Psychopomp Magazine Winter 2017 | Page 15

Everest, like you’re going to freeze to death, only you’re so lucky you have me here to keep you warm. I take your clothes off first, and then mine, and under the quilts and blankets I cover as much of your body as I can with my own and I whisper, over and over again:

I will not let you die here.

And we fall asleep like that, staying alive off of each other’s body heat, until Jeremy comes back and opens the door and finds us.

It doesn’t occur to me to be afraid, really. We are ghosts, I remind myself. He can’t even see us.

But he can, and he does, and the phrases Are you kidding me and How can you do this and Get out of this house you sick dykes are thrown at us in quick succession.

I get dressed thinking No, I’m not kidding and Well, it was easy and Christ, I should’ve gotten out of this haunted fucking house hours ago.

I hold your hand because you’ve started to quiet-cry again, and Audrey guides us out with a gentle nudge, like arrows carved into trees, like a trail of breadcrumbs we left to lead us home.

But foxes must have eaten the breadcrumbs, because wherever we end up after that, it’s not home. I feel like I broke the promises I made to you on Mount Everest, like I brought your body down with me but that’s all.

On one of the nights I can’t convince you to spend the night with me (it’s getting harder and harder) I’m woken up when a rock comes through my window, like it’s 1950 or something, and the note tied to it says Filthy Dyke. I pull the blinds down over the cracked glass and go back to bed.

When I go to see you the next day, your window is broken, too, but your note is much nastier, full of words I’ve always had trouble saying even in my head, and while mine seemed to have died on the kitchen counter where I left it, yours seems to live and breathe, to growl like a jungle cat.

Nikki Stein | 15