Stacy picks up a chunk of her own flesh and tosses it into the extra-strength black trash bag. It is half full already and stinks something awful. She makes her way through each room in her home, picking up the biggest pieces that cannot be vacuumed: a sloppy chunk of her pancreas, a jagged collarbone that sticks out of her wall, clumps of her pubic hair, and blood that drips from the ceiling—she must get a ladder for some of it. Her left eye sits atop the bookshelf and its pupil tracks her as she grabs it. 

The last pieces collected, she sets the bag down and grabs her Clorox wipes. She turns on a podcast, Birding with Gary, and begins in the kitchen. There is so much blood, but she relishes the burn in her muscles—palmaris longus, gluteus medius, adductor longus, triceps—as they begin to stitch back together, grow and rebuild, while she scrubs.

She stretches on her tiptoes to get at a piece of skin that stuck to the upper part of a high cabinet. She stumbles and looks down, sees her calf trembling. Half of it is still gone. She decides to come back to the skin when her leg can take the weight.

Once the kitchen is nearly spotless, she moves to the living room, bathroom, bedroom, guest room. The chemical smell of her cleaning supplies takes over the house and stings her open wounds but less so as they slowly recover. She believes it is sterilizing her, cleaning her.

She has learned to cover fabric in advance, like her couch, so she removes the bloody plastic and puts it outside in a bin to be washed thoroughly later. 

Stacy finishes three wipe containers and turns to bleach, splashing it across the tiled floor. Her body feels on fire as she scrubs on her hands and knees. Gary calls someone “birdbrained” from her phone and she mimes a laugh. She straightens any furniture that was knocked down, fixes paintings that were tilted, places things back on their shelves.

House free of the gore she can find, she checks to make sure none of her unhealed body parts are showing before she grabs the two trash bags she filled and takes them out back, behind her house. As she sets the bags down, she notices her neighbor in their garden. Stacy smiles politely, and they do the same. 

The neighbors have learned to ignore the house when it trembles and shakes with the force of an explosion or when Stacy emerges, hours later, with trash bags that are near bursting. They have let go wondering at what could be in the bags that smell like rot.

Stacy reaches into her own garden and grabs a handful of dirt. Once inside she looks at her spotless house and walks to the kitchen. She sprinkles dirt on the floor, the stove, counter, moves to the living room and tosses it on the couch and ground. She puts on her muddy boots and tracks them from the back door to the front. She takes a couple of books from the bookshelf and tosses them on the coffee table, floor, desk. She takes out a clean glass, pours tea in it, drips some of the liquid on the counter and the ground, and leaves the cup on the coffee table. After a moment of consideration, she takes the cup off the coaster. She moves the chairs around her dining table from their orderly positions, unfolds a blanket and wrinkles it. She wipes her fingers on the mirrors to leave finger marks, pulls out a piece of bread and dusts off the crumbs onto the couch.

Stacy glances at the clock and sits down on the couch. She lifts her shirt to look at the hole in her side that is still reforming. Maybe another hour and she will be back to normal. She closes her eyes for a moment and listens to Gary’s voice. 

“The house sparrow has been known to steal bluebirds’ nests and decapitate them,” Gary says grimly. “People have reported coming upon incredibly grotesque scenes.”

The doorbell rings. Stacy pauses Gary and takes one last look at her home before opening the door.

The cleaning lady lifts her supplies at her and smiles.

“Thanks for coming, my house is a mess,” Stacy says and lets her in.

Amber Beck is a writer and poet whose work can be found in Calliope, Rejection Letters, Sundress Publications Blog, Bindweed Magazine, and Poets.org. She received her MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing from Chatham University. She won second place in a Florida statewide writing contest, first place in NEA Big Read’s writing contest, and the Laurie Mansell Reich Poetry Prize. She has worked as an editor for The Fourth River and 101 Words and is the founder of Barmecide Press.