The Spare Room

“I love you.”

She said it the second she stepped inside. A bit suspicious, even for Elora. The air carried a faint floral scent, but it couldn’t mask the smell of stale sweat and old laundry.

I sat on the floor amidst a sea of tangled socks, dead pens, and discarded dresses. Elora looked disappointed. I couldn’t blame her; the place looked like a hurricane had hit a thrift store.

“Uh… where were you?” I asked, trying for a smile. “I looked everywhere.”

She didn’t answer right away. She just stared at me with those eyes. God had clearly spent a lot of time on her face, but there was a weird look in her expression today. Something empty.

“Are you… okay?” she asked.

“Yeah?” I stood up, stepping over a pile of magazines. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

I moved to put my hands on her shoulders, but she slipped past me and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Do you know what’s happening outside?” she asked softly.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Elora, come on. My mom used to nag me about ‘looking outside’ too. Don’t start.”

She gave a small, forced laugh. “Can’t you see the pattern here?”

Ping.

A notification on my phone. We both looked at the screen on the nightstand.

“Who’s that?” she asked. She sounded worried.

“Nobody. Forget it.” I stepped closer to her. “Can you smell that? The sweat smell? It’s getting really bad.”

“I can’t smell anything,” she said. Her voice was flat. “Don’t you remember?”

I blinked. A memory flickered—a flash of her chest, a surgical scar, a hospital gown. It vanished as quickly as it came.

“Remember what?”

“Nothing.”

She sat perfectly still on the bed. I checked the mental calendar. Anniversary? No. Birthday? No. I scanned the room for clues. The ticking of the wall clock started to get loud. Tick. Tick. Tick. It was drilling into my head.

The refrigerator wasn’t humming. The street noise had vanished. The only thing left was the ticking and that heavy, salty smell.

Thud.

Something fell in the next room.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

Elora didn’t move. “Hear what?”

“In there.” I pointed to the closed door at the end of the hall. “The spare room.”

“There’s nothing in there,” Elora said. She stood up and grabbed my hand. Her palm was damp. “Don’t go in there.”

I pulled my hand away gently. “I’m just going to look. Maybe a shelf fell.”

“Want to play cards?” she asked. It was so random I almost laughed again. “Let’s just play cards. I’ll go get them.”

She walked out of the bedroom toward the kitchen.

The curiosity hit me like a physical weight. Was she hiding a surprise? A gift? The smell of decay was definitely coming from behind that door. It was thick now, sticking to the back of my throat.

I crossed the hallway. The carpet was sticky under my bare feet. I reached for the handle.

Creak.

The door swung open.

The room was dark, except for two small flickers of light. On a small table sat a framed photo of Elora. She was smiling, the way she did before the hospital. In front of the photo, several incense sticks had burned down to gray ash. Beside them, a vase of lilies had turned into a slimy, black mess in stagnant water.

The “sweat” smell wasn’t sweat. It was the lilies. It was the house.

I turned back to the hallway.

“Elora?”

The house was silent. No footsteps in the kitchen. No shuffling of cards. The bed in the other room was covered in a thick layer of dust, undisturbed for months.

The only thing left was the echo of her voice, trapped in the wallpaper.

“I love you.”