“I’m hungry.”
“Hi, Hungry. I’m Ethan.”
I rolled my eyes, playfully punching my boyfriend in the arm. We jokingly bickered back and forth for a few minutes about where to eat, finally settling on some local place. We were on our way home from a trip to the beach.
It was a little past dinner time, and we were thankful that we missed the rush. We sat down at a beige booth, both of us ordering hamburgers and fries. Ethan was shy, so I did most of the talking with the waitress. We talked about how much fun we had on our trip, munching happily on crispy french fries and sipping cola from vintage glasses. It was a delightful experience.
We paid our bill and returned to the car, bellies full and hearts content. We listened to David Bowie and shared a cigarette with the windows down, watching the sun set over the mountains in the distance.
Ethan’s hair whipped in the wind, bouncy curls gently brushing my face as I leaned over to kiss his cheek. I wish he hadn’t turned his head, meeting lips with me above the center console. Because if he hadn’t done that, he would have seen the animal dart out in front of the road. He could have hit the brakes, or swerved, or anything other than hit it dead on at full speed. I never saw what kind of animal it was, but it left a smear of dark gore along the hood of Ethan’s Jeep.
I woke up in the hospital some hours later, unable to remember my name. Thankfully my memory came back to me as the anesthesia wore off. Police came to my room and I was shown photos of the accident, and they asked me if Ethan had been drinking or on drugs. I told them no and asked them where he was. That’s when they told me he was dead.
My mother consoled me the best she could. She sat with me in the hospital for days on end, leaving only to feed the dogs at home and get water. When they finally discharged me, she took me home to her house rather than my house. I was fine with it as there was no longer anything for me there.
Memories of Ethan brought me both comfort and pain. I longed to hold him, to listen to records with him and dance under the moonlight on our balcony. My father didn’t know how to handle my grief, but Mom did a good enough job for the both of them. Dad tried, but his attempts fell flat, which is likely my fault looking back.
After licking my wounds at Mom and Dad’s house for six weeks, I decided it was finally time to go home. Ethan had paid the entirety of the rent for a year just the month before his death, and it seemed wrong not to take advantage of his final act of love. Mom drove me home and helped me get my things inside, what little bit I managed to move to her house while I was coping.
The house was as cold and empty as it had ever been. The absence of Ethan was heavy in the room, and it threatened to swallow me whole as soon as my mother got back in her car. I collapsed to the floor, hugging one of Ethan’s shirts tight against my chest.
They never found his body. An officer told me that due to our accident being on a back road in another county, one that was rarely traveled, we hadn’t been found for a solid day after it had happened. They presumed that Ethan’s body had been taken by a hungry bear or mountain lion, or that he had staggered away in attempt to track down help and fell victim to the elements.
I shuddered, pushing the thoughts from my mind like a mental snow plow. I made myself a cup of tea and sat in the floor in the living room, flipping through pages of an old photo album.
The next six days were spent wallowing in my grief in the house, crying and screaming and boxing up Ethan’s belongings because I fucking couldn’t look at them anymore.
I was due back at work the next day; my boss had been kind enough to take me back despite disappearing without even thinking about calling them for the first two weeks. The pain was still raw and throbbing, making it difficult for me to lay out my uniform and wipe the dust off my name tag.
Suddenly, a knock at the door pulled me back to reality.
Mom had just left a little less than an hour before, so I assumed it was her returning for something she’d forgotten. I walked briskly into the living room, wiping the tears from my eyes and pulling the door open. Looking at the figure standing before me sent all the blood rushing to my head.
“Ethan?”
He stood in front of me, looking bashful, with his hands tucked in his pockets. He almost looked like he’d just been caught doing something that would get him in trouble. His guilty eyes met mine and he lifted the corners of his lips in a soft smile.
“Hi…” he said, eyes falling back to the ground. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
I should have been jumping for joy, falling over myself to embrace him. After all this time of believing, knowing, he was dead, the act of him showing up on my doorstep frightened me. My hand made its way to my chest, clutching at the collar of my shirt.
“How are you here?” I asked, nearly breathless.
Ethan shrugged, a hand emerging from his pocket to scratch his cheek. “I wish I could tell you. I woke up in a town a couple hours away from here, near where we wrecked.”
Furrowing my eyebrows, I barked, “Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you call anyone?”
“I literally just woke up two days ago man,” Ethan snapped in response, “Can you cut me some fuckin’ slack?”
I caught myself chewing my bottom lip anxiously and forced myself to stop. Ethan was visibly annoyed, rubbing his chin while looking at the ground. It was strange; an awkward, and forced interaction between people who shouldn’t be strangers.
“What was the name of the town?”
Ethan replied quickly, “I don’t remember.”
“You were just there, how do you not remember?”
“I just don’t remember,” he said, “I’ve been in a coma for a while right? My brain is acting weird. Stuff doesn’t feel right, and I really can’t handle the whole 20 questions thing right now.”
I suddenly felt bad, regretting my initial cold reaction to him. I reached out, hesitating only for a second before resting my palm against his arm. He looked at me like a lost puppy and any hesitation I had left melted away like salt in the rain. I pulled my boyfriend into a hug, squeezing him and sobbing into his shirt.
The news of Ethan’s unexpected homecoming spread through the town like wildfire. His parents were over the moon, coming to our house every day for weeks after he came home. My parents asked me dozens of questions I was unable to answer, offering their guest bedroom to me if anything seemed off. I laughed at the notion of Ethan being anything but the sweet, gentle man I’d known for years.
“This kind of thing has happened before, right?” I would say, digging through my brain for articles and clickbait I’d seen on Facebook. Surely I’d seen the tagline before. ‘Missing person comes home after 20 years in the wild’ or something along those lines.
Halloween was approaching and Ethan had been home for three months by then. We were setting up decorations in the front yard when I noticed he was standing weird, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what about his posture made me uncomfortable.
He was hanging a plastic bat from a tree limb in our yard while standing on a step ladder. His broad shoulders looked normal, stretching the gray fabric of his T-shirt as he fumbled with the bat. His waist was home to a tool belt despite none of our decorations requiring the use of tools, which was typical Ethan. His legs were-
I paused, staring at the front of my boyfriend’s shoes as he faced the opposite direction.
His ankles were twisted completely, skin stretched so tight against the bone that I could almost see them starting to emerge. Beads of crimson blood formed at the surface of the ripping flesh, sliding down his feet and into his sneakers. The thing is he didn’t seem to notice this at all. He was still struggling with the bat, eventually dropping it on the ground. It was only then he noticed his horrific ankles and sighed, effortlessly twisting his feet back in the right direction with an unsettling squelch followed by the snapping of bones.
My palm flew to my mouth, covering it as I gagged violently. I ducked behind the shed before Ethan could turn around to see me, not wanting him to know what I’d just witnessed. I slipped back in the house through the side door, vomiting into the kitchen trash can.
Ethan is still outside fucking with the plastic bat, if that’s even Ethan at all. I don’t understand how a person’s legs could snap like that and not cause them agonizing pain. He seemed completely unfazed, almost irritated that he’d forgotten to place his feet the right way.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to tell anyone, or if I should even say anything about it. Am I going crazy? Did I lose my mind when Ethan died and I’m actually in a mental hospital? Pinching myself hurts, so I guess this isn’t a deranged nightmare. I feel like at the very least, his feet are going to be torn up and need medical attention if it did actually happen. I guess I’ll see when he comes inside.