve ever prepared me for such tormentous serendipity. You come here—to me!—to bury your wife. Such mangled expressions of unhappiness and bewilderment strain your darling face. Confusion and rage. Longing and loathing. I study you and wonder, who’s your Daddy? Who’s your God? Who do you answer to? Where do you look when you cry out, high above or dead ahead? How badly has he screwed your mother? Who’s your Daddy, who’s your God? While searching for the answers to my new universe in your eyes, I miss your question and must ask you to repeat yourself:
“Can I see her?”
No, I shake my head. It’s against policy to view the deceased before I’ve finished speaking with them. Your lips remind me of a dollhouse, Mr. MacFarlane. An inviting little dwelling of moist cerise, warm and romantic, your cupid’s bow arched like a Tudor Roof with a perch for sweet birds to land, so tantalizingly safe when parted open. I wish to be small, a figurine fit for the dollhouse. Small enough to rest my dreary little self upon your plush pink tongue. And when you’ve had enough of my residency, you may evict me to the back of your throat and swallow me whole. I’ll erode in your acids and my essence will seep from your pores as I become one with your flesh.
I fully intended for my fingers to graze yours upon receiving Mrs. MacFarlane’s wedding dress and photograph. Did you feel it? This moment, it too holds weight. Mrs. MacFarlane’s wedding dress strewn across my lap makes me feel like Mary of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Her complexion when alive was a pale warmly lit yellow with full cheeks of blazing rose. Two fat peaches smothering a toothy white smile. I’ll tell you once I open my mouth that I am a peach.
Yes, a peach.
I am a peach pitted with rot knocked from a branch no less distorted than yours. I am kicked about, browned with bruising, and shielded from the flourishing rays of a summer’s sun. I grow mealy, listless. I watch as the pickers pine for peaches far more supple and ripe than I. Peaches sweetened by the juices of youth and promise that bring me to a steady spoil. For you I sit. I wait. I rot.
The phone rings, it’s Daddy again. I haven’t spoken to Daddy since he stuffed his duffel with Tommy Bahama button downs and muttered something about the beach, his youth, and floating. He keeps calling to check on business, but I don’t answer. Perhaps when he’s dead I’ll have something to say. Business and I were doing just fine till you came in. Mrs. Schulman thought she was at the beauty counter in Dillard’s getting her makeup done, I didn’t tell her otherwise, and the only complaint yet was from Mr. Redd who said my touch was too cold, but he quit screaming once I cut out his tongue.
Mrs. MacFarlane told me who pushed her down the stairs. Her neck protrudes in three places, and I’ll have to have her waves worn loose to conceal the damage. I promise, Mr. MacFarlane, I won’t tell a soul of your misdeed. She’s just begging me to, but I won’t. The guilt is tearing you apart. You had yourself a good peach, a ripe peach, a pretty peach swollen with splendor but on her sweetness you choke. That’s all right, Mr. MacFarlane, sometimes what’s coveted by some is tossable to others. Your transgression brought you to me, tears and snot and rot and all. Two husks of what could-have-been pitted with maggots and destined to spoil in darkness.
We are rotten. We are damned.
Daddy’s calling yet again.
Jennifer Lorne (she/her) has been previously published in ergot. Press August 2023, Z Publishing House's Emerging Writers of New Jersey 2018 and Emerging Horror Writers East Region 2019. In her beliefs she is devout: milk and honey in hot coffee, dessert after dinner, and perfume before bed.