{"id":7688,"date":"2017-09-07T18:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T00:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7688"},"modified":"2017-09-07T18:00:20","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T00:00:20","slug":"stay-a-little-while","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7688","title":{"rendered":"Stay a Little While"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Siegel<\/strong><\/p>\n

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At first, I thought I was wet, but it was just cold air. I stood up from the couch to trace where it was coming from. All the windows and doors were closed. I made my way around the room, feeling at the walls, until I got to the fireplace. It felt like I was in a meat locker.<\/p>\n

I popped my head inside and looked up, but it was too dark to see anything, and my glasses fogged, so I went back to the couch. My mug of coffee was starting to cool down, but I sipped at it anyway and waited, watching the fireplace. Eventually, I saw her bare feet, tinted blue, drifting down. It took her a while to land. She had always been dramatic about her entrances. She grasped at the top of the fireplace with her hands, her nails chipped and black, and ducked into the living room. She was dripping, but the carpet stayed dry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy now?\u201d I said. \u201cYou could at least give me a call first or something.\u201d She had only come back once before. I found her curled up in the bathtub. She must have come up from the drain.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn, I miss you,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen are you coming?\u201d Her irises had faded so that her eyes looked almost entirely white, like eggs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow am I supposed to know that?\u201d I hadn\u2019t stood up. I didn\u2019t want to encourage her. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you stay where you\u2019re supposed to and wait until I get there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat have you done to our living room?\u201d She was looking over at my liquor bar. \u201cI knew you\u2019d drink more once I left. Is that Scotch? Where the hell is all the bourbon?\u201d I\u2019d never liked bourbon much. I thought that would be one thing I could get rid of after she left.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt reminds me too much of you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

She approached me, and my glasses started to fog again, so I took them off.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look nice,\u201d I said. Her hair was wild, sticking out in every direction. She had always kept it straightened even though I made sure only to compliment her when she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t eaten in years,\u201d she said, and she spun around, fluttering her black dress. I felt a drop of something hit my cheek, but when I went to rub it away it was dry. The room now smelled like a harbor — of sweaty men gutting fish in the sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re both here. We\u2019re here right now. I can see you, and you can see me. This is enough.\u201d She coughed more black onto her hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou think you\u2019re here, but you\u2019re not. Look at your feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

She looked down, squinted, and wiggled her toes. \u201cThey still move,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe carpet isn\u2019t wet, honey. You\u2019re wet, but the carpet isn\u2019t. Go back up the chimney. Be patient.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to stay a little while.\u201d She coughed again but kept her hands at her sides, and the black faded before it landed like water freezing in mid-air. She stepped toward me, and spiders scattered from where she had been standing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know we can\u2019t touch,\u201d I said. \u201cRemember last time?\u201d It had been a nauseous pulse — like the south poles of two magnets repelling each other. I\u2019d never seen sadder eyes in my life. They\u2019d still had much of their color then.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I\u2019ll watch you,\u201d she said. \u201cUntil I have to leave.\u201d She sat in the La-Z-Boy on the other side of the room and watched me with a smirk on her face until I was finally able to fall asleep on the couch. Before she left, the first time, she was never the last one to fall asleep. I\u2019d have to drift off to her snoring each night. She\u2019d always been the heavier sleeper in the relationship.<\/p>\n

I woke up around three in the morning and saw that the chair was empty. I\u2019d somehow managed to kick off one of my socks, and two of the couch pillows had fallen onto the carpet. I peered back up into the chimney but didn\u2019t see anything. The cold in the room had left — so had the smell. I made a few rounds around the house, and retrieved some firewood off the back porch. I\u2019d need it to fall back asleep.<\/p>\n

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NICHOLAS SIEGEL<\/strong> is a graduate of Spalding University\u2019s MFA in Creative Writing program in Louisville, KY. His work has been published in The Molotov Cocktail<\/em>, Five on the Fifth, Bird\u2019s Thumb<\/em>, and Literally Stories<\/em>. He is a lover of bourbon, coffee, music, and animals. You can find his work at nswriter.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Siegel     At first, I thought I was wet, but it was just cold air. I stood up from the couch to trace where it was coming from. All the windows and doors were closed. I made my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":7680,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7688","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-200","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7693,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7688\/revisions\/7693"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}