Henry

A short story.

The apartment always felt brightest in the mornings.

Sunlight poured through the thin curtains in warm gold ribbons, spilling across the bed and crawling over Henry’s sleeping face. Claire stood in the doorway with a basket of folded laundry pressed against her hip, smiling softly to herself as she watched him rest. He had always looked peaceful when he slept. Still. Quiet. Heavy in the way exhausted people became after long nights.

“You’re going to ruin your sleep schedule again,” she whispered.

He didn’t answer.

She crossed the room carefully, setting the basket at the foot of the bed before kneeling beside him. The mattress dipped beneath her weight. His skin looked pale this morning, though that wasn’t unusual anymore. He spent so much time indoors lately. She brushed her fingers along his cheek and frowned slightly at the coldness there.

“You’re freezing again.”

Claire reached for the blanket tangled around his waist and pulled it higher against his chest. The smell in the room had gotten worse over the past week. Sweet underneath something rotten. She had opened the windows yesterday, but the scent still clung stubbornly to the walls no matter how much she cleaned.

Maybe another bath today.

Warm water always helped him relax. Afterwards he looked fresher. Quieter. More like himself.

The laundry basket sat untouched near the bed. One of his shirts hung over the side, stiff with dried brown stains she still hadn’t managed to scrub out completely. Claire quickly folded the fabric inward so he wouldn’t see it if he woke up.

“You always were messy,” she said with a faint laugh.

A fly landed briefly on his shoulder.

Claire’s smile faded.

She swatted it away immediately before gently smoothing the collar of his shirt back into place. “Ignore those things. They’re everywhere this time of year.”

His head lolled slightly toward her hand when she adjusted him. For a moment she paused, watching him carefully, waiting for the sleepy groan that usually followed whenever she disturbed him too much.

Nothing came.

That was alright. He needed the rest.

Claire leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his forehead. The skin there felt softer than it should have been.

Almost loose.

She pulled back, unsettled for reasons she did not want to name, then forced herself to smile. “Bath first,” she said. “Then I’ll make breakfast.”

Getting him into the bathroom took patience. Henry had always been heavier than he looked, all broad shoulders and long limbs, though he never believed her when she told him so. She remembered teasing him about it once after he fell asleep on the couch with his head in her lap, trapping her there for two hours because she didn’t have the heart to wake him. He had laughed when she complained. He had kissed the inside of her wrist and told her she was dramatic.

She missed the way he laughed.

No.

She disliked when thoughts came that way, sharp and sudden. They felt like cracks in glass.

“You’re just tired,” she told him as she worked her arms beneath his shoulders. “That’s all. You’ve been so tired lately.”

His feet dragged over the floorboards. His head rested against her collarbone, and she held him tighter, pretending it was affection that made him lean into her. Pretending he was only sleepy. Pretending he might murmur something against her neck if she waited long enough.

The bathroom was bright too. She had cleaned it twice last night, scrubbing until her knuckles stung, until the tub shone white beneath the overhead light. The bottle of lavender soap sat beside the faucet. A fresh towel hung from the rack. His razor lay neatly beside the sink, though he had not needed it in days. His hair had grown messy instead.

“I’ll fix that later,” she said, looking at the uneven dark strands falling across his forehead. “You hate when it gets in your eyes.”

She lowered him into the tub with care. His body folded awkwardly, knees bent, one arm slipping over the porcelain edge before she tucked it back against his side. The first time she had bathed him like this, she had cried. Not because it was difficult. Not because he was sick. She had cried because marriage, she thought, was supposed to look like this eventually. One person caring for the other when the body became too tired to do what love still wanted.

No one ever said it would happen so young.

The faucet squealed when she turned it. Water rushed into the tub, clear and steaming, wrapping around his hips, then his ribs, then his chest. She kept one hand beneath his head so it wouldn’t slip under.

“There,” she whispered. “That’s better.”

His lips had parted slightly. Claire touched two fingers beneath his nose and waited.

Nothing.

A little laugh trembled out of her, small and nervous. “You’re so quiet.”

For a while, she washed him.

She cleaned beneath his nails. She rubbed lavender soap along his arms and chest. She wiped his face with a cloth, careful around the bruising near his temple, though she couldn’t remember when he had gotten it. There had been so much confusion that night. A sound like glass breaking. His voice raised. Hers raised higher. Then silence, sudden and complete, as if the whole apartment had inhaled and forgotten to breathe out.

Claire wrung the cloth over the water.

It turned faintly pink.

She stared at it.

Then she blinked, and the color was gone, only sunlight shifting through steam.

“You always make such a mess,” she said again, softer this time.

When the bath was finished, she drained the water and dried him slowly. The towel snagged against places that should have been smooth. She ignored that. She ignored the way his skin mottled where she pressed too hard. She ignored the flies gathering near the bathroom window, tapping their tiny bodies against the glass.

Afterward, she dressed him in his blue sweater.

It had been his favorite, though he claimed not to have favorites. Claire knew better. He wore it on cold mornings, on grocery trips, on lazy Sundays when they were supposed to clean but ended up watching old movies instead. She had washed it three times after that night. Some stains remained near the collar, hidden if she folded the fabric just right.

She guided his arms through the sleeves.

“There. Handsome.”

Henry sat in the bedroom chair while she combed his hair.

The chair faced the window because he used to like watching the street below. Claire remembered him making stories about strangers from the third floor. The man with the red umbrella was secretly a retired spy. The woman who always carried two coffees was meeting her ghost. The old dog that refused to walk past the bakery was a fallen king cursed into fur.

“You were ridiculous,” Claire said fondly.

His head tipped forward.

She caught his chin before it fell too far. “Don’t sulk. I liked ridiculous.”

The comb pulled through his hair with difficulty. It had clumped in places near the back, where something dark had dried into it. Claire clicked her tongue. “You really should have let me do this sooner.”

She found the scissors in the vanity drawer.

They gleamed in the morning light.

A simple trim, that was all. Just enough to make him look clean again. She stood behind him and gathered a section of hair between her fingers. The blades closed with a soft metallic whisper.

Snip.

Dark strands fell across the towel draped over his shoulders.

Snip.

His head shifted.

“Hold still,” she murmured.

Snip.

The scissors caught on something.

Claire frowned and leaned closer. The hair at the crown was tangled badly, matted tight against his scalp. She tugged gently. Henry’s head came back with her hand, too loose on his neck, his mouth hanging open in a way she disliked.

“Sorry,” she whispered quickly. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

She tried again, more carefully this time, sliding the blades beneath the knot.

The scissors resisted.

She pressed harder.

Something gave.

A wet sound filled the room.

Claire froze.

For a moment the apartment was no longer bright. The sunlight thinned. The walls seemed farther away. The air thickened until each breath tasted spoiled and heavy. She looked down at her hand and saw the scissors not caught in hair but buried in the softened ruin at the top of his skull. The dark clump was not a knot. It was not dried shampoo. It was not something she could comb out if she was patient enough.

Something pale moved.

Then another.

Small white bodies spilled from the opening she had widened, dropping onto the towel, onto his shoulder, onto the blue sweater she had dressed him in so carefully. They wriggled where they fell.

Claire stared.

The smell struck her fully then. Not sour laundry. Not old food. Not a summer apartment with poor ventilation. Decay. Meat. Blood gone bad beneath closed windows.

Henry’s head sagged backward.

His eyes were half open.

Clouded.

Empty.

The bathroom. The clothes. The bathwater turning pink. Her fingers beneath his nose, checking again and again, not waiting for breath but confirming its absence. The shirt peeled from his body that night. The blood in his hair. Her hands shaking as she dragged him away from the broken edge of the coffee table.

No.

No, that wasn’t right.

He had been tired.

He had been sick.

He had needed her.

Claire dropped the scissors. They hit the floor point-first and bounced onto their side.

A tiny white body fell onto her wrist.

She made a sound then, but it was not a scream. It was too small for that. Too broken. She brushed it away and stumbled back until her legs struck the bed. The room swayed around her.

Henry remained in the chair.

Wrongly dressed.

Wrongly clean.

Wrongly loved.

“I didn’t,” she whispered.

The words sounded childish in the bright room.

“I didn’t do that.”

But the apartment did not answer. Henry did not answer. The flies did, tapping and buzzing against the window, frantic to reach the light.

Claire covered her mouth. Her eyes burned. For one terrible second, she saw everything as it was. The stained floorboards near the bed. The towels piled in the corner. The buzzing black shapes beneath the curtain. The man she loved, gone days ago, kept upright by her hands and her need and the terrible gentleness of denial.

Then Henry’s head shifted slightly.

Not by itself. She knew that.

Still, her heart seized.

Strands of hair slid across his head, hiding the wound.

Claire breathed in sharply.

The room brightened.

The smell dulled.

The flies became summer again.

Henry looked tired. Pale, yes, but tired. His sweater sat crooked, and there were little bits of lint on his shoulder. Poor thing. She had upset him with all her fussing.

Claire wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and forced a trembling laugh.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Look at me. Making a mess again.”

She picked up the scissors and set them on the vanity where they belonged. Then she lifted the towel from his shoulders, careful not to look too closely at what fell from it.

“There,” she said, smoothing his hair forward. “Much better.”

Henry sat quietly in the morning sun.

Claire knelt in front of him, taking both of his cold hands in hers.

“You scared me,” she said.

His cloudy eyes stared past her.

She smiled anyway.

“I’ll make breakfast now.”

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I read some horror romance and decided to try a cliché one. 😊