What the fuck was he doing down there?
I remember the handle felt colder than the rest of the house. Metal against my palm, slightly damp, maybe from the air down there, maybe something else. I didn’t think about it too long, I just pulled the door open. And yeah, the smell before? That was nothing. This hit like walking straight into something solid.
Ithit.
Thick, wet, wrong in a way that made my body react before I even had time to think about it. My stomach flipped hard and I instinctively dragged my shirt up over my nose and mouth, pressing the fabric tight against my face like that was going to do anything. The stairs cracked under me as I went down. My hand slid along the wall at one point, fingertips brushing over something uneven in the paint, but I didn’t look. My focus stayed down, on what was waiting, and when I reached the bottom, I saw him.
Zwierek stood with his back hunched, leaning forward like he was studying something closely. Still, focused in that way he gets when the rest of the world might as well not exist. The room looked worse, everything did. The air was heavier down there, like it had nowhere to go. It just sat, thick and humid, carrying that smell in a way that made it feel almost visible. And her, I could see enough from where I stood. The body had changed, skin no longer sitting the way it should. I didn’t say anything, just stood there, watched. Zwierek didn’t turn around, but he knew I was there.
“There are maggots in her now.”
I didn’t answer, I just kept looking, at him, at what he was standing over. At the way his hands rested near her, not touching, but close enough that it didn’t matter. A few secondspassed, then he straightened and turned around, his eyes landed on me immediately.
“Where’s your father?”
The way he said it, like there was only one correct answer. I frowned, lowering my shirt just enough to speak.
“In his house,”I said.“Where else would he be?”
His eyes stayed on me for a moment before he spoke.
“You didn’t leave his body there, did you?”
I didn’t answer with words, but something in my face must’ve said it for me, because Zwierek’s expression shifted. He let out a short laugh, but there was no humor in it.None.
“All these fucking years,”he muttered, shaking his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.“All these fucking years I’ve known you,”
He took a step closer.
“Let you sit there with your books, your thoughts, all that useless shit you fill your head with,”Another step.
“And you’re still this fucking stupid?”
He just looked at me like nothing had changed, like the air hadn’t just split open between us. I could still smell it. Rot. Thick and sweet and wrong, crawling into the back of my throat every time I breathed in. It clung to everything down there, the walls, the floor, the inside of my mouth. I swallowed against it, jaw tight enough to ache.
“He’s not dead, Zwierek.”
My voice came out lower than I expected, like I was holding something back and it was leaking through anyway. There was a wet sound behind him when he moved. I didn’t look at it. I kept my eyes locked on him instead. On the way his shoulders settled, on the way his head tilted just a little, like he was adjusting his angle on something he didn’t quite understand yet. Or maybe something he understood too well. His eyes found mine and stayed there.
“And why,”he said slowly,“is he not dead?”
Each word spaced out carefully, like he was tasting them before letting them land. I exhaled through my nose, but it didn’t help. The smell was still there. The pressure in my chest was still there, everything felt too tight, like my own body was closing in on me.
”It’s not what we thought,”I said.
That sounded wrong the second it left me. Too weak.
“He’s not,”I stopped, dragged a hand over my face, rough, trying to force the words into place. They didn’t want to sit still. They kept slipping, like they didn’t belong to me anymore.
“He didn’t… he tried,”I said finally, pushing through it.
“He did what he could, it wasn’t enough, no, but… he,”My throat tightened, fucking useless. I clenched my teeth harder.
“He’s not that,”I finished.“He’s not what we said he was.”
Zwierek didn’t react, didn’t blink, didn’t even fucking breathe, it felt like. He just stood there, looking at me like I had just said something mildly interesting.“And you believe that?”he asked, still calm.
Like he was already three steps ahead of me and just waited to see how long it would take before I realized it. I didn’t answer. I didn't trust my voice not to betray something I didn’t fully understand myself. My brow pulled in slightly, not even on purpose. Something shifting under my skin that I couldn’t get a grip on. The silence stretched so long it felt like it started to crawl. Then, something in him changed, like something snapped in his chest.
