I started warming the place a week early.
People think rot comes from neglect, but that’s ignorance. Rot is growth. Rot is hunger with direction. You have to encourage it, like you would any living thing. I turned the thermostat up and listened to the vents sigh, a sound like a long body stretching awake.
Seventy-eight at first. Then eighty-two.
By the third day, the windows fogged from the inside. That was good. Moisture means readiness.
I dragged the hose through the crawl space and punched a hole through the brittle pipe beneath the kitchen sink. Just a trickle—no floods. Floods drown. What I needed was damp persistence. A slow soak, the kind that seeps into beams and forgets how to leave.
The house responded almost immediately.
There’s a smell people think they know. They call it mold, mildew, wet wood. They’re wrong. Those are just the early syllables. The full word doesn’t fit in a human mouth.
I slept on the living room floor so I could feel it work.
My daughters stopped calling months ago.
I don’t blame them. After the hearing, after the papers, after the neighbors started using that look—the one where concern curdles into something harder—I became inconvenient. I was no longer a father. I was a situation.
They said I collected garbage.
They never asked why.
Every object here serves a purpose. Newspapers wick moisture. Cardboard breathes. Old clothes feed. The house isn’t cluttered; it’s layered. Stratified. Like soil.
They called the inspector once. He took pictures, wrinkled his nose, warned me about structural damage.
“You don’t want this place collapsing,” he said.
I smiled and said, “That’s exactly what I want.”
He didn’t laugh.
I first heard them in the walls during a fever.
I’d fallen in the shower and bruised my ribs. Spent two days shivering under towels, drifting in and out. That’s when the house leaned close.
Not voices. More like… instructions.
A pressure behind the eyes. An understanding that arrived fully formed, without language. The realization that decay is not an end state—it’s a doorway.
Everything breaks down eventually. But not everything gets to go somewhere afterward.
They showed me how to prepare myself.
How to soften.
I taped handwritten notes to the doors.
Nothing alarming. Nothing urgent.
Please knock loudly.
Door sticks—pull hard.
Mind the step.
Considerations. Courtesies.
I wrote invitations too, though I didn’t send them. That wasn’t necessary. When the conditions are right, people come on their own. Curiosity is a spore all its own.
The heater hummed day and night. I fed the corners with bowls of water. I stopped opening windows. I let the air thicken until breathing felt intentional.
The house began to sweat.
Patterns bloomed along the ceiling like pale constellations. The bathroom baseboards darkened, then softened. When I pressed a thumb against them, it left an impression that slowly filled back in.
Like memory.
I talk to the house now.
Not out loud. That would be silly. It communicates in sensations. A heaviness in the chest when it wants more heat. A faint sting in the eyes when it’s time to add water. A pleasant ache in the joints when I’m doing well.
It rewards compliance.
I grow stronger every day.
The cough started last week. Deep, productive. Each breath tastes sweet and metallic, like old pennies and rain. When I exhale, I imagine the inside of me fogging, turning hospitable.
I sleep less. There’s no need. The walls murmur all night, and I listen, grateful to be included.
Someone knocked yesterday.
Not hard enough.
I didn’t answer. They’ll try again.
I checked myself in the hallway mirror afterward. My skin looks translucent in places. Veins darker. More visible. Beautiful, really—like the capillaries in a leaf.
My fingernails have softened. I can press them against my palm and feel them bend slightly. This worried me at first, until I understood: rigidity is a liability.
I am becoming workable.
The basement is nearly ready.
I pulled up the carpet weeks ago and stacked it in the corner to rot. The concrete weeps constantly now, slick and dark. Pale threads lace the walls, branching, testing. When I run my hands over them, they recoil—not in fear, but anticipation.
I whispered my gratitude.
I brought the mattress down today.
Beds are important. You want guests comfortable when they arrive. Even if they don’t stay long.
I positioned it beneath the sagging beam where the air feels thickest. I lay down for a while, just to be sure. The concrete was cool against my spine. The smell wrapped around me like a blanket.
I laughed until I cried.
The children used to tell me I was sick.
That something in my head had gone wrong.
They never considered the possibility that something had gone right.
Illness implies malfunction. This is alignment. Every ache, every weakness, every strange new sensation is my body learning a different language.
One that doesn’t end in silence.
I practice being still. Being porous. Letting things pass through me.
Sometimes I feel movement beneath my skin. A gentle crawling, exploratory. It tickles. I don’t scratch.
Scratching damages the surface.
I left the front door unlocked tonight.
Just a crack.
The air outside felt thin and unsatisfying. Dry. Loud. I was glad when I closed it again.
I set the house to eighty-six.
Eighty-eight.
I can feel them now when I breathe in—tiny irritations, sparks of warmth. Settling. Claiming.
My lungs ache pleasantly.
I think of the yard sometimes. How neglected it’s been. All that soil wasted on grass. Someday it will be richer. Darker. Capable of holding anything.
Including me.
There’s a smell drifting through the vents now that even I can’t name.
It’s not rot anymore.
It’s promise.
I sat at the kitchen table and wrote one final note. Not for anyone specific. Just in case.
Please come inside. Everything is ready.
I taped it to the door, stepped back, and admired the way the paper curled slightly at the edges from the damp.
Perfect.
The coughing fits are worse tonight.
Each one leaves me dizzy, gasping, exhilarated. I spit into the sink and watch the sink watch me back, rimmed with soft gray fuzz.
I think something inside me has bloomed.
I’m so proud.
If someone comes now, they won’t need instructions.
The house will take care of them.
The air will do the rest.
I’m going to lie down in the basement and wait. I’ll keep the heater on. I’ll keep breathing deep and slow.
By morning, I won’t need to breathe at all.
By then, I will be useful.
By then, the house won’t be a house anymore.
It will be a garden.
And I will finally belong to it.
