Müllerian Mimicry

Idowu finds their disdain of the many windows in the living room well-worn and familiar. They fumble with their sandwich as they sit on the hardwood floor, surrounded by paint buckets, brushes, and sagging furniture. There is nothing outside the window, but Idowu feels like the absence of anything is a lie. A construct. The empty porch is an open mouth. Idowu cannot bring themselves to admire the distant pond beyond it, the more distant Blue Ridge mountains, and the titmice traversing the porch railings.

Crystal, their wife, eats her sandwich in ragged chunks, her stained pants rolled up to her knees. A paintbrush drips daffodil near her thigh. Crystal’s frown is heavy with an unexpressed opinion. Come out with it, Idowu wants to snap, say something; this was your idea, but there is only silence.

Their phone vibrates. Idowu doesn’t check it.

“I’m not so sure about this,” they say. Phantom cramps roll through Idowu’s stomach and attempt to wring bile from their innards, cramps that make their toes curl in agony, but they do not flinch.

Crystal munches on her sandwich with a frown, humming, unconcerned, a mushroom stuck to her cheek. The phone vibrates again. Dad keeps asking “How is the house?” which means How are you? without the promise of a visit. Idowu loathes how sluggish the risperidone makes him. They are dissolving into hollow moments.

Three-fourths of this feeling comes from starting over with Crystal again. An unusual fourth comes from the wide windows.

“Everything will be fine,” Crystal repeats. “You aren’t little anymore. Renovating your childhood home will be cathartic.”

Their reflections in the glass watch them.

It’s not fine. Fixing this house won’t fix our marriage, Idowu thinks. Then Crystal points and asks, “What bird is that? Tell me about it, honey,” though there is no interest in her voice, and Idowu must turn their gaze outward and fight not to hurl again.

*

At midnight, while Crystal snores on an air mattress upstairs, Idowu returns to the living room windows. They stand in front of the glass wall, staring at their reflection. An October chill creeps through the panes.

The house is a collection of neglect—dust bunnies, reams of clothes from high school, untouched photo albums. It is a testament to domestic ennui, not violence. There should be no nails of dread in Idowu’s chest.

They shut their eyes. The house stretches out behind them, a breathless body made of hardwood, plaster, and rafters. A corpse embalmed with toys and childhood photos that presses against Idowu’s back. Idowu knows it the way they know their entrails and weight and Crystal’s curves. None of these bodies ever leave. Idowu flees, but hands and past promises of happiness—now worn thin—tack them to these woods. This place.

No one has ever lived here, even if they’ve walked here. Idowu’s vision returns, blurs with tears. This house and I are empty.

They think of their father standing here at the window, all kindness and stress, too afraid to take them outside. Never take risks, he always said. Stay safe. This house is safe. They remember countless childhood homecomings to hollow rooms and halls and struggling with homework alone. Every night, Idowu locked themselves in the windowless bathroom while they prayed for their father’s return from work. Dad’s paranoia didn’t feel unnatural at home. It takes an ill person, Idowu thinks, to survive an ill house.

As they stare at their reflection, they dissociate. At once, Idowu’s reflection is a stranger. Idowu keeps their breathing even. They tilt their head. Turn their hand. The twin stranger copies them. As their heartbeat skyrockets, Idowu reminds themselves that no matter what their brain says, their reflection is not a separate person.

Shouldn’t be.

Abruptly, the reflection puts a hand down instead of up. Idowu freezes. Their reflection is a translucent pane over out-of-sync flesh. The remains of an embroidered flower cling to the reflection’s jacket. Idowu’s sleeve is bare. There is a stranger on the porch. Someone ribby and filthy standing in their image.

Idowu exhales when it leaves.

It takes an ill person, Idowu thinks, to survive an ill house.

*

It was dressed this time. It’s matured. That is all Idowu can think about on Friday.

“Idowu, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Idowu digs through an old dresser.

Crystal hums. She paints a strip of trim.

Outside of Idowu’s childhood room, autumn leaves shower the roof. The deciduous forest is aflame with orange, yellow, and red. Inside the house, the cramped second story is dim. Cool. Dry carpet rustles beneath the tarp Crystal set down. Old fantasy novels yellow on shelves; old David Bowie posters fade on walls. Dusty plastic stars fade into the plaster ceiling.

Idowu’s throat is tight. Nothing has changed since my high school graduation, they think. Jesus. It’s really been six years since he went to the care facility. They didn’t let him take anything. Dead ladybugs encrust every corner and fold of this time capsule. They smell of dry, crisp death.

Idowu tastes decay when they yank open a dresser drawer. Abandoned bird guides, elementary school drawings, and report cards clutter the drawer. For every birthday Dad missed and dinner he slept through, he collected a memento. Stink bugs crawl over Dad’s cache. Articles of Idowu’s high school clothes lay crumpled and buried in the drawer beneath it.

“Those drawings are cute!” Crystal breathes over Idowu’s shoulder. “You’ve been interested in nature forever, huh?”

Idowu examines the muddy fingerprints staining some tracksuit pants. A lump bobs in their throat. “I guess.”

“You should’ve been a biologist.” Crystal is papery with wistfulness. She kisses Idowu’s collar. “You would’ve been great at it.”

Instead of responding, Idowu stares at the marigold patches on the pants.

They search for the tracksuit jacket beneath the snarl of souvenirs, bugs, and shame, finding nothing. Crystal talks for an infinity. The deeper Idowu digs, the more their memories of wearing the tracksuit during eleventh grade, of watching Dad iron on the jacket’s marigolds, disintegrate. All they remember are the identical flowers patching the creature’s cuff last night.

“You’re lucky your dad saved this mess,” Crystal says. “My mom trashed all my childhood stuff when I got older.”

“He’s good at saving things he neglects.”

Crystal’s laugh is harsh. “At least he thinks of you. Take that silver lining, honey.”

Idowu stops looking for the jacket. They watch a stink bug crawl over the fingerprints on the tracksuit pants. All their regrets vanish behind the monolithic image of the creature now dressed in their clothes.

Idowu hopes it is warm.

*

The sole thing closer than Halloween is one of Crystal’s bad moods. Idowu sees it coming. That Sunday, all Crystal does is send her mother photos of her and Idowu together while they reupholster chairs. The snapshots are saccharine. Idowu no longer recognizes the fond relationship showcased in them.

Crystal polishes their marriage’s shell and places it on the mantle. She cozies up to her spouse for every photo. After each camera snap, she withdraws. Her smiles vanish. An empty, irritated look enters Crystal’s eyes whenever she stalks away from Idowu to edit the images. Tension sharpens her body into a lonely, untouchable hunk of obsidian. Idowu doesn’t approach her.

If a photograph does not come out well, Crystal retakes it. By the fifth selfie, Idowu is tired. I’m not a dog, they think. I don’t want to perform affection.

After each text that goes unanswered, Crystal uses the staple gun more viciously. Anger overflows from her presence; wine flows into her chipped mug. By evening, Crystal reclines on the couch flushed with rage. She used to shrug off her mother’s cold shoulder or cry. Idowu prefers that to this fixated fury.

“It’s hot,” Crystal says. “Idowu, open the window.”

She points. Idowu smashes down their trepidation. When Crystal is like this, her vast ire eclipses all else. Idowu sighs and complies. In their peripheral vision, they see Crystal scrolling through her phone. She dry-swallows her antidepressants and drapes a hand across her forehead.

“I’m not asking for too much from her.” She grits her teeth.

Idowu kisses their wife’s brow. “You’re not.”

“First, it was ‘get divorced.’” Crystal takes Idowu’s hand, grip too tight. “Now, nothing. Just her smug waiting. Fuck, I hate her.”

Hurt breaks her voice into points. Idowu hums before their guilty agreement slips out. Sometimes, they think, the devil might be right.

Crystal clutches Idowu’s hand until eight, when she finally blacks out from the wine, leaving Idowu in a kingdom of half-dressed chairs and half-hung Halloween decorations. Streamers arc across the dining room ceiling. Paper bats speckle the chimney.

Anxiety stings Idowu’s nerves when they see their reflection in the distant dining room window. It is stiff. Hunched. The streamers cleave it into blurry segments. A whole hallway stretches between them.

I need to relax. Idowu grimaces. Last night was probably a hallucination. I haven’t seen that thing since I was a child.

The reflection’s eyes are oversize and dark. Swollen ticks fleck its cheeks. That detail brings reality crashing in. Idowu wipes their clammy hands on their pants.

“Oh, god. It’s you,” they rasp. “Go away.”

Idowu hums before their guilty agreement slips out. Sometimes, they think, the devil might be right.

The creature is leaning forward. Its lips are cracked. Dirt sticks beneath its broken nails. It presses its nose to the screen, sniffing. The mesh warps. An autumn draft advances with it.

“I’m serious! Stay away.” Idowu’s loud voice lacks confidence.

The creature stoops. Its form is an abstract recreation of Idowu’s. It is their skin stretched over cat bones. The creature’s face steels with determination seconds before it explodes through the mesh on all fours. Idowu’s yell masks the sound of screen tearing from frame.

“No!” they scream. “Out! Out!”

The creature sprints into the kitchen with a hound’s lope, legs flying out. It crashes against the trash can when Idowu swings a broom at it. Crystal staggers up as the creature bolts out the window, then over the rolling hills, a wrapper in its mouth and debris scattered behind it.

*

“When did you start hallucinating again?”

“I’m not hallucinating,” Idowu says.

In daylight the house is hollow. Crystal is lean, trimmed of all love and patience by her hangover. Strands of hair escape her bandanna and fall into her face. On the couch, Idowu pinches their nose.

“Idowu.” Crystal braces her foot on the coffee table. She rubs her temples before burying her face in her hands. “You’re killing me.”

“No.” Idowu stands, agitated, thrumming with an answer. “No, no. Listen to me. It wasn’t a hallucination. Look.”

Idowu trudges to the window, a resigned Crystal behind them. They unlock it. Idowu stills when they see the screen is whole—restapled to the frame.

It takes strength not to dissolve into doubt when Crystal exhales, sounding much older. Crystal reluctantly places a hand on their lower back. Her touch is exhausted. Restrained. Idowu almost cleaves their tongue in half with all the old grievances they bite back. Cruelties and mediocre heartbreak hang around them, as inescapable as the crepe garlands. All their missteps hit half-healed wounds now.

“This isn’t the DPDR,” Idowu says. Crystal yanks her hand away.

“It never is. It wasn’t when you locked yourself in the bathroom in September, or when that mess at the airport happened—”

“Crystal, I’m not losing my mind this time.” Idowu exhales, past failures and old walls surrounding them. “That thing out there is real. It could hurt you. Please, please trust me on this.”

Crystal paces around the room, a burning, dying star orbiting the same elliptical circuit as ever. Her trembling hands twist together behind her back. Idowu hates that they stand here waiting for old words. They always wait.

“Every time I trust you when you’re like this,” Crystal says, hoarse, “you punish me for it. I’m sick of seeing you melt down. I’ve been taking care of you since we dropped out of college, yet this is what I get.”

Idowu wants to put their foot through the repaired screen.

“If you’re sick of seeing me lose it, why did you insist on this house?” They gnaw on the inside of their cheek. Blood springs forth. “Do you think I feel good here? It doesn’t matter how much we repaint or remodel this hellhole. It will always be the same horrible, empty house I grew up in. I feel like I’m like nine years old again, hiding in my closet, terrified that the dad coming into the house isn’t my dad. But you had to have this place. You’ve been set on it since your mom demolished your old house.”

Crystal stops across the room from Idowu. Her lashes glimmer, thick with tears. Guilt pierces Idowu when they feel nothing.

“You agreed to come here. Don’t look at me like that,” Crystal says, voice wavering. “I’m not torturing you. I’m not imprisoning you here.”

“You told me that if I loved you, I’d do this for you,” Idowu says. “What else was I supposed to do?”

Crystal sniffles. She wipes her face. “I don’t know. Fuck, Idowu. I’m tired.” Crystal turns her gnarled, grasping hands up at her partner. “Do you want to leave here? Do you want to leave me? What do you want?”

“I don’t know, Crystal. Just lock the window for me,” Idowu says. “Good job fixing the screen.”

Their wife latches the window and storms out to carve pumpkins on the porch.

“Do you want to leave here? Do you want to leave me? What do you want?”

*

When they were seven—before the depersonalization and derealization, before Crystal—Idowu saw it.

They were sitting on the living room floor with new twists in their locks. Night cloaked their house. Daddy slept on the couch, dreaming Ambien dreams. Idowu didn’t bother keeping the TV volume low.

Movement flickered outside. Idowu turned their head. There’s an opossum on the porch, they thought.

It was no opossum. Inches away, another Idowu stared through the glass. They were naked. Clumsy twists littered their scalp. The remains of the neighbor’s kitten hung from their mouth. Curious eyeshine ringed their pupils.

Idowu gasped.

The creature scampered off the porch.

*

On Halloween, Idowu sprawls on the sofa during the afternoon, contemplating the creature. The stranger. Afternoon sunshine lays thick in the living room. Leaves rustle outside. Frost gilds the window.

The creature isn’t human, Idowu thinks. It’s a mimic of one, of me.

That is the difference between their wife and the creature. No grudges taint the mimic’s blank face. Viceroy butterflies do not resent; wasps do not feign romantic kismet. The thing that digs through Idowu’s trash never asked to be human. It simply approximated a shape to help itself. It has grown bold because it hungers and because people abandoned this house for so long.

Any starved scavenger would understand.

Is this Müllerian mimicry? Idowu wonders. Are they and the creature two toxic things imitating each other’s warning signs? Crystal certainly engages in Müllerian mimicry. She imitates her mother to escape more pain. Whenever Crystal softens, her tenderness is unbearable. It resembles their beginning. Now, youth and clumsy love letters no longer cover their meltdowns.

Idowu knows their wife less as their fourth anniversary encroaches. Maybe they never knew her. Crystal is a cicada shell of jagged traumas and dust—something that once loved plus hoped, and now acts out those things.

In that regard, Idowu thinks, we’re both mimics. Their phone buzzes. Dad’s messages float onto the screen.

“How are you?” he texts. “How is the house?”

“Everything is fine,” Idowu texts back, their fingertips leaden.

“Are you being careful?”

Idowu shuts their phone off.

*

They remain alone on the couch until evening arrives, accompanied by a yellow moon. Pumpkins leer from the porch. Cotton cobwebs span the door. Crystal enters the living room, candy and a wine glass in hand. Tired iciness burdens her gaze when she beholds Idowu.

“You’ve been moping all day,” she says. “Go get some air.”

Idowu forsakes the house without objection. They trudge through the nearby field. Grass brushes Idowu’s legs. Twilight silvers the hills. As they sit by the pond, mud squelches beneath them. Leaves rustle. Far away, a rabbit screams. Me too, Idowu thinks.

By that point, they are out of their body. They are a stranger piloting strange flesh. They tilt their head back, listening to screech owls and bats swoop overhead. Night falls.

Further up the hill, the house’s windows glow. Idowu pictures Crystal chugging a wine bottle and swaying to spooky music. She celebrates events regardless of whether she has fun or not. Idowu finds that bittersweet. They gaze at the porch stairs they and their father never sat on past sunset. Since their father worked until late, they almost never sat on them at all. “One day, baby,” he had said, “you’ll understand why we’re careful.”

Something crouches in the light streaking the lawn. It is a parody of a person. It slinks around in flashes of thigh, its face low to the ground. A breast hangs out of its shirt. The figure sniffs at the porch stairs before bounding up them. Idowu watches it stretch under the sill, waiting, before it rears. The figure stands at the living room window, looking in, hands probing the glass with raccoon-like intensity.

An orange rectangle splits the pitch. Crystal’s shape stands in the doorway. Idowu knows she is speaking. Crystal’s mouth moves. She points at the figure’s chest; she waves her glass. It stares. Crystal gestures, sharper. The figure slides through the door.

Then nothing.

Did it drop to all fours when it entered? Idowu does not know. They are anchored here by nature’s sounds and smells. It is all tangible. Whether I was ever here or not, Idowu thinks, mud between their fingers, I know this place was.

Crystal’s music tilts into a scream. Two silhouettes tangle in the window. Maybe they are tussling. Maybe they are dancing. If Idowu squints, it’s one and the same.

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