Housekeeping

Cecilia Kennedy

If the sun slips just right between the curtains, and the air smells fresh, and the floors glisten, then my home is perfect, and I feel rich. Until I look at the neighbors’ house across from mine, the one custom-built, the one with new surprises added each month: a tropical garden, walkways, a pool, an exercise nook, a she-shed, man-cave, giant playhouse for the kids, outdoor kitchen, and firepit. I’ve gone on a tour once. She, the wife, dressed in luxury loungewear, showed me everything, offered me a cocktail while she shopped online, bored out of her skull—and then I was never invited again.

Lots of others have been invited, stayed for parties, invited again, while I watch, so jealous, especially on Halloween, when they decorate in silk spiderwebs and dry-ice fog and animated attractions. People say they use human skeletons and bones because he’s a doctor, has access to all kinds of things. People go in and come out with big smiles on their faces and gift boxes of chocolate.

I watch well after midnight, so jealous, as the skies cloud over and an eerie calm sets in. The neighbors’ house lights flash, and I grab my binoculars, watch while a thick ooze of blood pours down the outside walls, watch while the doors slam shut and open with thunderous force, watch while she, in her expensive loungewear—and her family in matching pajamas—run screaming, flames licking the sky. I watch as they drive away to go live with her mother indefinitely, watch as the spirits inside the human bones escape, shrieking into the night. And I watch the light of those glorious flames shimmer over the floors I’ve just cleaned, all envy dissipating in a cloud of lemon mist.

Published in Issue No. 3, Pulsus Litterae, December 1st, 2024.

Cecilia Kennedy (she/her) taught Spanish and English composition and literature in Ohio for 20 years before moving to Washington state in 2016. Her works have been published in Maudlin House, Meadowlark Review, Vast Chasm Press, Tiny Molecules, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fiery Scribe Review, Kandisha Press, Ghost Orchid Press, DarkWinter Press, and others.