Reunion

The ride home was silent, until it wasn’t.

“Heh,” Milo said, “I guess you could say there was blood on the dance floor.”

Angie wasn’t having it, and neither were the guava pastries from the high school reunion.

“You think this is funny?”

“I mean, a little bit—”

“Well it’s not, Milo! It’s not fucking funny! You see, this is why we don’t go out. You always get drunk and do something stupid, and then we have to leave before one of us has to go to the hospital! And that’s if we’re lucky.”

“I swear I didn’t start the fight this time! It was my stupid ex’s fault, he­ —”

“I don’t care, Milo! I don’t care why you got into that fight, or who started it! I couldn’t care less. God, I knew this would be a disaster, but I’m still angry.”

“Wow, you knew this would happen…way to have faith in your partner, Angie.”

“It’s hard to have faith in you when you constantly fuck up!”

Things got quiet again. Angie ignored Milo’s puppy dog eyes and payed attention to the road. She knew they weren’t doing it on purpose, but those eyes weren’t what she needed to see right now. Milo directed their attention outside the window, getting lost in the dark blur of the passing trees.

Angie sighed, slowing to the first red light they’d come to in thirty minutes. Yelling at Milo never solved things before, and it wouldn’t now. She had to shift into Mom Girlfriend mode, which was harder than it sounded.

“Look…I’m sorry, okay? That wasn’t right of me to say. I’m not going to pretend like I was lying, but just because I was being honest doesn’t mean I was right. I—”

Milo turned their attention back to Angie.

“Well, I’m glad you were honest, I guess.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean it was, but…what I’m trying to say is, I’m in the wrong too, okay? I need to see the good in things, the good in you, more often. I just focus so much on negative patterns that I ignore the positive ones. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, that makes sense. I’m sorry too. You’re right to be mad at me for all this. I have to grow up and try to be…better I guess. No, not try; I’m going to be better. Not just for you, but for me too. For us.”

The ride was quiet again. Milo gave Angie a soft smile. She performed one back. Like always, she chose to believe this would be the final apology.

When Angie pulled into the driveway, she noticed that the door to their house was ajar. She gestured at Milo to be quiet, and they both crept up to the door. Angie pushed it and it fell off its hinges. Milo caught it before it slammed on the floor and propped it against the wall. They looked at each other with wide eyes and shared a shaky chuckle.

Angie turned on her phone flashlight to navigate through the overwhelming darkness. Their heartbeats were louder than their footsteps. If the intruder was still there, the two of them would be dead by now.

“Oh my God!” she said.

“What is it?”

Angie didn’t respond. The guava pastries were making their way up her throat, and she was struggling to stop them from escaping.

“What is it?” Milo snatched the phone from her hand and shined it at what she saw.

 A corpse was propped up with its left arm resting on the back pillow of the couch, its right leg was crossing over its left. Milo and Angie’s milk white rug became red. There was a large hole where its stomach should be, revealing a cavern of dripping blood and a ribcage stained red. Its guts pushed out of the cavern, intestines half-coiled on the corpse’s lap. Its heart sat neatly in its stomach cavity with veins and arteries thoughtfully arranged around it. The claw marks on its chest almost looked drawn on, like a tree that lost its leaves in the fall.

The flesh had been peeled from the face, only the forehead and ears still covered. It was nearly impossible to tell what the color of its skin was, unless it was somehow naturally wet crimson. There was a hole where its nose should be, and it mocked them with its lipless skeleton grin. Milo was more interested in the envelope between its teeth. They opened it to reveal a small piece of paper with two words on it.

“It just says, ‘have fun.’”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Tears ran down Angie’s cheeks. Her eyes were almost as wet as the corpse’s.

“I—I don’t know.”

Angie tried to hold back her vomit, but the cryptic letter robbed her of any remaining strength she had. The guava pastries poured out onto the floor, chunks in a greenish-brown liquid. She didn’t enjoy looking at it, but she found herself staring at the vomit on the floor, entranced by how the chunks slid off her shoes and onto the puddle she created. They bumped into each other, creating rings that rippled throughout. Like a crowded public pool in the summer. It wasn’t pretty, but it was still better than looking at the body.

Milo started to investigate the body. Angie snapped back to reality just in time to see  undressing the corpse.

“Jesus, Milo, what are you doing?”

“I want to know who this is. I’m looking for clues.”

“This isn’t fucking Scooby-Doo! We need to leave the body alone and call the police!”

“Angie you know I don’t trust cops—”

“This is a little bit bigger than whether you do or don’t trust cops, Milo! There’s a fucking corpse—”

“Holy shit!”

“What?”

Milo picked up the body and turned it around. They lifted up its shirt, showing her its back. The heart display took a dive. An intestine, God knows what kind, landed in front of their foot. They tripped on it and almost fell head first into the ice cream sundae from hell. Angie caught them and helped them back up. The two of them were red from the waist down.

“Do you see it?” Milo asked Angie.

“I just see blood… and vomit…” She was barely able to get that out of her mouth without adding another topping.

“No, not that. The tattoo! Come get a closer look.”

Milo waded through the concoction of blood and vomit, dragging the body with them. They struggled to lift up the body to put its back at Angie’s eye level. All that weightlifting at Planet Fitness was finally paying off.

“A rose?”

“Not just any rose Angie, Ryan’s rose!”

“Wait, Ryan like…your ex from the reunion? Milo, this is…this is fucked.”

“We…might need to call the cops.”

This is the final draft of the inciting incident I posted a while pack. A lot of changes happened between then and now. I’m really happy with how this turned out and I hope to share more of my fiction writing with you guys in the future.