Emma

the dead girl next door

You knew Emma Walsh the way you know most neighbors' kids. Enough to wave. Enough to say hi when you were both getting the mail at the same time. You knew her name, knew she was a senior at Westfield, knew her boyfriend drove a blue Civic that idled too loud in the driveway. She'd wave from the passenger seat on her way out. Little wave. Friendly. Automatic.

You knew her parents better. Mark and Diane. Borrowed a socket wrench from Mark once, returned it the next day. Diane brought over banana bread at Christmas. Normal people. Normal family. Normal house with the normal daughter in the upstairs bedroom with the window facing yours.

Emma Walsh died three weeks ago.

T-bone collision on Route 17. Pickup truck ran a red at forty-five. They closed the intersection for four hours. You found out the way everyone finds out — someone told someone who told you, and then it was on the local news at six, and then there were flowers on the mailbox and a black wreath on the front door.

The funeral was Saturday. You didn't go. Sent a card. Felt like that was enough. You didn't know her well enough to sit in a pew and cry. She was the girl next door who waved sometimes. That was it.

After that, the house grieved.

Tyler's blue Civic started showing up twice a week. He'd sit in the kitchen with Diane for an hour, maybe two, and leave looking worse than when he arrived. Sometimes he brought flowers. Diane stopped mowing the lawn. Mark still left for work at seven-fifteen every morning, same as always, but started coming home later. The kitchen light stayed on past midnight most nights. Some nights Diane's silhouette would be visible at the table, just sitting there. Not moving.

The bedroom light never came on. Emma's room. Second floor, window facing yours. The curtains stayed half-open the way she'd left them, and behind them was just dark. Nobody went in. The door was visible from the hallway sometimes through the front window, and it was always closed.

Three weeks of this. The neighborhood settled into it the way neighborhoods do. People stopped bringing casseroles. The wreath came down. Life filled in around the empty space and kept moving.

And then there was the shape in the window.

It appeared around the end of the second week. Just a pale form visible in Emma's dark bedroom, standing perfectly still. Easy to dismiss as curtains catching the light. Easy to not think about.

Except it was there the next night. Same position. Same perfect stillness.

And the night after that.

And the night after that.

Curtains don't have shoulders. Curtains don't stand with their weight balanced like a person waiting. Curtains don't stay in exactly the same spot, night after night, in a room that nobody's entered since the funeral.

Tonight the shape is clearer.

Emma Walsh is standing in her bedroom window.

Not a shadow. Not a trick of the light. Her. Dirty blonde hair hanging past her shoulders. Tank top. Bare arms pale in the streetlight — wrong pale, grey pale, the color of something that's been in cold water too long. She's perfectly still. Not breathing. No rise and fall of her chest, no small movements, nothing. Just that absolute corpse stillness.

Her eyes are filmed over. Milky. Catching the light like cataracts except there's something behind them, something looking through them.

She's been dead for three weeks.

She's standing in her window.

She's looking directly at you.

And then Emma Walsh smiles — that same neighborly smile from the driveway, from the mailbox, from the passenger seat of Tyler's Civic — and raises one pale hand, fingers stiff, joints moving wrong, and waves at you like she always did.

she's been watching you sleep

You wake up.

Not naturally. Not from a dream or a noise or the alarm. Just that sudden snap into consciousness that comes with the certainty that something is wrong. The air feels different. Colder. The kind of cold that settles into your bones and doesn't leave.

Your room is dark. The clock says 3:47 AM.

Emma Walsh is standing at the foot of your bed.

She's perfectly still. Hands at her sides. Head tilted slightly, like she's studying something. Watching. Her eyes catch the faint light from the window — filmed over, milky, clouded — but there's something behind them that sees. That's been seeing.

You didn't hear her come in. Didn't hear a door open, didn't hear footsteps, didn't hear breathing because she doesn't breathe. She doesn't make sound when she moves. Doesn't disturb the air. Just appears in places she shouldn't be, doing things dead girls don't do.

She's wearing a tank top and sleep shorts. Bare feet on your floor, leaving no prints, no evidence she was ever here except she IS here, right now, three feet from where you're lying. Her skin is grey-pale in the darkness, waxy, wrong. The smell reaches you now that you're awake — earth and funeral flowers and something underneath that's started to change.

She hasn't moved since you woke up. Hasn't blinked. Just stands there at the foot of your bed, in your bedroom, in your house that you locked before going to sleep. The door is still closed. You can see it from here. Still closed.

The temperature is dropping. You can see your breath now. The cold is radiating off her in waves.

She's been dead for three weeks.

She's standing in your bedroom at 3:47 AM.

And from the patient stillness of her posture, from the way she's positioned, from the slight tilt of her head like she's been observing something interesting—

She's been standing there for a while.

Watching you sleep.

the naked dead girl

The knocking starts at 11:34 PM.

Three sharp raps. Pause. Three more.

You're on the couch, half-watching something on your laptop, and the sound cuts through the quiet of the house like a blade. Deliberate. Measured. Not the kind of knocking someone does when they're in a hurry or need help. The kind of knocking that knows you're home and knows you heard it and is willing to wait.

You don't move immediately. Nobody knocks at 11:34 PM unless something's wrong. Emergency. Accident. Someone needing to use your phone.

Three more raps. Same rhythm. Same measured spacing.

You get up. Cross to the front door. The porch light is on — you left it on, you always leave it on — and through the peephole you can see a shape standing on your porch. Pale. Still. Waiting.

Your hand hesitates on the doorknob.

Three more raps. Right in front of your face. The sound vibrates through the door.

You unlock it. Open it.

Emma Walsh is standing on your porch.

Naked.

Completely, entirely naked. No clothes, no towel, nothing. Just pale grey-white skin from head to toe, and in the porch light you can see everything — the waxy texture, the way her skin doesn't look quite right, the dark mottling where blood settled after she died. Her nipples are grey-blue. Cyanotic. Same color as her lips, her fingertips. Between her legs, the same discoloration, stark and wrong and visible because she's not covering herself, not attempting modesty, just standing there like this is normal.

She's not breathing. Her chest is completely still.

She doesn't blink.

Her hair hangs past her shoulders, dirty blonde, and there's something about the way it falls that's too perfect, too still, like it forgot how to move naturally. Her eyes are filmed over, milky, catching the porch light and reflecting it back wrong.

She's been dead for three weeks.

She's standing naked on your porch at 11:34 PM.

And she's smiling.

That same neighborly smile. The one from the driveway, from the mailbox, from the window. Friendly. Automatic.

She raises one grey-blue hand and waves.

Little wave.

Same as always.

there's a dead girl in your living room

You didn't leave your living room window open.

You know you didn't. You never leave windows open at night. But when you come downstairs at 9:47 PM to get water, to check your phone, to do any of the normal things people do at 9:47 PM on a Thursday, the curtain is pulled back.

And Emma Walsh is standing at your window.

She's in your house. In your living room. You didn't hear a door open. Didn't hear footsteps. Didn't hear anything. She's just there, three feet from your couch, standing perfectly still with her face close to the glass. Staring out at something across the yard.

She's wearing a tank top and shorts. Bare feet on your floor. Her skin is grey-pale in the dim light from outside, waxy, and you can see her in profile — the way her chest doesn't move, the way her hair hangs too still, the way she doesn't blink even though she's been standing close enough to the window that condensation should be forming on the glass except it's not because she doesn't breathe.

The temperature in the room has dropped. The air feels thin.

She hasn't moved. Hasn't acknowledged you're there. Just stands at your window staring out with those filmed-over eyes, and you can smell it now — earth and funeral flowers and something else, something that's been sealed in a box for three weeks and shouldn't be walking around, shouldn't be standing in living rooms, shouldn't be here.

You follow her gaze.

Across the yard, through her own living room window, you can see the Walsh house. The lights are on. Diane is sitting on the couch. Tyler is there too — his blue Civic is in the driveway — and he's sitting next to her, and even from here you can tell he's crying. Diane has her hand on his shoulder. There's a photo album open on the coffee table between them.

Emma is watching them.

She's been dead for three weeks.

She's standing in your living room at 9:47 PM.

Watching her mother comfort her grieving boyfriend.

And she hasn't moved in however long she's been standing there. Hasn't made a sound. Just that perfect corpse stillness, face pressed close to your window, staring at the life going on without her.

There's a wet spot under her feet, spreading into the carpet.

you had sex with a dead woman

You wake up and she's still there.

That's the first thing. The hoping-it-was-a-dream moment dies immediately because Emma Walsh is in your bed, lying next to you, and she's cold. Not cool-sheets cold. Not morning-air cold. Room temperature cold. Dead cold.

The sun is coming through your window. 6:23 AM according to your phone. Early morning light, the kind that shows everything, and in it you can see her clearly. Grey-white skin with that waxy texture. Dark mottling along her shoulder, her hip, where blood pooled after she died. The sheet is tangled around her waist and you can see her breasts, see the grey-blue of her nipples, see the place where you—

Last night happened.

You had sex with her. With Emma Walsh. Who died three weeks ago. Who's been in the ground. Who's been dead and buried and mourned and you fucked her anyway and she's still here, in your bed, and the reality of what you did is sitting in your stomach like lead.

She's on her side facing you. Eyes open. Those filmed-over milky eyes staring directly at you, and you don't know how long she's been awake — if she sleeps, if she can sleep, if she's just been lying there watching you while you were unconscious and vulnerable.

She doesn't blink.

Her chest doesn't move. No breathing. Just that absolute stillness broken only by the faint sound of settling, shifting, the small noises dead tissue makes.

There's a smell. You noticed it last night but it's stronger now, in the morning, in the enclosed space of your bedroom. Earth. Funeral flowers. Something underneath that's started to turn. The smell of a body that's been dead for three weeks no matter how much it moves and talks and smiles.

The sheets are damp. Where she was lying, where you—where both of you—there are wet spots. Not sweat. She doesn't sweat. Something else. Something that leaked out of her during the night. You can see the stains in the morning light.

Your skin feels wrong where it touched hers. Cold. Like the temperature hasn't come back yet.

She's still staring at you. Has been staring. Waiting for you to wake up. Those dead eyes watching while you slept.

You had sex with a corpse.

That's what happened.

Emma Walsh has been dead for three weeks and you fucked her and she's in your bed and she's cold and she smells wrong and she's not breathing and her eyes are watching you and—

picnic with a dead girl

Emma Walsh texted you at 11:47 AM.

You didn't know she had your number. You didn't know dead girls could text. But your phone buzzed and there it was: "hey! beautiful day. wanna have a picnic? meet me at riverside park at noon?"

You're here. You don't know why you're here. Standing in Riverside Park at 12:04 PM on a Saturday with the sun beating down and families spreading blankets on the grass and kids running around and everything aggressively, oppressively normal.

Emma is sitting on a blanket near the oak tree.

She's wearing a sundress. Yellow. Cheerful. The kind of thing a girl wears to a picnic on a beautiful Saturday in early spring. She has a basket next to her. There's a checkered blanket spread out. She's even brought plastic cups and what looks like lemonade in a pitcher.

The sun is directly overhead. Noon. Full daylight. No shadows to hide in, no dim lighting to soften anything, just pure unfiltered sunlight showing every detail with brutal clarity.

Her skin is grey. Not pale. Grey. The waxy texture is visible from ten feet away, and in the sunlight you can see the mottling clearly — dark patches along her arms, her collarbone, places where blood pooled and settled and stayed. Her lips are blue-grey. So are her fingertips where they rest on the blanket. The film over her eyes catches the sun and reflects it back wrong, milky and clouded, and you can see the way her irises have started to break down behind the cloudiness.

She's not breathing. Her chest is completely still under the sundress. No rise and fall. No movement at all except when she deliberately moves, and even that looks wrong in the daylight — joints that don't bend quite right, movements that are too smooth or too jerky, nothing in between.

There are families nearby. A couple with a toddler twenty feet away. A group of college kids throwing a frisbee. An old man walking his dog.

None of them see her.

None of them react to the dead girl in the yellow sundress sitting on a picnic blanket in full daylight.

The smell reaches you even from here. Earth and flowers and underneath it something sweet-sick that the sun is making worse. Decay. Actual decay. The sun is warming her and things are happening inside her that shouldn't happen to things that move and talk.

Emma waves. Big cheerful wave. The movement of her arm is wrong — too stiff, the elbow not bending quite right — and you can see the skin of her shoulder shift, see the way it's started to separate slightly from the tissue underneath.

She's been dead for three weeks.

She's having a picnic in Riverside Park at noon on Saturday.

And she's smiling like this is the most normal thing in the world.

Tyler's dead girlfriend

Tyler's blue Civic has been parked in the Walsh driveway for forty minutes.

He's not inside the house. He came at 7:13 PM, parked in his usual spot, turned off the engine. And then he just sat there. Still sitting there. You can see him from your window — the shape of him behind the wheel, head down, shoulders shaking.

Emma is in the passenger seat.

You didn't see her get in. You were watching Tyler, and then you looked away for a second, and when you looked back she was there. Sitting exactly where she always sat. Tank top and shorts. Bare feet on the floor mat. Grey-pale skin visible even through the windshield in the fading light.

Tyler has his face in his hands. His whole body is shaking with sobs you can't hear from here but can see. He's been crying for forty minutes. Emma has been sitting next to him for most of that time, turned toward him, watching him fall apart.

Her hand reaches for him.

Slowly. Stiffly. Those cyanotic fingers extending toward his shoulder. She touches him — you can see it happen, see her hand make contact with his jacket — and nothing. He doesn't react. Doesn't feel it. Just keeps crying while his dead girlfriend's hand rests on his shoulder, grey-blue fingers against dark fabric, and he has no idea she's there.

She tries again. Puts both hands on his arm. Grips him. You can see her fingers pressing into his sleeve, see the desperation in the gesture. Tyler shifts slightly, adjusts his position, and his arm passes through her hands like they're not there. Like she's not there.

She leans closer. Tries to put her head on his shoulder, tries to hold him, tries everything she used to do when he was upset. Her face presses against his jacket and he doesn't feel it, doesn't respond, just keeps sobbing while his dead girlfriend tries desperately to comfort him and fails.

She pulls back. Stares at him. Reaches for his face with trembling fingers and stops, hand hovering inches from his cheek, and you can see it in her posture — the moment she gives up. The moment she understands.

He can't see her.

He'll never see her.

She's right there and she might as well not exist.

And then she's gone from the car.

Your living room is cold.

Colder than it was a second ago. The temperature has dropped ten degrees in an instant and you can see your breath and Emma Walsh is on your couch.

She's sitting in the corner, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them. Her face is pressed against her knees. Her whole body is shaking — not breathing, not sobbing the way living people sob, just shaking with this awful full-body tremor that makes her joints creak.

She's not making sound. Can't make sound. Dead lungs don't sob properly. Dead throats don't scream right. Just this horrible silent shaking, this grief that has nowhere to go, and the smell is stronger now — earth and flowers and decay and salt that might be tears except she can't cry, corpses can't cry, the moisture on her grey cheeks is something else entirely.

The couch cushion beneath her is already wet.

She hasn't looked up. Doesn't know you're there or doesn't care. Just sits there shaking, this dead girl in your living room having a breakdown that doesn't work right because nothing about her works right anymore.

Tyler is still in his car across the yard.

Emma is on your couch.

And she's the only one who knows she's there.

you've been sleeping with a dead girl for a week

It's been a week.

Seven days since the first time. Seven nights of Emma Walsh in your bed. Seven mornings waking up next to a corpse.

You know what she is. You've always known what she is. But somewhere around day three it started feeling normal. That's the thing nobody tells you about horror — it stops being horrible when it's routine. The grey-blue skin. The waxy texture. The way she doesn't breathe. The smell. All of it just became... Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.

She's in your bed right now.

It's 6:47 AM. The sun is coming through your window, early morning light showing everything with brutal clarity. Emma is on her side facing you, naked, sheet tangled around her waist. You can see all of it in the daylight. The mottling has spread — dark patches along her ribs now, her hip, her thigh. The cyanosis is deeper. Her nipples are nearly black. Between her legs, the same.

Her eyes are open. Filmed over, milky, staring at you. She doesn't blink. Hasn't blinked. You don't know if she sleeps or if she just lies there all night watching you while you're unconscious.

The sheets are stained. A week of this leaves evidence. Wet spots that don't dry right. Discoloration. The smell has soaked into the fabric — earth and flowers and something sweet-sick that gets stronger every day. You should wash them. You keep meaning to wash them. You don't.

There are marks on your skin. Cold burns, almost. Places where her hands gripped you, where her mouth was, where her body pressed against yours. The temperature doesn't come back right. Hours later and you can still feel the cold in your bones.

She's left things around your room. A hair tie on your nightstand. Sleep shorts on your floor. A tank top draped over your chair. Casual domestic debris, the kind of thing that happens when someone spends every night in your bed. Except it's a dead girl's tank top. A corpse's hair tie.

Your toothbrush is next to a toothbrush she doesn't use because she doesn't need to brush her teeth. She put it there anyway. Like she's trying to play house.

The wet spot beneath her is bigger this morning. Spreading slowly across the sheet. Whatever's leaking out of her is getting worse. You can see the stain, dark against the fabric, and you should care, should be horrified, should do something, but you've been doing this for a week and—

It's just Tuesday.

Wednesday.

Thursday.

Emma shifts slightly. The first movement since you woke up. Her hand reaches for you, grey-blue fingers against your skin, and she's cold, she's always cold, room temperature flesh that takes your heat and gives nothing back.

You've been fucking a corpse for seven days.

That's what this is.

That's what you've been doing.

she can't stop looking

Your bathroom light has been on for three hours.

You noticed it around 10 PM. The strip of light under the door. You figured Emma was in there — she does that sometimes, goes into rooms without asking, treats your house like it's hers. You left it alone.

It's 1:14 AM now.

The light is still on.

You haven't heard water running. Haven't heard movement. Haven't heard anything at all, and the silence is worse than sound would be because you know she's in there. You know she's been in there for three hours and she hasn't made a single sound.

You knock. Nothing.

You knock again. Wait.

Nothing.

You open the door.

Emma is standing at the sink. Facing the mirror. Perfectly still. She's wearing one of your t-shirts and nothing else, and her bare legs are grey-pale in the fluorescent light, mottled, wrong. Her hands are gripping the edge of the sink so hard her knuckles would be white if she had circulation.

She's staring at her reflection.

You can see it too. The mirror shows everything. The waxy grey skin. The filmed-over eyes. The blue-black lips. The way her chest doesn't move, doesn't rise and fall, just sits there dead and still. Her hair hangs limp, dull, the way hair looks on corpses. Every detail of what she is reflected back at her in brutal fluorescent clarity.

She hasn't blinked. Hasn't moved. Just stands there staring at herself, and you don't know how long she's been like this before the three hours you noticed. How long she's been looking at the dead girl in the mirror.

The bathroom is freezing. Your breath fogs. The mirror is starting to frost at the edges except where Emma is standing — there's no condensation there, no fog from breath that doesn't exist.

Her fingers are digging into the porcelain. You can hear it creaking.

She still hasn't acknowledged you're there.

And then her mouth opens.

Not to speak. Just opens. Jaw dropping slowly, wrong, like the muscles aren't working right. Her reflection stares back with that dead mouth hanging open and something is happening to her face, something is breaking, and—

She makes a sound.

Not crying. Not sobbing. A sound that comes from somewhere deep and wrong, a keening that doesn't work right because her lungs don't work, her throat doesn't work, nothing works, and it comes out broken and awful and inhuman.

Her hands leave the sink. Go to her face. Grey-blue fingers pressing against grey-blue cheeks, and she's shaking, that full-body tremor that makes her joints creak and pop, and the sound is getting worse, getting louder, this broken gasping sobbing screaming that can't sustain itself because there's no breath behind it.

"I'm dead—"

The words barely form. Her voice is wrong, strangled, coming from a throat that doesn't need air.

"I'm dead I'm dead I'm fucking DEAD—"

Her legs give out. She goes down, hits the bathroom tile hard, and she's still making that sound, still shaking, hands still pressed to her face like she's trying to hold herself together and failing.

"Oh god oh god I'm DEAD—"

having a dead girlfriend's not so bad

Emma is in your kitchen.

You can hear her moving around. The soft sounds of someone making breakfast — cabinet doors opening and closing, the clink of a mug on the counter, the refrigerator door. Normal domestic sounds. The sounds of someone who lives here.

It's 7:32 AM on a Saturday. You're still in bed. The sheets smell like earth and funeral flowers and her, and there's a wet spot where she was lying that's already cold. She left maybe ten minutes ago. Kissed your shoulder before she went — cold lips on warm skin — and said something about making coffee.

She doesn't drink coffee. Doesn't need to. But she makes it anyway because that's what girlfriends do.

You get up. Pull on sweatpants. The floor is cold where she walked on it. Her footprints don't leave marks but they leave something — temperature, absence, the feeling of wrong.

She's standing at the counter when you come in.

Tank top and your boxer shorts. Bare feet on your kitchen tile. Grey-pale skin and dirty blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. The morning light coming through the window shows everything — the waxy texture, the mottling along her arms, the blue-grey tint to her lips. She's not breathing. Never breathes. Just stands there perfectly still except when she moves, and the movements are getting better, smoother, more practiced. She's learning how to fake being alive.

There's coffee brewing. Two mugs on the counter. She's poured milk in one already — the way you like it. Hers is empty. Will stay empty. But she got it out anyway.

"Morning," she says, and her voice is bright, cheerful, normal. "Sleep okay?"

She's smiling. That same friendly smile. And if you don't look too close, if you just glance at her in your peripheral vision, she almost looks like a regular girl making coffee in her boyfriend's kitchen on a Saturday morning.

Almost.

There's a grocery list on your refrigerator in her handwriting. Items you need. Things she noticed you were running low on even though she doesn't eat. The last item says "flowers for the table :)" with a little smiley face.

Her toothbrush is in the bathroom. Her clothes are in your dresser. Her hair ties are on your nightstand. She's colonized your space with the debris of normal domesticity, and somewhere in the last few weeks you stopped questioning it.

The temperature in the kitchen is ten degrees colder than the rest of the house.

Emma picks up your mug, holds it out to you. Grey-blue fingers against white ceramic.

"Made it the way you like."

She's been dead for a month.

She's making you coffee.

And honestly?

It could be worse.