This thing between us
Even after they pour the dirt over her grave, Thiago can’t come to terms with his wife’s murder. Neither can the media. Neither can the pundits or the bloggers looking to turn her death into a symbol for their own agendas.
The only company Thiago wants to keep is with his guilt, grief, and memories. But the world won’t let him.
Neither will Itza, the smart speaker in his condo.
She chimes and responds when she wants. At night Thiago wakes up to see her light stretching across the hallway outside his bedroom. When his wife was alive, they received packages through Itza neither of them ordered—weapons, industrial lye. They heard scratching in the walls. At night Itza would say things that sounded like she was talking to someone in the living room.
To admit what they thought was causing all this, what was inside their home, would be crazy. But one “glitch” on Itza’s part, and now Vera was gone forever.
Friends think Thiago should move on, like he can outrun the pain. So he moves far enough away from these friends, from the news coverage and social media chatter, but not far enough from Itza. Or more exactly, the entity that puppets Itza. An entity that puppets more than just objects the longer Thiago denies its existence. And secluded in a small mountain town, giving a face to this presence may not be enough to stop what it ultimately wants, when a towering slab of stone and mud appears outside his cabin, and the books on his shelves fall to the floor and open with a single message repeated on the pages: Pull me out of the wall.