Chapter 7: Rot and Revelation

7

Actually, I’d thought about this possibility.

The food and water in the bed could last me three days.

As long as I waited until Lillian left the house, I could force the switch open and fix it later.

But now, after just one night, the corpse was already starting to bloat.

I desperately needed to deal with the body, but I couldn’t risk running into Lillian.

All I could do was wait.

But on the second day, Lillian still didn’t leave.

The corpse began to develop putrid blisters.

I carefully touched those soft, pus-filled bubbles, afraid to break them.

By the third day, I was starting to lose hope.

The corpse was changing grotesquely: his eyeballs fell out, his abdomen caved in, his skin split open.

Rotten flesh clung to my shirt, the mattress squelching beneath me as fluids leaked out, the smell so thick it felt like it coated my tongue. The stench was suffocating, maggots crawled all over me.

Lillian never slept on the bed again—maybe the smell had made her suspicious.

But she still didn’t leave.

I knew I couldn’t go on like this, and was ready to break the switch by force.

But just then, I heard Caleb’s voice.

“So gross, what’s that smell?”

The mattress felt like a prison cell. Sweat dripped down my temples as the corpse beside me swelled and split, the air thick with decay. My skin itched where the blood seeped through, and the sickly-sweet rot threatened to choke me. I clawed at the boards, panic surging as the hours crawled by. My mind conjured up news stories—missing persons, weird smells in suburban apartments, the kind of gossip that spreads through small towns like wildfire. I pictured the landlord pounding at the door, the police tape going up outside. Still, Lillian just stayed, holed up with her phone, sometimes crying quietly at night. When I heard Caleb’s voice—so familiar, so wrong—every muscle in my body went cold.

I braced myself, lungs burning, knowing that if I didn’t get out soon, I’d die here—rotting away with the corpse, just another secret buried in Lillian’s bed.