At 12 years old, I experienced a serenity each morning that I have not managed to recreate since. Silence so deafening I could pretend no one existed but me. In the early hours, I lived alone amongst a sea of corpses. But as the sun rose, so did the bodies.
Zombies rising from the couches, the floor, groaning like the undead. Dragging themselves from the haze of the night before. I watched. I listened. I sat at a table so cluttered, I practically fit right in.
All day, as I watched the dead crawl in and out of the front door, I drew little pictures across dozens of pages.
All day, I learned things I didn’t want to know, met people I didn’t want to see, ate food that didn’t need to be cooked. My stomach never truly settled; the air thick enough to lie on my tongue. I soaked up knowledge that wasn’t mine to know, as I breathed in smoke that wasn’t mine to breathe.
All day, smoke filled the air. It stained the walls, the carpet, the curtains. It stained my skin. The smoke infected every soul that dared to enter, and permanently altered those who lived within it.
For years, this pattern would never change. The greatest comfort I have ever known was the way the dead mumbled their every thought into the void, certain no one would hear it. I never stopped listening. The mold in the sinks, the pills on the table, the scent of cigarettes, sex, and vomit. Every day was a party I was only living in the aftermath of. It was so ugly that it became the most beautiful thing I have ever known. It was like cultivating mold. Something dangerous, maybe, but it was alive. It was breathing, it was living. This was where I learned to be alive.
When the world was empty enough to feel sincere, to hold a human’s heart, my uncle would teach me important skills. The first time he taught me how to draw a rose, it was on a neon green sticky note. We’d play video games together for hours, he showed me everything I learned to love. There were two arcade cabinets in his living room. Not the only ones he had, just the ones he thought were cool enough to keep in his apartment.
I told him I wanted to learn how to paint murals, spread my soul so wide no one could ever ignore it. He showed me how to use spray paint cans to get all the details I wanted. I should’ve asked him about life. About love, family, connection.
I should’ve asked him what you’re supposed to do when the world you’ve always known crumbles under the weight of your own fear.
I was too young, then, to know what I had. Too young to know what I could lose. He was protecting me from something that now I’d do anything to infect myself with again. I don’t remember many of the faces of those bodies that swarmed my home from dusk until dawn. At some point you lose track of faces, never bother to remember names. You only hear their words; you hear too many words.
The easiest way to eradicate mold is to get it at the source.
I wasn’t there when it happened. None of the zombies that crowded my uncle were there that day. My mother, like most of the people surrounding him, had dissipated when he became less useful to them. I hadn’t even texted him in months. I wish I could have said something to him. I wish I could have stopped it. I didn’t ever get to say goodbye. I wasn’t there to hear the gun go off, but the sound still echoes through my entire being. Angels, their voices humming through me, like the fluorescent lights of a hospital. He never went to a hospital.
When my uncle died, so did the entire biome around him. My mom was destroyed just as badly as I was. She was already losing pieces of herself to the void she couldn’t walk away from; this was a vital piece. It was like she lost an organ. It ruined us both, to the point that I started losing her, too. As she got worse, I searched for anywhere else to go, and I found it.
My friend’s parents were quick to take care of me when I was lost. The first thing I remember thinking was I’d never been in a house so bright. There were so many windows, none of them trying to shut out the light. It smelled like expensive candles and warm, homemade food. The walls, floors, people were all untouched by the grime I loved. It was so clean. So pure. It made me sick. If anywhere was going to be an escape from the life I knew, this was the perfect contrast.
I wasn’t supposed to live here for long. Just until my mom figured out our living situation. It was supposed to be a couple weeks, maybe a month at most. I’ve lived here for almost three years now.
When you take a hurt animal from the habitat its always known, it doesn’t get less hurt right away. It gets scared, it lashes out. Figuring out a new way of life around a whole new type of creature would be difficult for anyone. I fought against everything, but I was never truly angry at the things I yelled at. This new light exposed parts of me I never thought I’d have to see.
There’s sunlight splaying itself across my every day now, and I am still lured by the call of a night I never finished living.
It's purgatory. Where the ground does not recognize my skin, and the leaves are too far above my reach. I could claw at the concrete for days, and it would not take me back now that I have crawled my way above it. My nails could wear down until they’re gone. Then all I’d have is blood. I know that. No amount of crawling can get me any further up, towards the branches. It would only make me fall.
I’m kinder, now, than when I first got here. Kindness and assimilation have not negated the desire I still have for everything I used to love. I think I might spend the rest of my life looking for my uncle, my mom, and every person who raised me in every person I meet in the future. I was born with mold growing in my veins.
Mold can be grown artificially, but the fake stuff never has the one thing that makes it powerful. When it's too polished, too contained, it never has the underlying threat of danger. When the world you know is built around mold that's only there because you don't know how to get rid of it, everyone gets a lot closer to avoid it. There's poison in the walls, and the only cure is human connection.
Losing the poison before the cure is never what anyone's prepared for.
It's an odd thing to crave the poison, longing for destruction because you miss the connection. Where I live is cleaner, now. It’s all sanitized. There’s always going to be mold in my heart, and I wouldn’t ever want it gone. They might have just been ants on the ground, wandering the hills of the gravel. Where I am now, though, the leaves are subject to the desires of the wind. To either be small or lack autonomy.
One day, I know I will find comfort within both worlds. One day I will understand a way to balance it all. For now, I'm only coping with what I have lost, and what I have yet to understand.
