I locked my wife in the pantry under the stairs

stairs my mother said was the house settling. Every childhood night I woke and heard something dull beneath the floor, only for Mom to stroke my hair and whisper, “Old houses complain. Don’t listen.”

I had been sleeping above my father’s prison.

Emily had heard one night what I had ignored my whole life.

The paramedics take her up first. I follow at a continue reading …