Sloth (This is a Ghost Story)

There's a stain on the wall about four inches to the left of the television set. The stain has been there for a long time. If Daryl were to look at it closely enough, which he never does, he'd still be able to see the spindly remains of an unlucky fly's legs. The fly’s left wing had fallen off from the wall about two weeks after its death, and now rests at the wall’s edge where it meets the floor, paper-thin and invisible, caked in a thin layer of dust.

A poorly-performed burial service.

Sometimes Daryl looks at the stain, but then whatever TV program he’s watching snatches his attention back, and he forgets about it again. Today, HGTV is on. Daryl thinks of changing it, but his hands are covered in barbeque sauce, so he leaves the remote where it is and continues eating. Onscreen, a kitchen is being gutted. Someone is taking a hammer to the cabinets, and Daryl wonders if the man’s safety goggles will leave funny marks around his eyes. He takes another bite of his chicken wing and then sets the plate aside, mostly untouched. He hasn’t had much of an appetite lately. Can’t even bring himself to lick the sticky sauce from his fingers, so he just rests his hands palms up on his lap, fingers curling inward.

There is a sink down the short hallway and into the kitchen, and he thinks of going to it. He’d take the plate of wings with him, maybe, so he could put the leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow. To Daryl, it doesn’t look like the countertops in the kitchen on his television screen are all that outdated, but a woman named Casey insists it’s necessary for the eventual cohesion of the space, and Daryl figures she probably knows better than him. It looks satisfying, breaking up the pieces and starting all over again.

Outside the window on the left side of the couch, the sun is making its slow descent. Orange bleeds into the room, folding itself into the single, beige pillow and disappearing. Daryl doesn’t notice. They’ve started in on the master bedroom now.

In the daylight, Daryl tells himself that there are things worth doing.

Sometimes he goes to the grocery store and stands in the aisle underneath the blinking fluorescents and tries to remember which kind of ice cream is his favorite. In the end, he just gets chocolate. He’s glad for the automatic checkout lines, the robotic voice of a woman he doesn’t know that asks how many bags he’d like and tells him he can insert his credit card now. There are people here. He can see them even beneath the ugly lights. Terse glances at calorie counts, the playful gaze of a girl holding up a sushi roll for her boyfriend to see. (This one, babe?), a mother reaching for a dropped pacifier, eternal patience etched into her smile lines. Daryl knows he belonged here, once, but the world passed him by a long time ago, and God knows it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Certainly not for him.

In front of the TV again, Daryl dips into the ice cream container. He’s sure there’s a bowl somewhere in the kitchen, but the cabinets always seem to glare at him, wondering why they’re not being updated. Today, it’s a crime show of some kind. Flashing red lights, caution tape surrounding the outside of somebody’s shattered, suburban life. The camera follows a sandy-haired man and his giant of a partner into the house, bloodstains smudged sporadically along the carpet as they make their way into the foyer. A melted bit of ice cream drips onto Daryl’s socked foot. He ignores it.

“Could be a ghost,” the sandy-haired man says only to his partner, voice dipped too low for the other investigators to hear.

Huh, Daryl thinks. Not just a regular crime show then.

Outside his window, the sun has been down for hours. The dead fly on the wall beside the television screen loses another leg, weightless and tiny and impossible to notice. A packet of barbeque sauce from Daryl’s chicken wings has tipped over, seeping sluggishly into the beige pillow closest to the window. Tomorrow, Daryl will see the unfixable stain, and he will be filled with an overwhelming sadness that cannot be explained.

The day after that, he will sit back down on the couch and finish off the rest of his ice cream. The pillow will be flipped over, barbeque sauce side down.

A poorly-performed burial service.