Leanna

A Story About Love

a distinct door slam and you understand that you'll be finding the remains of his dinner in the carpet for the next few weeks at least. he was so meticulous, at the beginning—hundreds of maids, overnight dry cleaning, stealing away to the bathroom to pick the gore out of his gums. . .

there were warning signs; you can’t honestly deny that.

maybe you just don't see what you don't want to see.

on your first date, the sky was hazy and aflame–not quite red, but almost. close enough to make his stomach growl. you smiled at this–you didn’t yet know to fear his hunger–and held his hand walking inside. he held your door for you, pulled out your chair, said most of the right things. you looked past the wrong, past the stain on his smile, pushed a feeling of trepidation down into your stomach, and you said to yourself: maybe this could be love. 

you relished the thought of having it, saying it, meaning it.

another date, and then another. holding hands in central park. watching movies at his apartment. disregarding dried blood on the walls. deciding to go steady. starting to stay the night. ignoring the screams from the dining room. 

when you caught yourself, you had spent months together in thoughtlessness. you forgot yourself, forgot your doubts, forgot about everything except for the way the word sounded coming from your mouth: love, love, love. 

you said it like a mantra. like a prayer when you found yourself unbelieving. 

it kept you sane. it kept you a girl in love. 

and you were good at it. some people juggle. or throw around a ball or stand on their heads. but you, you could pretend all day long that everything was fine, that you were just paranoid, that there was nothing wrong with your beau slipping out at godforsaken hours and coming back drenched in sweat and carnage. 

when he got too comfortable, when it was all too much to ignore (specifically, when you found entrails at the back of the fridge sealed up in tupperware and marked as monday’s lunch), you stopped pretending that you were paranoid, but you didn't stop pretending. 

you left mouthwash by the butcher knives and bleached the kitchen tiles and bought noise-canceling headphones, and pretended that this was love. 

the unspoken resignation must have been clear. any remaining effort he had, absconded in a manner you've never seen him adopt–quietly, slowly, without a long and obnoxious kiss goodbye–while you and he remained. every day he got a little sloppier, every day testing the limits of what you would stomach for him. for love. 

you don't know quite what keeps you in his organ-strewn apartment other than the self-created obligation to keep it clean.

(when did he stop hiring those maids? it seems like one by one they. . .)

(. . .)

some mysteries solve themselves. he doesn't wash the evidence from his face before he greets you anymore. metal is almost comforting now, familiar. you can't remember when you got used to the taste.

you can’t remember when you got used to the dreams. in endless nightmares, you wear a veil and gown as you scrub your own vomit from the dining room table. in them, you lose patience, peeling off your flesh and begin tearing it frantically to fill his plate. in them, you and he hold a knife together, and it is together that you plunge it into your chest, first, and then into his. it has become a habit to wake up screaming in harmony with his midnight meal.

you grab yourself a glass of water, and you return to bed with your revulsion and its source. facing the wall so that he cannot see you. over and over, you whisper the unbelievable word to yourself. love, love, love.

Leanna is a writer from Queens, New York who has previously been published in ARCH and Wrongdoing Magazine. The goal of her work is to be off-putting, unless you weren't in fact put off, in which case that's what she was actually aiming for all along. She studied psychology and her #1 artistic inspiration is Marisa Tomei's performance in My Cousin Vinny. Find her on Instagram at @joepesci79.